Government & Politics

Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger are nontraditional tourists who explore missile silos, test sites, and bomb shelters. The two just published A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, a chronicle of their travels to nuclear landmarks across ten states and fives countries.

Journalist Ahmed Rashid's new book, Descent into Chaos, examines the Unites States' nation-building efforts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Rashid argues that U.S. efforts have failed — and served to destabilize the region further.

When the candidate was assassinated 40 years ago, Hamill was there: He was Kennedy's friend and had helped persuade him to run for president. A journalist and author, Hamill covered the story for The Village Voice.

The former White House spokesman rocked the capital last week with a provocative memoir. He joins Terry Gross to talk about What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

Fresh Air's TV critic reviews HBO's Recount, about the uncertain and still-controversial aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. The movie stars Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern and Tom Wilkinson.

Now a military expert for Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco was a Pentagon analyst for seven years — and he was there when terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. He tells Fresh Air about his experiences that morning.

After American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, it took firefighters three days to stop the blaze. Firefighter Patrick Creed and journalist Rick Newman discuss the Pentagon blaze and the book they wrote about it, Firefight.

In 1964, Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in a landslide victory; eight years later, Republican president Richard Nixon was reelected in an equally lopsided race. In his new book, Nixonland, historian Rick Perlstein looks at the chaotic years between those elections.

U.S. Senator Jim Webb, a onetime Republican who won his Senate seat as a Democrat, has stayed clear of endorsing a candidate in the Democratic primaries. The retired Marine explains why — and talks about his disagreements with the Bush administration, the legislation he's introduced to expand benefits for Iraq War veterans, and his new book, A Time to Fight.

Reverend Carroll Pickett was the death-house chaplain at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas for 13 years. During his tenure, he ministered to 95 inmates executed by lethal injection. He is the subject of a new documentary, At the Death House Door.

It's become a $50 billion a year industry: Corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and IBM are being paid to do things the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon usually do, including analysis, covert operations, electronic surveillance and reconnaissance.

Iran's president was relatively unknown on the international stage before he was elected, but he's a standard-bearer for a new generation of hardliners. In a new biography, journalist Kasra Naji explores Ahmadinejad's rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.

In her book Unveiled, Deborah Kanafani recounts her marriage and divorce to a high-ranking Palestinian diplomat — and the cultural rift between her "American" upbringing and her married life.

Veteran peace negotiator Padraig O'Malley worked on the conflicts in Northern Ireland and South Africa. Mac Maharaj played a role in the latter nation's anti-apartheid movement. Both took part in recent closed-door negotiations in Finland, aimed at bringing reconciliation among rival factions in Iraq.

The United States is home to less than five percent of the world's population — and almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Adam Liptak, national legal correspondent for The New York Times , says that's one of the ways America's legal system differs from those of other countries.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004; it was on his watch that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal took place. Subsequently, Sanchez has vocally criticized the conduct of the Iraq war — especially the Bush administration's "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan." His new book is Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story.

In her new book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of A Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale revisits the gruesome 150-year-old murder that helped catapult British mystery fiction into being. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan offers a review.

Al Gore made waves for his work raising awareness on climate-change issues. Another poisonous environment has captured his attention as well: a climate that threatens reasonable public discourse.

Fresh Air film critic David Edelstein reviews Standard Operating Procedure, a documentary from Errol Morris about the treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq in 2003.

Paul Polak, founder of the nonprofit International Development Enterprises, has spent 25 years working to eradicate poverty. In Out of Poverty, he says simple technologies and a willingness to listen are key — and that government subsidies can do more harm than good.