Places & Travel

Rock historian Ed Ward reviews The Stiff Records Box Set

Journalist Scott Anderson. He traveled with a platoon of elite Isreali commandos into the West Bank and wrote about it in the article "An Impossible Occupation" which was the cover story of last Sundays New York Times Magazine.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel Everything is Illuminated (Houghton Mifflin) by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Architecture critic for The New Yorker Paul Goldberger discusses the different ideas for what to do with the site of the World Trade Center.

Maria Rosa Menocal is a R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. She is also the author of the new book: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in Medieval Spain (Little, Brown). Menocal details Andalucia, Spain from 786 to 1492 where literature, science, and tolerance flourished.

Film critic John Powers reviews Lagaan, the new film from India made in Bollywood which he says may be one of the few Indian films to make it big over here. Its already been released in England and is also released on DVD.

Journalist John Burns is the Islamabad Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He will talk about reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the past, Burns has been posted in China, Bosnia, South Africa and Russia. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one of them in 1997, for his reporting on the Taliban.

Mexican film director Alfonso Cuaron. His new film Y Tu Mama Tambien is set in Mexico and is about two teenage boys and an 'older' woman who set out on a journey. The film has been described as a 'smart and sexy new road movie' and one that transcends the usual teen road-trip genre. Cuaron previously directed two Hollywood movies, A Little Princess, and Great Expectations.

Mark Malloch Brown heads the United Nations Development Program. He'll discuss their efforts in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza to help with reconstruction. Brown is also the chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee of the heads of all U.N. development funds, programs and departments.

Ugandan Aids activist Noerine Kaleeba. She works with UNAids, a United Nations organization in Geneva. Shes also on the Ugandan committee on Aids, and founded The Aids Support Organization in Uganda. Kaleeba lost her husband to the disease; four of her siblings are HIV positive as are a number of their children. Kaleeba is also author of the book, We Miss You All: Noerine Kaleeba - Aids in the Family (Women & Aids Support Network).

Sociologist Cheryl Benard is the author of the book, Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance. Under the Taliban, the group known as RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), educated girls and women in underground schools, ran small businesses and secretly photographed Taliban beatings and executions. Benard has worked with the organization for ten years. She is also the wife of an Afghan refugee who is one of President Bush's key Afghanistan advisors.

Journalist Jeffrey Rosen's article in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine is about the CIA's effort to partner with Silicon Valley to develop new anti-terrorist technologies. The CIA has founded a venture-capital firm that funds the development of cutting-edge technologies that may be useful for national security, in particular new techniques for finding terrorists. Rosen will talk about some of these technologies — and what civil libertarians think of them.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Nanny Diaries (St. Martins Press) by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.

Writer Bharati Mukherjee's new novel is Desirable Daughters (Theia Press). Mukherjee is an Indian-born writer who emigrated to the U.S. as an adult. Her new novel is about a traditional Brahmin family transformed by contemporary culture. Mukherjee is the author of five novels, two nonfiction books and two collections of short stories, including The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article in the current New Yorker Magazine about Saddam Husseins 1988 chemical attacks on the Kurds . There is also new evidence of Husseins ties to al Qaeda. Goldberg has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2000. His specialty is foreign reporting with an emphasis on Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Goldberg came to The New Yorker from The New York Times Magazine, where he reported from Africa and the Middle East.

Harry Shearer wears many hats — writer, actor, director, comedian and radio host. His new film, which he wrote and directed, is called Teddy Bears Picnic. Its a satire of the goings-on at the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive retreat in the Northern California woods. The richest and most powerful men gather in the Grove. Their activities are kept secret, but a lot of drinking is involved. Shearer visited the Grove in order to write the script. Teddy Bears Picnic opens March 29. Shearer hosts Le Show, now in its 19th year on public radio.

Film critic John Powers reviews Y Tu Mama Tambien. It translates as And Your Mother Too, and it's set in Mexico.

Writer and retired New York city firefighter Dennis Smith arrived at the site of the World Trade Center towers on the day of the attacks to volunteer with the rescue effort. His new book Report from Ground Zero (Viking) is composed of first-person testimony of rescuers who were there when the towers were attacked and fell, and who helped in the efforts afterwards. Smith spent 18 years with the fire department. He is the author of nine books, including the bestseller Report from Engine Co. 82 about his years in the city's most dangerous and active firehouse.

Srdja Popovic is one of the founders of the nonviolent student group which helped bring down Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The group known as Otpor (the Serbian word for "resistance") had a clenched fist as its symbol, but used humor and theater to ridicule Milosevic and other government officials. The new PBS documentary Bringing Down a Dictator tells their story. Popovic is now a member of Parliament.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new CD Wish You Were Here: Love Songs for New York, a new anthology of songs recorded in reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.