Society & Culture

They have collaborated on the new book Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. Patricia Due was a civil rights activist with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and was part of the movement's landmark "jail-in." Protesters served time instead of paying a fine for the so-called crime of sitting at a Woolworth lunch counter. Patricia Due worked with many of the movement's great figures during the 1960s.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews Mark Twain the new two-part documentary series by Ken Burns which airs on PBS tonight and tomorrow night.

Writer Neil Baldwin is the author of the new book, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass roduction of Hate (PublicAffairs books). Baldwin details Ford early obsession with moralistic writings condemning Jews for not accepting Christ. Shortly before World War I and continuing into the 1930s he wrote a series of venomous anti-semitic essays in the newspaper, The Dearborn Independent (which Ford owned). In 1928 he collected many of the essays published in 1920 under the title, The International Jew: The World Foremost Problem. He also published The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

In her 40 years of public service she worked for civil rights, helped write the guidelines that are now established in the Sexual Harrassment Act, worked for reform in South Africa and has argued before the Supreme Court. She has been the Commissioner on Human Rights in New York, the first woman appointed to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a law professor. Holmes Norton is the subject of the new biography Fire in My Soul, written by a long-time friend, Joan Steinau Lester.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the evolution of the meaning of the word "plastics."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Marriage: A Duet. It's a book of two novellas by Anne Taylor Fleming.

Haynes is the writer and director of the new movie Far From Heaven, inspired by the 1950s Douglas Sirk movie All that Heaven Allows. Friedberg, as the movie's production designer, worked with Haynes to bring a 1950s look to the film. Haynes also directed the movies, Safe and Velvet Goldmine.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters have written together since the 1970s for several major newspapers and magazines. Their latest piece covers Native American-owned casinos and appears in this month's Time magazine. This September, they also published The Great American Tax Dodge: How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You.

He is the author of the bestseller Boy Still Missing, which is now available in paperback. He relates the saga of getting his photograph taken.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the way the words of courtship are showing up on the newspaper business pages.

This year she received the John Humphrey Freedom Award for her 20-plus years in the field of human rights and democratic development in her country. She was noted for her work to promote women's rights in Nigeria. She helped organize civil protests across the country, demonstrating against the planned adoption of a conservative and discriminatory form of law known as Sharia.

Former senator, vice president, and presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife, Tipper. In the two years since the presidential election they have been working on the new book, Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family. The book explores the changes that have taken place in families over the past few decades, using examples of families the Gores have met along the way. Tipper Gore is a former photojournalist and served as adviser to the president on mental health policy. Their other book is the collection of photographs The Spirit of Family.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (Farrar Straus & Giroux)

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Todd Haynes' new movie Far from Heaven.

She's put together a book of photographs of and from the museum's collection of human oddities and outdated medical models. The Mutter Museum is in Philadelphia, Pa., and is one of the last medical museums from the 19th century. It originated with the collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter, who gathered unique specimens for teaching purposes. The museum displays many strange human artifacts, such as a slice of a face, amputated limbs and a plaster cast of the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker.

Head of Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission, Dr. Sima Samar. She was appointed to the position in July. Previously she served as the country’s first Minister for Women’s Affairs appointed by the interim Afghan government. Dr. Samar is an internationally-renowned feminist and human rights activist. Samar defied the Taliban and continued to operate schools for girls and health clinics in Afghanistan’s provinces and refugee camps in Pakistan. Samar was born in Ghazani, Afghanistan and is a Hazara, one of the most persecuted of the ethnic minorities.

LaHaye, who died earlier this week, was a fundamentalist Christian and a longtime leader of the religious right. His Left Behind books sold more than 50 million copies. He spoke to Fresh Air in 2002.

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Little Friend (Knopf) the second novel by Donna Tartt.

Filmmaker Burr Steers is making his feature film debut with Igby Goes Down which he wrote and directed. It's about a disaffected teenager from a well-heeled but financially strapped family.

Film critic John Powers reviews Punch Drunk Love, the new film from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson's previous films include Magnolia and Boogie Nights.