"Broken Badges" Is Like a B-Verision of the "A-Team"

The political journalist is a former Jesuit seminarian and professor of public policy at Northwestern University. His new book is called Under God. It's a collection of essays about the frequent collison of politics and religion in America.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the re-release of the exceptional Carla Bley and Paul Haines concept album. It features an eclectic mix of singers and musicians, including Linda Ronstadt, Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, and John McGlaughlin.

The African American novelist's books include Appalachee Red, which won the James Baldwin Prize for Fiction, Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee, and Baby Sweets. He's just published a memoir, The Last Radio Baby, about growing up the fourth of ten childen in a sharecropper family in rural Georgia.