Places & Travel

Foreign policy expert Joseph Cirincione is senior vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He s been called a nonproliferation guru. His soon-to-be-published book is called Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.

Conservative thinker Michael Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, but prefers the term "democratic revolutionary" to "neoconservative." He discusses the current and future U.S. policy toward Iran, arguing that the United States should encourage change from within the country, rather than launching an all-out attack.

Disaster science specialist Ivor Van Heerden is the cofounder and deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. His new book is The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina -- the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist.

Before most Americans had heard of the Taliban, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote a book about them. After the Sept. 11 attacks, it became a best-seller. Rashid's recent reporting for English-language newspapers involves Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Middle East peace expert Sari Nusseibeh is the founder of the Palestinian Consultancy Group and the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization, the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem and a professor of Islamic philosophy. He co-wrote the People's Voice Initiative to build grassroots support for a two-state solution. Until December 2002, he was the representative of the Palestinian National Authority in Jerusalem.

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post has been reporting from Lebanon. Shadid won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for international reporting. His latest book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, has just come out in paperback. Shadid is of Lebanese descent and grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla.

TV critic David Bianculli previews When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Spike Lee's two-part HBO documentary about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Fiction writer Claire Messud has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award. Our book critic says Messud's just-published novel, The Emperor's Children, might just be the one to propel her out of the "finalist" category and win her the gold.

Matt Dillon, who recently starred in the comedy You, Me and Dupree, next plays the lead role in Factotum, based on a novel by Charles Bukowski. Dillon was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film Crash.

Augustus Richard Norton is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University and has been writing about Lebanon for 25 years. He is an expert on the Shiite political movements, including Hezbollah. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Norton's books include Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon and Civil Society in the Middle East.

Deputy Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Ginger Cruz oversees the audit, inspection and investigation operations established to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq. Cruz just returned from Iraq.

Oliver Stone's new film World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena, follows two Port Authority policemen trapped in the rubble of the towers. Our critic says the film raises a lot of questions about how we grieve.

British diplomat and journalist Rory Stewart walked alone across Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. The former fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Havard's Kennedy School of Government wrote about it in the memoir The Places in Between. Stewart was later appointed a provincial governor in post-invasion Iraq, and has a memoir about that experience as well.

Palestinian author, journalist and literary critic Samir El-Youssef was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He now lives in London, and has collaborated with his friend, Israeli writer Etgar Keret, on a book, Gaza Blues. El-Youssef provides his views on recent events in the Middle East.

Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid is a visiting fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He says that while growing up in Syria in the '70s and '80s, it wasn’t fears of an Israeli attack that kept him up at night. His concern was the dreaded Syrian security apparatus and certain government officials.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman just returned from a trip to Israel, Jordan and Syria. He talks with us about the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and where Syria fits in. Friedman's most recent book is The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.

Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek magazine, discusses the crisis in the Middle East.

Miami Vice, the '80s TV sensation starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two vice squad detectives, has been given a makeover by its former executive producer. Michael Mann directs an updated version for the screen, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. Our film critic has a review.

Professor Daniel Byman talks about new book, Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism. He explores the symbiotic relationship between terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. Byman is associate professor in Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and director of Georgetown's Security Studies Program and Center for Peace and Security Studies.

Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. His new book is called Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. He talks about the possibility of U.S. involvement in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This is the first of a two part interview.