Tony Lagouranis, former U.S. interrogator, makes an appearance on Talk of the Nation to discuss Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq, a memoir on the tactics he used at Abu Ghraib, including stress positions, environmental manipulation, military dogs, sleep deprivation and, in one case, a mock execution.

In the interview, Lagouranis talks about his training as an interrogator and the shock and confusion he endured when he realized that the U.S. military was deliberately going against certain aspects of the Geneva Convention laws. He admits that the techniques in question never actually worked. “People only tell you things when they want to tell you things, and causing somebody pain, duress, is only going to strengthen their resolve.” He also entertains callers’ questions, during which he discusses the gray areas and moral issues he had to endure throughout his tour in Iraq, and whether the military’s disregard for the Geneva Convention was the reason why the scandal at Abu Ghraib happened.

Listen to the interview here.

Lagouranis also appeared on Diane Rehm early last week. Listen to that interview here.

Remember that book, Hate Mail from Cheerleaders and Other Adventures in the Life of Reilly, by that Sports Illustrated-columnist Rick Reilly? Remember that? It was a collection of his funniest, wittiest and most touching columns from the course of 9 years occupying the back page of SI. Yeah, that one. Well, now you can see what that guy looks like, because CBS has posted a clip of the interview with Reilly on its Website, in which he discusses some of the columns contained therein and why his book makes a great fathers’ day gift.

English gossip-columnist Tina Brown is the latest to try her hand at parsing the mind of perhaps the most beloved member of the royal family. She interviewed the people that knew the late Princess Di best, analyzed old press notes and managed to create one of the most thorough portraits of her we have seen in recent years.

Brown’s book, The Diana Chronicles, garnered a small article on Good Morning America, along with an excerpt , which you may read here.

Adoption is a fairly modern concept, stemming not from Dickensian “boy for sale!” moments in Oliver Twist, but from 1920s Memphis, where a woman named Georgia Tann began quite literally stealing and selling babies. Before this point, potential parents believed in eugenics, and that the sins of the parents— sex out of wedlock say—would be visited upon the child. There were still people willing to adopt, but they were mostly mothers unable to convince their husbands to undergo the process. Tann saw this as a business opportunity and went to great lengths to facilitate the adoption process, most notably falsifying documents to make the child appear of a higher pedigree, and also refuting the popular eugenics theory with her own “blank slate” idea, which stated that a child was a product of its environment.

Barbara Bisantz Raymond’s new book on the topic is Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption, and she recently appeared on Diane Rehm to discuss, orphanages, baby farms and a terrifying story in which Tann appears at a poor woman’s door, offers to take her ill child to the hospital, and then fakes the child’s death so that she might later sell it.

Listen to the interview here.

As reported last week, journalist Carl Bernstein—who with Bob Woodward won the Pulitzer prize for exposing Nixon’s Watergate Scandal—has recently published a biography of Hillary Clinton entitled Woman in Charge. Bernstein sat down with Colbert two nights ago and admitted that she is a very controlling woman and that the farther Bernstein got with the book, the more and more she wanted to control who she spoke to and what was written about. Colbert had a field day with that.

Also discussed was the fact that Clinton is no longer an inevitable win in the democratic primary. Bernstein thinks that it’s unlikely Obama will “evict” her, but not out of the question.

Watch the whole interview (with the Shrek reference) here.

On a plane ride back from Russia in 1988, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson leaned over to Robin Givens, his wife of less than a year, and informed her quite calmly, “I’m going to kill you and get away with it.” She was pregnant with their first child.

Not long before, Givens had spoken with Barbara Walters and for the first time admitted, publicly and perhaps to herself as well, that yes, Tyson did hit her and yes, she was scared. Now, nearly two decades later, Givens has published a memoir entitled Grace Will Lead Me Home, in which she writes about her relationship with Tyson, the now-famous interview and the decision to get out while she could.

In an interview with Good Morning America, Givens discusses the cycles of domestic violence that have plagued her family for generations, which she believes predisposed her to the situation with Tyson. She also states that, were it not for the love and support she found with her family, she never would have had the strength to do what she did. Grace, she tells the GMA talking head, was her grandmother’s name.

Watch the interview and read a sample chapter.

The only thing most people think of when Phil Spector comes to mind is that hair. Or maybe those boots. Didn’t he kill someone or something? Somebody seems to think so, as Spector currently stands trial for murder, and of all the people watching, Mick Brown is perhaps one of the most anxious. Brown is Spector’s biographer and interviewed the infamous record producer some two months before the alleged killing of actress Lana Clarkson took place. The writer just recently came on NPR to discuss that interview, and the resulting book, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound.

Read the excerpt and listen to the interview, in which Brown plays clips from the last Spector interview, and discusses the current state of the trial.

Tony Lagouranis joined the army just prior to 9/11 and was tapped to be an interrogator at among other places Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison where the United States’ current unorthodox interrogation methods were first uncovered.

While at first he was enthusiastic about his duties, he soon came to realize that when it came to the extraction of potentially important information pushing the legal envelope was accepted, even encouraged. His recount of the experience is Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq. (The title, by the way, is the name of an official tactic designed to terrify prisoners into divulging information.)

Lagouranis talks to Diane Rehm about why he feels the moral and strategic aspects of U.S. interrogation methods have failed and what the ramifications of that might be. Listen to the interview.

It has been 10 years since the crash killing Lady Di and she’s still having a dramatic impact on popular culture. Enough so, that Christopher Andersen saw fit to write After Diana: William, Harry, Charles And The Royal House of Windsor, a book that follows and examines the lives of the remaining family members in the wake of Diana’s death, from the teenage years of Princes Harry and William to Prince Charles’ marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles. Andersen also addresses some of the rumors surrounding Diana and the Royal Family, including the prevalence of infidelity that Andersen purports plagued the family until the Princess’ dying day.

The Early Show has made an excerpt of the book available, as well as an interview with Andersen, both of which you may view here.

John Hemingway, grandson of the famous Ernest, recently published a memoir of sorts, Strange Tribe, in which he details the struggles of growing up beneath the mental illness of both his grandfather and parents. More specifically, though, the book deals with Ernest’s relationship with his son, John’s father, Gregory, who at first played into the Hemingway machismo, but later became a cross-dresser, and later still, a transsexual.

The narrative follows Gregory up until his death in 2001 at the Women’s Correctional Facility of the Miami Dade County Jail, and includes a series of unpublished correspondence between father and son.

Hemingway the Youngest sits down with Diane Rehm and discusses one hell of a family life. Listen in.