Places & Travel

Journalist Owen Bennett Jones is the author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. In the book, he examines the country's turbulent 55-year history. He'll discuss Pakistan's history and its current relationship with the United States. Jones lives in England and has written for The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Independent newspapers and the London Review of Books. He has also reported for BBC Radio and BBC World Television.

This year she received the John Humphrey Freedom Award for her 20-plus years in the field of human rights and democratic development in her country. She was noted for her work to promote women's rights in Nigeria. She helped organize civil protests across the country, demonstrating against the planned adoption of a conservative and discriminatory form of law known as Sharia.

She's the chief diplomatic correspondent. Wright has just returned from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan. She'll talk about the future of the Persian Gulf if the U.S. goes to war with Iraq and ousts Saddam Hussein.

She's an associate professor of Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Her area of expertise is the privatization of security and military services.

Investigative journalist Bob Woodward is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post. He's the author of eight nonfiction bestsellers, including All the President's Men and The Final Days — both on Watergate and President Nixon — and The Brethren, about the Supreme Court. For his newest book, Bush at War, he had behind-the-scenes access to the Bush administration in the first 100 days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Burmese writer Pascal Khoo Thwe has written his autobiography From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. (HarperCollins). Thwe grew up part of a tiny remote tribe in Burma which practiced a combination of ancient animist and Buddhist customs mixed with Catholicism. He was the first member of his community to study English at University. When a brutal military dictatorship took over Burma, Thwe became a guerrilla fighter in the movement for democracy.

In his new book, The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century, Kupchan argues that the era of American dominance may be coming to an end. This demise will not be brought on by the Islamic world or China, but from an integrated Europe. He says that as Europe's political and strategic goals continue to diverge from those of the United States, Europe will rise as a new rival. Kupchan served on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration.

She's put together a book of photographs of and from the museum's collection of human oddities and outdated medical models. The Mutter Museum is in Philadelphia, Pa., and is one of the last medical museums from the 19th century. It originated with the collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter, who gathered unique specimens for teaching purposes. The museum displays many strange human artifacts, such as a slice of a face, amputated limbs and a plaster cast of the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker.

Head of Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission, Dr. Sima Samar. She was appointed to the position in July. Previously she served as the country’s first Minister for Women’s Affairs appointed by the interim Afghan government. Dr. Samar is an internationally-renowned feminist and human rights activist. Samar defied the Taliban and continued to operate schools for girls and health clinics in Afghanistan’s provinces and refugee camps in Pakistan. Samar was born in Ghazani, Afghanistan and is a Hazara, one of the most persecuted of the ethnic minorities.

We remember Israel's first ambassador to the United Nations and the United States, Abba Eban. He died yesterday in Israel at the age of 87. This interview first aired Dec. 2, 1992

Journalist Bill Keller is a columnist for The New York Times and senior writer for the magazine section. He just returned from a trip to Russia. Hell discuss Russias position on Iraq

The Cuban Missile Crisis took place 40 years ago this week. We talk with historian and former Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Peter Kornbluh who directs the National Security Archive's Cuba Project. The organization obtained newly declassified documents about the Crisis. They've published the information in the new book The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. The National Security Archive also helped organize the historic 40th anniversary conference held in Cuba last week.

Journalist Jonathan Landay co-wrote an article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer called "Officials' Private Doubts on Iraq War." Landay and his co-writers say that "Intelligence professionals and diplomats... privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war." The report says the White House is spreading misinformation that includes distortion of Saddam Hussein's ties with al Qaeda, overstatement of international support, and understatement of repercussions of a Middle East war.

Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Daniel Yergin will talk about the changing economy of oil in light of the possibility of war with Iraq. Yergin's 1991 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, is highly acclaimed. He is president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. His new book, co-authored with Dr. Joseph A. Stanislaw, is The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modern World. The Prize was adapted into an eight-hour PBS/BBC series.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (Pantheon) a collection of stories of real women in China taken from a call-in talk show in China by journalist Xinran. Xinran was host of the talk show.

Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack's new book is The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. He has studied Iraq and Saddam Hussein for 15 years. During the Clinton administration, Pollack served as director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, where he was one of the people responsible for implementing U.S. policy toward Iraq. Before that, he was a Persian Gulf military analyst in the CIA. In 1990, Pollack was among the very few analysts to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He is also the author of Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991.

Novelist Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives in Canada. His new novel is Family Matters. The book is set in 1990s Bombay and is about an elderly professor with Parkinson's disease who is forced to move into the crowded apartment of his daughter and her family. Mistry is also the author of A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey which were both short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Charles Tripp is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He's the author of A History of Iraq.

Two editors from Jane's Information Group talk about the war on terrorism and the potential attack on Iraq. Charles Heyman is the editor of Jane's World Armies and the author of The Armed Forces of the United Kingdom. Alex Standish is the editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest. Standish also produces television and radio documentaries for the BBC.

Muslim journalist M.J. Akbar is founder and editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, an English language newspaper published in India. He's also the author of five books, including his latest, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam & Christianity.