Government & Politics

Yanar Mohammed, an internationally renowned Iraqi activist, founded the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq to advocate for women's rights. It's an uphill fight: From the 1950s to the 1970s, Iraqi women could legally work, study, marry and divorce, and wear what they wanted, but the new constitution in Iraq, based on the Islamic Sharia law system, denies women the civil and social rights guaranteed to men.

Alan Furst's best-selling spy thrillers (Kingdom of Shadows, Night Shadows, The Polish Officer) play out in the brooding, tumultuous Europe of the pre-World War II years, offering an intimate, insider portrait of an escalating crisis in which the players can't always see the implications of the game. Critic-at-large John Powers explains why he's a fan.

Writer and editor David Talbot founded the online journal Salon.com; he was editor-in-chief from 1995 to 2005, and still serves as board chairman of Salon Media Group. He's written a book about Robert and John F. Kennedy called Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.

Journalist Marcus Stern and his colleagues at the San Diego Union-Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for uncovering the bribery scandal involving former U.S. Congressman Duke Cunningham. Cunningham funneled tens of millions of dollars in post-9/11 contracts in exchange for millions in bribes.

Now Stern and his team have written a book about the scandal: It's called The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, The Most Corrupt Congressman.

The man in charge of Regent Law is a graduate of the University of Chicago's law school and the author of a 1999 book titled Is Higher Law Common Law? Readings on the Influence of Christianity in Anglo-American Law. Brauch talks to Terry Gross about Regent Law and about Savage's reporting.

Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. He's been writing about a Christian law school, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, whose graduates have become influential in the Justice Department.

One of those Regent University graduates is Monica Goodling, former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Savage writes that Goodling has "drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations."

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of Lynchburg, Va.,'s Thomas Road Baptist Church and an outspoken leader of the religious right, died yesterday at age 73; we remember him with an interview recorded in the early days of Fresh Air's national broadcast. In 1979, Falwell founded a movement he called the Moral Majority and helped return the Republican Party to power with the election of President Ronald Reagan. Falwell also founded Liberty University, an evangelical institution believed to be the largest of its kind. Rebroadcast from March 14, 1986.

In Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, historian Michael Beschloss takes a look at nine crucial moments when a president risked his political career for the good of the country, often by taking an unpopular or controversial stand.

With his famous "slam dunk" comment about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, George Tenet helped shape the arguments that led the United States into the Iraq war. A holdover from the Clinton administration, he was director of the CIA when the White House made the decision to invade, and in 2004 President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his service.

A new biography of Justice Clarence Thomas explores some of the paradoxes of his life and career; it's called Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Authors Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, both reporters at The Washington Post, say the book grew out of a Post article exploring "both the racial vehemence that has hounded Thomas and the roots of his ascension to the judicial mountaintop."

Carlo Bonini, investigative reporter for the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, broke the story about an Italian intelligence agency's involvement in forging documents saying that Iraq secured uranium from Niger. Those documents helped the White House make the case for invading Iraq. Bonini's new book is Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek has written about LBJ, JFK, FDR and Ronald Reagan. Now, in his book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, he tackles two political titans he describes as "self-serving characters with grandiose dreams of recasting world affairs."

Journalist Bill Moyers returns to PBS April 25 with Bill Moyers Journal; the first episode "Buying the War," a 90-minute examination of the role of the press in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Sari Nusseibeh is the president of and a professor of philosophy at al-Quds University, the only Arab university in Jerusalem. He's written a memoir, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life; he's also co-author of the People's Voice Initiative, aimed at building grassroots support for a two-state solution in the Middle East. Until December 2002, he was the representative of the Palestinian National Authority in Jerusalem.

Charlie Savage Talks with Monique Nazareth.

In Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price, author Jonathan Cohn looks at case studies of patients struggling with the U.S. health-care system to explain why a profit-based model means some people don't get the care they need. Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, advocates a government-regulated single-payer system.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf faces protests at home — and given his stance on the Taliban, eroding support in the West as well. Journalist and author Ahmed Rashid parses the challenges and possibilities of contemporary Pakistani politics.

Middle East policy expert Daniel Byman talks about the effect of the war in Iraq on state-sponsored terrorism.

Byman is the director at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he is also a professor.

Journalist George Packer's article in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker magazine is called "Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most."

He reports that men employed by Americans as interpreters, construction workers, drivers and office workers are now being marked for death and hunted down as collaborators.

Packers most recent book is The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq.

Weapons expert Joseph Cirincione's new book is Bomb Scare: the History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He talks about how nuclear threats will evolve in coming years.

Cirincione is senior vice president for national security and international affairs at the Center for American Progress. He also teaches at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. And he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.