Some years ago, suburbanite mystery writer Jon Katz packed up and bought an upstate New York farm in hopes of giving his border collies the best life possible. Now, some five books later, Katz has discovered what that really entails. His sixth in the series, Dog Days, is series of dispatches from Bedlam farm, which now boasts the beloved dogs, as well as sheep, steers and cow, donkeys, a barn cat, a rooster and three hens. Katz, who writes about farm life for Slate and co-hosts “Dog Talk”, a public radio talk show, dropped in on Diane Rehm to discuss how hard it is to promote harmony between animals, why his donkeys like Willie Nelson best, and how his collies continually surprise him.

Listen to the full interview.

Connie Schultz and her husband, Sherrod Brown, were eating a restaurant with a local democratic chapter when Brown, for the seventh time in two days, announced his intentions to run for the senate, and in a state, Ohio, where no democrat had won statewide office in twelve years, no less. The party chairman introduced Brown from his podium, and, for the first time, introduced Schultz as “his lovely wife”. Now, a year later, that lovely wife, also a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, brings us this: His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, her memoir of a year on the campaign trail. From her “lovely wife” position, she could see the workings of her husband’s campaign better than all most anyone else: the sacrifices, both personal and professional, the new-found responsibilities of being a political wife, the endless chin-wagging, and the day to rigors of political life (including those nasty bloggers!). Schultz captures all these details in a witty and intelligent tone, much the same tone she used in her NPR interview, which you may listen to here.

In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there is a prison there known as the Wire, where those suspected of terrorism are detained, oftentimes without formal charges brought against them. To pass the time, many of them have turned to writing poetry. Attorney Mark Falkoff, who represents 17 Yemeni prisoners, discovered this and edited together a volume of detainee poetry entitled Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak.

“It wasn’t just the first poem I’ve written in captivity,” says Moazzam Begg, a poet who was detained in Guantanamo for 3 years. “It’s the first poem I’ve ever written in my life of any meaning at all. It has particular significance because it describes, demonstrates and is a message to people outside of Guantanamo Bay of what I feel and what is happening around my surroundings.”

The poems, Falkoff says, are not at all a security risk, despite the army’s suggestion that the detainees were not writing for “the sake of art”, but rather using poetry as “another weapon to attack the Western ideals against which they are at war”.

You can read excerpts and listen to the full interview here.

Rosco’s was a dark bar, smoky, lots of taxidermy on the walls, and the first place where Danielle Trussoni heard her father, Jim Trussoni’s war stories. Jim was a Vietnam vet, drafted from Wisconsin at the outset of the war, and immediately volunteered to be a “tunnel rat,” and plumb the labyrinthine and oftentimes booby-trapped Viet Cong tunnel systems. Jim now suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Danielle attributes it primarily to his time underground. This past year, Danielle went so far as to write a memoir, entitled Falling Through the Earth, which describes what it was like growing up beneath this man and how his PTSD effected her life as well.

Danielle sat down with NPR’s Weekend Edition to discuss the book. She begins as a 5 year old who just recently found dozens of photographs of Asian men in her basement, which she would later discover were of Viet Cong Jim had killed. “He really cherished them,” she says. This was her first encounter with her father’s PTSD, though they did not speak about the photos until 14 years later, when Danielle was doing a project for a history class at U. of Wisconsin. She interviewed Jim about his experience, and quickly realized that the stories she’d heard as a child had changed, sometimes for the better, other times not. “They were fraught, very emotional,” she says of the interviews. “Jim never felt remorse in the way I wanted him to feel remorse for those deaths, and I guess a solider can’t.”

In researching the memoir, Danielle actually went to Vietnam and retraced her father’s foot steps, even plunging down into preserved Viet Cong cave systems in hopes of understanding better Jim’s mindset. “It did [help me to understand. I could feel the heat, and I could feel the claustrophobia, and I could see nothing ahead but…nothingness”.

Listen to the full interview, in which Danielle further discusses her time in Vietnam, and the difficulties with the actual writing of the memoir.

In the latest of a series of books with hyper-literal titles, historian and journalist Dan Kurzman brings us Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius the XII, a fascinating look at one of the increasingly infirm dictator’s late-stage plots.

