History

Qassem Suleimani is the chief of a powerful branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He is considered to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American during the Iraq War, and now he is helping to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

No. 28 was the first president to team up with America's legislative branch, and he used a groundbreaking moral argument to get the U.S. involved in World War I. A. Scott Berg's new book, Wilson, fills in missing pieces of the president's life.

T.E. Lawrence, the British officer who played a key role in the Middle East during World War I, served as one of that war's few romantic champions. Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia explains how Lawrence used his knowledge of Arab culture and medieval history to advance British causes.

In his book, which has just won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, Keith Lowe describes a land with no governments, schools, banks or shops, where rape was rampant and women prostituted themselves for food. Flying in the face of usual post-WWII narratives, Lowe sheds light on a complex history.

As the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times, David Kirkpatrick has covered events in the region since January 2011. He says that the toppling of the democratically elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi throws the changes of the Arab Spring into question.

Two new documentaries are making headlines. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Blackfish centers on the whale that killed a trainer before an Orlando SeaWorld audience in 2010. The Act of Killing by human rights researcher Josh Oppenheimer, looks at the mass executions of communists in Indonesia in the 1960s.

Director Kenneth Branagh has given us fresh Shakespeare and witty modern comedies of manners, and some years ago he turned to opera, with an adaptation of Mozart's classic set in World War I. It's finally available in the U.S., and critic Lloyd Schwartz says the results are disappointingly mixed.

The famed author and illustrator broke the rules of American children's literature in the '50s and '60s, but many Americans have never heard of him. A new documentary, Far Out Isn't Far Enough, looks at his life and work.

In his new book, journalist Charles Glass explores the little-known history of thousands of American and British soldiers who deserted during World War II. Glass describes how the strain of war can push a soldier to the breaking point -- and how the line between courage and cowardice is never simple.

Author and journalist Yoram Kaniuk died June 8 at age 83. He joined Fresh Air's Terry Gross in August 1988 to talk about fighting in the Israeli underground and his belief that, for Israelis and Palestinians, "the only way is to live somehow together."

A new documentary directed by Morgan Neville profiles backup singers whose voices you know but whose names you probably don't: Lisa Fischer, Darlene Love, Judith Hill and Merry Clayton.

The civil war in Syria is attracting fighters from all over, threatening the region's tenuous stability. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group tells Fresh Air that "a war in Syria with regional spillover has now become a regional war with a Syrian focus."

Recently, Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan found a letter from then-Secretary of War James Forrestal that had been sent to her father after he had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1945. In that letter, she found an expression of gratitude that could serve us well today.

The fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson is The Passage of Power; it explores the period between 1958 and 1964 during which Johnson went from powerful Senate majority leader to powerless vice president to — suddenly — president of the United States.

In her classic '60s documentary, Shirley Clarke profiles a loquacious 33-year-old gay hustler who dreams of having a nightclub act. Her subject could hardly be more complex — and in examining him, she raises important questions about the relationship between fact and fiction.

The New York Times reporter talks about spending much of the past year with rebels in Syria. Chivers is also the author of The Gun, about how the AK-47 has defined modern warfare.

The creator of the acclaimed AMC series talks about his protagonist -- Don Draper -- as an aging existentialist looking for meaning in a chaotic world. He says the show's sixth season, set in 1968, is situated in that historical meaning for a reason: to reflect a traumatic passage in Don's life.

Author Dennis Lehane talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about his New York Times op-ed, "Messing with the Wrong City," which expressed his love for his hometown.

Seth Mnookin, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, describes live-tweeting the events at MIT.