Places & Travel

Dave Alvin is best known for his work in the Blasters and X, as well as his solo career. His new CD West of the West is a tribute to California songwriters, and features Alvin performing songs by Jerry Garcia, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Merle Haggard and others.

Trauma care professionals C. William Schwab and Therese Richmond work at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia. After years of treating patients in the emergency room, Schwab and Richmond have co-founded the Firearm Injury Center at Penn in an effort to systematically reduce the epidemic of gunshot wounds in the United States.

Sandy Tolan talks about his book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East. The account grew out of a 1998 NPR documentary in which Tolan reported on a friendship between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman that served as an example of the region's fragile history.

On Sunday, Harry Connick Jr. will be among the nominees attending the Tony Awards. Connick received a Tony nod for best actor in a musical for his Broadway debut in the revival of The Pajama Game.

Connick has released a disc of his Broadway endeavors. The triple CD features not only recordings of the 2006 Pajama Game cast, but those from the 2001 musical he wrote, Thou Shalt Not. The latter feature duets with his Pajama Game co-star, Kelli O'Hara.

Our book critic reviews Terrorist, the new novel by John Updike.

The new documentary Baghdad ER goes inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, the Army's premier medical facility in Iraq. Shot over two months in 2005, the film tells the stories of the hospital's doctors and wounded soldiers. The film debuted on HBO last week. Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill discuss their project with Terry Gross.

Few musicians are as identified with Texas as the late Doug Sahm. But Sahm also spent five years in exile in California, where rock historian Ed Ward got to know him. Ed takes a look at this period, in which he says Sahm and his band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, did some of their most lasting work.

The award-winning Australian novelist Peter Carey is known for his manic comic energy. Reaching for comparisons, reviewers have likened him to James Joyce, Tom Wolfe and other writers obviously in love with words, words, words. Carey's latest novel, Theft: A Love Story, is sure to steal its readers' attention away from all other activities.

Journalist Nicholas Kristof has just won the Pulitzer prize for his New York Times commentary on Darfur. He and John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group deliver an update on the continuing crisis and genocide still under way in the African republic of Sudan.

Two archaeologists test the historical accuracy of some of the Bible's oldest stories in a new book, David and Solomon. Neil Asher Silberman talks about the findings in the book he co-authored with Israel Finkelstein.

There have been several waves of pop music in New Orleans since World War II, with each one subsiding as its celebrated musicians realize they can't make a living in the city they grew up in. In 1960, another of those waves crested, and with it came a pioneering effort for racial equality. Ed Ward has the story of AFO Records: All For One.

Forced out of New Orleans after Katrina hit last year, historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, soon returned. He helped with rescue efforts and immediately began the task of collecting oral histories of the catastrophe.

The result is his new book, The Great Deluge, which offers a multi-perspective account of the storm and its aftermath. Brinkley is the author of three other historical narratives, including Tour of Duty.

This past week marked the 26th anniversary of the failed rescue attempt of hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. We talks with journalist Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam.

Filmmaker Liz Mermin's new documentary, The Beauty Academy of Kabul, is about a group of American hairdressers who open a beauty school in Afghanistan to teach local women how to cut hair and apply make-up, thus making them financially independent.

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker discusses on the latest developments between Iran and the United States regarding Iran's nuclear power program. Hersh writes that the Bush administration has clandestine plans for a possible major attack on Iran.

Author Stephen McCauley first made a splash with The Object of My Affection, the novel that was later made into a movie starring Jennifer Aniston. His new novel, Alternatives to Sex, concerns a a gay fortysomething realtor with an addiction to cruising the Internet in pursuit of casual sex.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Friends with Money, the new film by writer/director Nicole Holofcener who wrote and directed Lovely & Amazing and Walking and Talking.

Stephen Kinzer has reported from more than 50 countries for The New York Times and has been the paper's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua. In his new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, he writes that in the past 110 years, America has overthrown 14 governments that displeased them for "ideological, political, and economic" reasons.

Sharon Stone returns as a gorgeous novelist (and apparent psychopath) in a sequel to her 1992 smash hit Basic Instinct. This time, she's matching wits and sexual techniques with British actor David Morrissey instead of Michael Douglas. David Edelstein has a review.

Rock Historian Ed Ward on the history of African-American musicians in Nashville. He plays music from Night Train to Nashville a double CD put out by the Country Music Hall of Fame (in conjunction with a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Show).