Fearing that Pius XII would speak out against the Nazi’s actions against the Jews, he ordered the SS leader in Italy, Gen. Karl Wolff, to carry out the deed. Kurzman, then writing for The Washington Post, was the first to interview Wolff after the war. Describing him as a successful opportunist, Kurzman explains Nazi/Vatican relations from the 1933 Concordat, the ultimate reason for Pius XII’s silence throughout the war to that point.

Kurzman was interviewed by NPR’s All Things Considered today, during which time he described Wolff’s daring betrayal of the Fürer and his hopes that the pope might be an instrument in negotiating peace and a subsequent Anglo-American-German offensive against the unruly Soviets.

Read an excerpt and listen to the full interview here.

Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic political strategist, has been in his words, “at the center of progressive politcs…from Vietnam to Iraq.” He recently came out with a book, No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Campaigner, in which he writes about his experiences in politics over the past 30 years, during which time he experienced a drastic change in campaigning.

He sat down with Jon Stewart and discussed how in the 70s each candidate had “their people, and if they lost, they went away.” Now, campaigners jump from candidate to candidate in sort of an interview process. “It’s sure easier to run with someone you believe in.” Campaigning, Shrum argues, is more a business now than ever, and that in order to win the candidate needs to go after the best, most experienced campaigners he can get, regardless of previous affiliation.

Watch the interview for an entertaining story about Julie Christie, Warren Beatty and some democrats.

In June 2005, a group of Navy SEALs embarked on a mission to the mountains of Afghanistan to scope out a rumored Taliban hideout. They were not supposed to engage any one, let alone a group of goat herders. Convinced that if the SEALs executed these herders the bodies would be found and their whereabouts would be compromised, they let them go. In what Marcus Luttrel writes is “the stupidest, most southern-fried, lame brained decision I ever made in my life to vote to let them go. I must have been out of my mind taking a vote that I knew would sign our death warrant.” Some 45 minutes later, a 100 plus Taliban fighters were on the four SEALs. Only Luttrel survived.

Matt Lauer conducted an interview with Luttrel on The Today Show about the ex-SEAL’s memoir, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team Ten. Luttrel and Lauer go through the whole harrowing episode in detail, including how Luttrel survived in the months following the tragedy.

You may watch the interview here and read the corresponding excerpt on the show’s Website.

His mother must love him: Pete Jordon found his calling some 12 years ago as a (drumroll)…dishwasher! He was, in fact, so enthusiastic about it that he set out to wash in all 50 states, chronicling his journey both in magazine articles and segments for NPR’s This American Life. He’s now consolidated his efforts into a book, Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States, which takes the American infatuation with bad people in kitchens (don’t tell me you haven’t watched Hell’s Kitchen!) to a whole new place, which Jordon describes as “the heart of the kitchen…the dish pit!”

Think very carefully if you plan on eating out again and then listen to Jordon’s interview with Michele Norris, in which he discusses the vermin he shares the Dish Pit with, a Chinese restaurant in which the owner insisted washing water glasses was a waste of time, and the inherent racism in the New Orleans’ dish-washing scene.

Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles was featured on NPR yesterday. The book is the latest of many to try and get into the head of the Princess to get “the real Diana.” To this end, Brown sifted through the extensive press coverage and interviewed friends, staff and the people closest to her, ultimately creating a portrait of the beloved Royal as a savvy, globe-trotting humanitarian — the predecessor of Bono and Angelina Jolie

The NPR interview with Brown, along with a brief excerpt of the book is available here.

Brown and her book were also featured on GMA last week, and you may read that here.

Former Soviet KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko died last November in a hospital in London. His organs failed because of exposure to lethal levels of polonium-210. In short, he was poisoned. His death received extensive news coverage, and the world waited expectantly for an explanation to emerge. The elements were certainly there: Litvinenko had left the Russian secret service in 2000 and had gone into hiding, knowing that he was a marked man for what he knew. Another Russian spy was charged, but he blames British intelligence for murdering Litvinenko to discredit Putin. The dying Litvinenko, in his final statement, actually blamed Putin for his death. In the end, though, answers were still few and far between…until now, of course.

Litvinenko’s wife, Marina, and close friend Alex Goldfarb, have recently published Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, in which they elaborate on the ex-spy’s life, investigations and death. They even go so far as to name names they believe were involved in the murder, explain why he broke with Russia in 2000 and reveal some of the Russian secret service’s biggest, um, secrets—those they believe Litvinenko was killed for knowing.

Marina Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb appeared on The Early Show yesterday to discuss the book. You may watch their interview here and read an excerpt here.