Places & Travel

Music critic Milo Miles shares his thoughts on the New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Chayes is a former NPR reporter, is now field director of Afghans for Civil Society. It's a non-profit, non-governmental organization founded to promote a democratic alternative and to assist in the development of a civil society. ACS involves the community in reconstruction efforts, from physical reconstruction of a bombed-out village, to organizing a women's income generating project, to launching an independent radio station. The new independent documentary Life After War chronicles the group's efforts. While at NPR, Chayes reported from Paris, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Writer Sarah Waters is the author of three novels which she calls "lesbo-Victorian romps." The lesbian-themed books are: Tipping the Velvet (about "a sort of Moll Flanders in drag"); Affinity (a historical book set in a Victorian women's prison); and Fingersmith (a gothic melodrama). Fingersmith was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tipping the Velvet was made into a BBC miniseries and it will be shown on BBC America, beginning Friday, May 23.

Actor John Malkovich is making his directorial debut with the new film The Dancer Upstairs. Malkovich has been nominated twice for an Academy Award for his work in the films In the Line of Fire and Places in the Heart. His other films include Heart of Darkness, Being John Malkovich, Shadow of the Vampire, Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog and Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun. Malkovich is also a founding member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Christian missionaries — mainline and evangelical — want to go to Iraq to provide humanitarian aid. But their presence would be troubling for many Muslims who are suspicious that aid is just a cover for another motive — converting Muslims to Christianity. We talk with two individuals with opposing views on the subject: Albert Mohler is a minister and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's considered a leader among American evangelicals. Southern Baptists are pledging to go into Iraq to provide humanitarian aid.

Charles Kimball is professor of religion, an ordained Baptist minister, and the author of the new book, When Religion Becomes Evil.

She is professor of history at the University of Toronto and the author of the new book, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, about the Peace Conference after World War I in which delegations from around the world convened to find an alternative to war. During the six months of the conference, new boundaries were drawn up in the Middle East. Out of that conference Iraq was born, and was for a time under British control. MacMillan's book, published under the title Peacemakers in England, was the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Friedman will discuss the post-Saddam Middle East. Friedman's best-selling book is Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of the Middle East.

She is the author of Crescent, a new book about a single Arab-American woman chef in Los Angeles. Her previous novel Arabian Jazz won the Oregon Book Award. Abu-Jaber grew up in America in a traditional Jordanian household. Abu-Jaber is a writer-in-residence at Portland State University.

He is a professor of International Relations, International Law, and Middle Eastern Politics at Boston University. He's also the author of the best-selling book, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914-1922. The book details how the geography and the politics of the Middle East were shaped by decisions by the Allies during and after World War I.

Anthony Shadid, foreign correspondent for 'The Washington Post.' Before working for the Post, he was a correspondent at The Boston Globe's Washington bureau. He spent nine years with Associated Press, five of them in Cairo. He is the author of Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam. In the spring of 2002, he was shot by Israeli troops in Ramallah while covering a story for the Globe. He's currently reporting for the Post from Baghdad.

He is editor of the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard. He also chairs the neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century. He is one of the architects of the blueprint for regime change found in the document "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century."

John Burns is currently in Baghdad reporting for The New York Times. He is at the Palestine Hotel, where there are about 100 other reporters. Burns is the Islamabad bureau chief for the Times.

Journalist Elizabeth Neuffer is the Foreign Affairs/U.N. Correspondent for The Boston Globe. She recently returned from Iran and was in Iraq earlier this year. She has also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan. She's also the author of the book, The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, about the war crimes tribunals and the efforts of victims to find justice.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Gordon, the novel by Edith Templeton first published in 1966 and banned in Europe for indecency.

Walon Green is one of the executive producers of Dragnet, the remake of the 1950s crime drama set in Los Angeles. The new show revives the fictional detectives Joe Friday and Frank Smith. Green is a veteran producer and writer of other police dramas including Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, as well as the dramas ER and Law & Order. Green also wrote the screenplay for the classic Warner Bros. western The Wild Bunch, directed by Sam Peckinpah. He also wrote the screenplay for a more recent western, The Hi-Lo Country.

Gordon is a sports journalist and Bonner is a specialist on North Korea. They collaborated on the documentary The Game of Their Lives about the most shocking upset in World Cup History: It was July 19, 1966, and the scrappy underdog North Korean team beat the favored Italians, whose players were some of the finest in the world. Later the Korean team lost in the quarterfinals to Portugal. Then the players returned home and disappeared from view.

Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine. The design for the World Trade Center site has been chosen and architect Daniel Libeskind created the winning proposal. Goldberger will describe the selection process and comment on the winning design.

When she was 10 years old, her father, a doctor and advocate for democracy in Sierra Leone, was executed for treason. As an adult, Forna returned to Sierra Leone to investigate the circumstances surrounding her father's death. Her memoir is The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest. Forna is a broadcast journalist living in London.

The United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa talks about the current state of the AIDS crisis there. He recently returned from a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, where he was investigating links between hunger and AIDS. He is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and was the Canadian ambassador to the U.N. from 1984-1988.