Places & Travel

The New Orleans-based, twenty-year-old pianist and singer started performing when he was five, and later studied with Ellis Marsalis. Connick says, as a younger musician, he has more to prove -- which fuels his drive to learn more.

Writer Michael Tolkin's novel The Player is based on his experiences as a screenwriter interacting with film executives in Hollywood.

Rock historian Ed Ward looks at the history of Jamaican reggae music, which he says began as a reinterpretation of 1950s American rock and roll before becoming a style uniquely its own.

Reed is best known for capturing scenes from Lebanon's civil war. Several of those photographs have been collected in his new book, Beirut: City of Regrets.

The groundbreaking psychoanalyst didn't trust future biographers, even going so far as to destroy some of his personal papers. Nonetheless, historian Peter Gay has found enough material to write his second book on Freud. He joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about Freud's personal life, theories, and views on female sexuality,

Actor Clint Eastwood is known for finishing movies quickly and under budget -- that way, he can focus his energies on his pet projects. Film critic Stephen Schiff says the new Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, is an example of Eastwood's sometimes slipshod work.

Book critic John Leonard says that Murial Sparks' new, slim novel is packed with plot. The result isn't clutter, but richness. A Far Cry from Kensington, about a woman in the publishing world of 1950s London, reminds Leonard of Doris Lessing, only with a sense of humor.

National security correspondent Roy Gutman takes a look at the tense relations between the United States and Nicaragua, in light of the conflict between the Contras and Sandinistas. His new book about the topic is called Banana Diplomacy.

Newsweek photojournalist William Gentile. Gentile covered the Nicaraguan revolution for UPI ten years ago, and he's the only foreign correspondent from that time still working in Nicaragua. Gentile's new book, Nicaragua, contrasts the violence of the Contra war with the natural beauty of Nicaragua and the lives of everyday people there.

Newsweek correspondent Sylvester Monroe. He recently returned to the ghetto housing project in Chicago where he was raised for a reunion with his boyhood friends. He chronicles their successful and failed attempts to escape the ghetto and ghetto culture in his book Brothers.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews the latest installment of the Spencer detective series, the novel Crimson Joy by Robert Parker.

Investigative journalist Paul Eddy, co-author of The Cocaine Wars, which traces the course of cocaine from the hills of Bolivia to American street corners, and the domination of the market by a group of drug barons based in the resort town of Medellin, Colombia. The book also details the extent of cocaine corruption in both Dade County, Florida (Miami) and the Bahamas. Eddy writes for the Insight Team, the investigative arm of the Sunday Times of London.

The final performance in a month-long series by fiddler Michael Doucet and two members of his Cajun band BeauSoliel.

David Martin, Pentagon correspondent for CBS News and co-author of The Best Laid Plans, an account of America's flawed war against international terrorism.

Actor Bob Hoskins. He stars in the new film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" in which he acts opposite an animated rabbit. Hoskins' other roles include the mob chief in "The Long Good Friday," a low-level hudlum in "Mona Lisa," and the gangster club owner in "The Cotton Club."

Rock historian Ed Ward profiles The Kinks, one of the first of the British Invasion groups, and their 1966 album Face To Face.

Three members of the New Orleans cajun band BeauSoleil, led by Michael Doucet, will perform several songs.

Writer Bharati Mukherjee. Her new book of short stories, The Middleman and Other Stories, portrays immigrants from Third World countries who strive to maintain their indigenous identity while embracing much of Western culture and lifestyle.

Jazz Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews "Brothers For Life, the new album by saxophonist Earl Turbinton. Like many New Orleans jazz musicians, Turbinton moves between work in jazz and rhythm and blues. He's worked with musicians as diverse as blues guitarist B.B.King and Joe Sawinul, the founder of the fusion band Weather Report.

Three members of the New Orleans cajun band BeauSoleil, headed by Michael Doucet, will perform several dance songs.