Roundup

Inside the War on Terror: 'The One Percent Doctrine' [audio 20min]

Author Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11, is an investigation into the guarded world of anti-terrorism policy. He also reveals that al-Qaida was planning an attack on the New York City subway system.

National Popular Vote [7min @21:25]

You might not do this very often...but when you think of the U.S. electoral college system, what words come to mind? Probably not 'simple' or 'clear'. Try 'impenetrable', or 'arcane'. The electoral college is the method by which American voters elect their President. Each state is allotted a certain number of seats in the electoral college, based on population. When a presidential candidate wins the most votes in any state, all of that state's electoral college votes go to that candidate. Which

The Deviant Dead • Richard III • Trial by Combat [audio 30min]

Sue Cook and the "Making History" team examine listeners' historical queries and gets to the bottom of historical mysteries, local legends, family curiosities and architectural oddities. 1) Richard Daniel met up with Nicola Whyte, of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, who is interested in the number of place names on old maps of Norfolk which appear to relate to places of execution or places of burial. 2) Who was the last English king to die in battle was, and who was the last h

The Norfolks [audio 15min]

The Norfolks survived the demise of their mentor, Richard III, to become of the most powerful Catholic families in England. The family go back 900 years and are still associated with tradition, pageantry, and ceremony. "This Sceptred Isle: Dynasties" is a narrative history charting over a thousand years of influence wielded by the power brokers of Britain and Ireland, told in 10 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Anna Massey, with readings by actor Ro

'Still Hungry in America': A Return to Mississippi [audio 13min]

If you are of a certain age, you may well remember your parents urging you to eat all the food on your plate with the following admonishment:"Don't you know there are starving children in Africa or somewhere in the world?" A book proved the point: Still Hungry in America. In the spirit of Walker Evans' Depression-era photographs, it chronicled poverty in the American South during the 1960s, a time when the mass mechanization of farming had pushing thousands of sharecroppers out of work. T

Still Hungry in America, Part Two [audio 8min]

In the second part of our story, Michele Norris reports on contemporary health problems in Belzoni, Miss. In the 1960s, it was starvation among Belzoni's poor that drew attention across the country. But in 2006, residents are suffering from an epidemic of obesity. Michele Norris reports.

Report Re-Examines 1898 Wilmington Race Riots [audio 5min]

The race riots in Rosewood, Fla., Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta are well-known. But the events on Nov. 10, 1898, in Wilmington, N.C., predate them all. Black businesses were destroyed as whites seized control of local government. A new report details the Wilmington Race Riot's legacy. The report also asks for atonement, and that the riot get its own place in history.

Great English Gardens: Capability Brown's Stowe [audio 13min]

The magnificent landscaped gardens at Stowe were built in the early 1700s by Lord Cobham, a wealthy Whig MP who developed them into a showcase for his wealth and taste acquired from studying the classics. Together with his head gardener Capability Brown, Cobham set about creating a natural landscape but with a formalised approach. In the next in our series on great English gardens, Andrea Wulf explains to Maggie Ayre how the gardens at Stowe have contributed to garden design. This Other Eden:

Ben Barnes and the Inside Story of American Politics [audio 15min]

Ben Barnes was once a rising star in Texas politics, serving as speaker of the state House and lieutenant governor by the age of 30. He also was a protege of President Lyndon Johnson, who once declared that Barnes would be the next president of the United States. But the fallout from a bribery scandal, which he says was trumped up by Richard Nixon, cut short his thriving political career. He has since become a lobbyist and fundraiser. Barnes, 68, has released a memoir called Barn Burning Barn

Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long [video 55min]

Richard White, Jr., chronicles the life of Louisiana politician Huey Long. White clarifies some of the confusion of Louisiana's most iconic figure in the 1930s. Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. He was assassinated September 10, 1935, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge as he was mounting a presidential bid against then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. White wrote Kingfish (Random House) to clear up some of the myths

Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War [video 60min]

Pulitzer-Prize winners Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss discuss their book Tiger Force (Little, Brown and Co.), an investigation into a reconnaissance platoon, created in 1965 to report air strikes and to kill the enemy in Vietnam. The authors tell stories of the killings that took place at the hands of the Tiger Force soldiers during the Vietnam War. According to the authors, this was the longest series of atrocities committed during the war. These events did not become public knowledge un

Catholic Church Revises English Translation of the Mass [audio 5min]

The Catholic Church has revised their English translation of the mass, making the wording closer to the Latin. Some priests and parishioners are unhappy with the changes. Liane Hansen speaks with Rev. Thomas Reese, of the Woodstock Theological center at Georgetown University.

Pazo de Oca [audio 15min]

A series celebrating visionary gardens of the world. 4/5. The palace gardens of Pazo de Oca in Galicia, restored to former glory by Spain's 'gardener Duke', perfectly combine baroque stonework, lush vegetation, an abundance of water and a working farm. Susan Marling investigates.

Texas POWs [audio 4min]

In the 1940s, 150,000 German prisoners were taken from the battlefields in North Africa, all the way to Texas. Weekend America's Bill Radke talks with Carol Brincefield, a teacher and a historian with the Lavaca County Historical Committee, about a section of the Geneva Convention that led to Texas becoming the country's biggest repository for German prisoners of war.

Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence [video 60min]

Wayne Fields sat down in 1996 to discuss how American presidents use acceptance speeches, inaugurals and State of the Union speeches to define their administration's agenda. In Union of Words he examines what influence a president's choice of words and use of colorful language has on promoting unity across the country. Fields is professor of English and director of American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of What the River Knows: An Angler in Midst

Mark Bowden on Militant Islam, the Colombian Drug Trade and His Other Investigations [video 3hr]

The latest book by Mark Bowden, national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, is Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam, about the 444-day Iran hostage crisis that began in November 1979. His 1999 book, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, the story of the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter in Somalia in 1993, was made into a movie directed by Ridley Scott. Another of his books, Killing Pablo (2001), which covered the life and de

The Russells [audio 15min]

The Russells were a political family that also produced a great social reformer, Lord John Russell, whose achievements are still felt today; as well as one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers, Bertrand Russell. "This Sceptred Isle: Dynasties" is a narrative history charting over a thousand years of influence wielded by the power brokers of Britain and Ireland, told in 10 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Anna Massey, with readings by actor Ro

Three Mile Island [audio 60min]

It's 27 years since America's worst nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Now archive interviews of community members responding to the crisis have been made available to the public for the first time. Martin Bell, who reported from Three Mile Island during the crisis, revisits the story - speaking to those who were at the middle of the nuclear storm, including Richard Thornburgh, the then Governor of Pennsylvania; and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Harold Denton, who was c

Soweto 1976: An Audio History [audio 13min]

Thirty years ago, the uprising of a group of schoolchildren changed South Africa forever. For decades, the whites-only government of South Africa had brutally enforced a policy of racial segregation known as apartheid -- and just as ruthlessly crushed any opposition. By the 1970s, an entire generation of anti-apartheid fighters had been silenced. Many were killed. Others, like Nelson Mandela, were in prison or in exile. But on June 16, 1976, students in Soweto township outside Johannesburg decid

Reviving Shanghai's Jewish History [audio 5min]

A new Jewish center has just opened in Shanghai, the first of its kind in China in 50 years. During World War II, the city saved an estimated 30,000 Jewish lives by welcoming refugees fleeing the Nazis. But Shanghai's Jewish history has been all but forgotten there. Now, some are struggling to bring this chapter of the city's story back to life. Louisa Lim reports.