Government & Politics

Journalist Ari Shavit says Israel must find a way to reconcile its democratic values with the reality of everyday life there. His new book draws from interviews with hundreds of Israelis — both Jews and Arabs — as well as his military experience and Zionist family history.

Roy Scranton and Jacob Siegel edited and contributed to the collection of short stories by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They tell Fresh Air about how soldiers cope with the fear of death, and why many soldiers feel conflicted about sharing their experience with a larger audience.

It's been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and polls show that a majority of Americans still believe Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, not a lone assassin. Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act, explores what keeps these conspiracy theories alive.

New York Times national political correspondent Jonathan Martin explains the Republican rift that was widened by the recent budget battles. He talks about how the divisions may play out in upcoming elections and traces the history of the battle between establishment Republicans and the "insurgent" conservatives.

n 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles as secretary of state, and Allen Dulles as director of the CIA. In his new book, The Brothers, journalist Stephen Kinzer says the Dulles' actions "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises."

Smart, who was held captive for nine months at age 14, describes the 2002 ordeal in a new memoir called My Story. She's now an advocate for children's safety education and says "the best punishment" she can give her abusers is to move on with her life and be happy.

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel, The Lowland, is on the long list for the National Book Award and the shortlist for the Man Booker. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Lahiri should start making room in her trophy cabinet; The Lowland is a beautiful tale of a family transformed by political violence.

The AMC show about a high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer ended its fifth and final season on Sunday. Writers Peter Gould and Thomas Schnauz say there was "absolute sadness" in the writers' room as they put the last plot points into place.

In his new book Tip and the Gipper, MSNBC's Hardball host Chris Matthews reflects on his time as a top aide to Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill during Ronald Reagan's presidency. He compares O'Neill and Reagan's unlikely friendship to today's approach of "government by tantrum."

In 2006, Oregon successfully made pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient of meth, a prescription drug. Since then, Mother Jones' Jonah Engle reports, 24 states have tried to follow suit -- and 23 have failed. Engle attributes those failures to pharmaceutical companies' massive lobbying efforts.

Qassem Suleimani is the chief of a powerful branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He is considered to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American during the Iraq War, and now he is helping to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

TV critic David Bianculli points to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starring Andy Samberg, and The Blacklist, starring James Spader, as shows to watch this season. Other debuts, like The Michael J. Fox Show and The Crazy Ones, show plenty of potential.

Evan Mandery's A Wild Justice is an account of the legal battles that led to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down capital punishment, then reversing course four years later. He says that today, prisoners who are sentenced to death have a 10 percent chance of actually being executed.

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

Before whistle-blower Edward Snowden became a household name, he was an anonymous source. The Washington Post's Barton Gellman recounts how he began corresponding with Snowden and the process of reporting on the government's Internet data mining program.

Cradle to Grave brings at-rish youth into a Philadelphia hospital to get them to think about the consequences of getting shot. "You only have to die one time," the director tells them, "but the people that you leave behind die a little bit each and every day for the rest of their lives."

In the new FX series, Bichir plays a Mexican detective who teams up with an El Paso cop to solve a series of murders. He tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that The Bridge aims to give equal treatment to both sides of the border.

Today's Internet users have become accustomed to stories of hacking, identity theft and cyberattacks, but there was a time when the freedom and anonymity of the Web were new, and no one was sure what rules — if any — applied to its use.

Orange Is the New Black's showrunner explains how a story about a privileged white woman and criminality allows her to tell "really fascinating tales" of black women, Latinas, old women and criminals. Kohan also created the Showtime series Weeds.