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In their new book, Cobra Two, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor conclude that a bitter Iraqi insurgency was not pre-ordained, and they recount the military and political opportunities that were lost along the way.

Forty years ago, Allan Sherman topped the pop charts by replacing the lyrics of folk songs with satires of Jewish American life. And in doing that, he offered a perfect snapshot of what it meant to assimilate.

Novelist Kevin Baker has just published the third volume of his City on Fire trilogy. Strivers Row is set in Harlem in 1943. The story focuses on a fictional character — Jonah Dove — and the very real Malcolm Little, later to become Malcolm X.

For 100 years, sufferers of leprosy were banished to Molokai, an untamed Hawaiian island. A new book chronicles how paranoia forced thousands of people to live in exile.

The world mourns Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85, as the author of The Feminine Mystique and a catalyst for the modern women's movement. Kitty Eisele first knew her as "Aunt Betty." She offers a remembrance of a family friend.

In December 2005, a team of Indonesian, American and Australian scientists studied the mist-shrouded "lost world" atop the isolated Foja Mountains of New Guinea. What they found was a haven for rare wildlife and a host of new species.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversees surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists. Its power has grown since the passage of the Patriot Act. Critics worry about the secrecy that surrounds the proceedings, but FBI agents say undue concern about civil liberties hinders surveillance.

President Bush gave his third of four planned speeches Tuesday in a campaign to win support for the U.S. effort in Iraq. Responding to a question about the number of Iraqi casualties, President Bush said as many as 30,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion. Steve Inskeep talks to Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

African Americans have substantially higher rates of many illnesses than the rest of America's population. A group of professional black men in Atlanta has launched a project in hopes of reversing the trend.

Anna Deavere Smith is renowned for her one-woman shows, which have helped redefine modern theater. In her new book, Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind, she talks about the joy and pain of her peculiar profession.

In his Nobel Prize speech Wednesday, British playwright Harold Pinter delivered a scathing critique of U.S. and British foreign policy. Some reviews of his speech praised it for its dramatic force, while others derided it as childish and uninformed. We hear two excerpts from that speech.

We've all had these moments in movie theaters or in meetings when we hear the annoying ring of a phone and suddenly realize, to our horror, that it's our own phone. Engineers are trying to solve this problem. They're developing polite cell phones that can tell when to keep quiet, and when it's OK to interrupt.