Simon Montefiore is the author of “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.” He says Stalin was more complex than we thought, but still a monster.
Simon Montefiore is the author of “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.” He says Stalin was more complex than we thought, but still a monster.
Olivia Laing says John Cheever's "The Swimmer" is one of the finest short stories every written.
Tom Szaky tells Jim Fleming how his company turns candy wrappers and juice bottles into pencil cases and backpacks.
The demographics of the United States are changing: how does the latest wave of immigration fit into the historical pattern?
One hundred years ago, Fritz Haber invented the first chemical weapon and convinced the German army to use it. His wife Clara, also a chemist, fiercely opposed her husband's project. When she couldn't stop it, she committed suicide. Judith Claire Mitchell tells the story in her tragic and yet funny novel "A Reunion of Ghosts."
Steve Paulson prepared this report on Saint Francis of Assisi and his continuing influence in the modern world.
Howard Axelrod was accidentally blinded in one eye in a freak accident when he was in college. Disoriented and depressed, he retreated to an off-the-grid cabin in the Vermont wilderness. He stayed there, alone, for 2 years. Now he's published a memoir about his period of renunciation, "The Point of Vanishing."
Susan Corso is the author of “God’s Dictionary: Divine Definitions for Everyday Enlightenment.” She tells Jim Fleming about spiritual etymology and how she interprets the root meanings of words to come up with her definitions.