Search results for

The Bush administration on Thursday lowered the national terror alert level from orange to yellow, suggesting the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on U.S. soil has eased somewhat. Hear NPR's Robert Siegel and NPR's Melissa Block.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Gilligan's Wake, a new novel by Tom Carson.

He served on the front line in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. He's written the new memoir, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. Journalist Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down) writes of the memoir, "Jarhead is some kind of classic, a bracing memoir of the 1991 Persian Gulf War that will go down with the best books ever written about military life." Swofford attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient.

Investigators looking into the space shuttle Columbia accident say NASA workers made safety a top priority, but may have become so comfortable with successful missions that they didn't keep track of small issues that can turn deadly. NPR's Richard Harris reports.

Commentator Jon Slaughter says that in his four years of active duty, his preparation for deployment in the Middle East has been his most challenging and rewarding. He hopes, however, that his preparation won't be needed and everyone comes home just fine.

NPR's Sylvia Poggioli concludes her series on Muslims in Europe with a look at the new religious battle lines that have been drawn between the continent's Christians and growing Muslim population. As different cultures collide in what was the bastion of Christendom, Islam is striving to adapt to Europe's cultural environment.

NPR's Alex Chadwick remembers Luis Marden, one of National Geographic's first adventure photographers, who died yesterday at age 90. Marden trekked to Mayan ruins in the 1930s, and the photos he took there pioneered the use of 35 millimeter film. He developed underwater photography with Jacques Costeau. And Marden also discovered the sunken ship made famous in Mutiny on the Bounty.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Perpetuum Immobile (on the Leo label) by pianist Simon Nabatov.

As one of Latin America's most renowned photographers, Iturbide has spent half a century capturing the beauty of her homeland and calling for her country to reclaim its sense of pride and identity.

He's the creator and producer of NBC's new series Mr. Sterling, about a freshman senator on Capitol Hill. O'Donnell was a writer and producer for the first two seasons of NBC's The West Wing. Before his television career, O'Donnell was in politics himself. He was Democratic chief of staff of the United States Senate Committee on Finance from 1993 to 1995. Prior to that he was senior advisor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan D-NY from 1989 to 1992. Currently O'Donnell is also senior political analyst for MSNBC.