Places & Travel

Journalist Scott McCartney, who follows the airline industry, writes the weekly column "The Middle Seat" for the Wall Street Journal. McCartney is the journal's travel editor and deputy bureau chief in Dallas, Texas.

The new film version of King Kong, the story of a lovelorn giant ape taken from his island home, was directed by Peter Jackson. It's the first release for Jackson since his trilogy of Lord of the Ring films.

A new Showtime cable miniseries tells the story of Muslim terrorists in America. The controversial thriller Sleeper Cell premieres Sunday night.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate was written by Marjorie Williams. Williams died last year of cancer.

The new film The Weatherman stars Nicholas Cage and Michael Caine. Film critic Daivd Edelstein has a review.

A need for foreign workers in Iraq -- and the flood of American dollars into the country -- have created a labor network that critics call misleading, illegal and even dangerous. Chicago Tribune correspondent Cam Simpson retraced the fatal journey of 12 men from Nepal.

As a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, Richard A. Clarke often had to imagine worst-case scenarios. His first novel — a thriller — does just that: set five years in the future, it envisions the United States on the verge of another war in the Middle East.

Actress Claire Danes is starring in the new film Shopgirl opposite Steve Martin, who wrote the screenplay for the film and the novel it's based on.

Musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, two New Orleans natives, have been friends for years — back to the days when Connick took piano lessons from Marsalis' father, Ellis

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth has been a favorite of readers since his memoir Goodbye, Columbus emerged to help define the culture of postwar America. Now the Library of America is releasing Roth's books — a rare step for a living author.

Adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel, the film follows a young man trying to decipher family history. Elijah Wood plays the fictional Foer, who traces his grandfather's life in a Ukrainian village.

Anthony Shadid's new book is Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. Shadid is the Baghdad correspondent for The Washington Post. The book culls stories from Shadid's many visits to Iraq over the past eight years.

We remember director Robert Wise, who won Oscars for West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Wise also worked as the editor of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. He died last week at 91. This interview first aired March 7, 1989.

The aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks revitalized New York City's mafia organizations. That's one of the revelations of former 'New York Times' crime reporter Selwyn Raab's new book, 'Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires'.

Trumpeter Gregory Davis has been with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band since its inception in 1977. The group, known for revitalizing the New Orleans brass band sound by incorporating funk, jazz, gospel and rock, will play at the upcoming "Big Apple to the Big Easy" Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden Sept. 20, 2005.

Historian and author Douglas Brinkley teaches at Tulane University and was displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He has since returned to New Orleans and begun to document the catastrophe by gathering oral histories -- he hopes to collect as many as 20,000 -- for a book, tentatively titled The Great Deluge.

Rev. Willie Walker of Noah's Ark Church in New Orleans helped with rescue efforts.

Kevin Judice is a lieutenant in the Narcotics Division of the New Iberia, La., police department. He spent eight days rescuing people in New Orleans.

Margaret McLaughlin, director of Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital's veterinary technicians in New York City, is part of an ASPCA rescue team that is finding and treating lost animals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She talks about the plight of animals in the battered Gulf Coast states.

An investigative reporter for The New York Times, Christopher Drew has been on the ground in New Orleans and provides a firsthand account of the situation he witnessed in the Superdome and the streets of the flooded city.