Alt-Country singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash's latest album, Black Cadillac is surely some of her finest -- and darkest -- work to date. This is an intimate exploration of her history.

For Rosanne Cash, Family Is Inspiration

"The assumption that everybody wants a bundle is flawed."

Some people secretly want to be poor?

No Bundle of Joy

Portman tells Robert Siegel the project interested her because of its subversive and provocative ideas questioning such modern-day labels as "terrorist."

Portman, now 25, has been in the public eye since she starred in The Professional at age 11.

'V for Vendetta': A Provocative Turn for Portman

Apple has criticised a French law that could break the locks tying songs from the iTunes store to iPod players.

In a statement Apple said that if the law were passed it would result in "state-sponsored piracy".

Apple attacks plan to open iTunes

In case you've been worrying about how the war in Iraq will end, or the coming of avian flu, or the extinction of the universe as we drift into the cosmic void, well, relax. Here's something you should really fret about: the future of the U.S. economy in the age of globalization.

Will Your Job Survive?

Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group talks with Steve Inskeep about President Bush's characterization of the threat to American forces in Iraq. Malley and his colleagues recently published a review of propaganda by Iraq's insurgents.

Surveying the Security Conditions for American Forces in Iraq

Interesting movies this week include Capote, The Squid & the Whale, and Paradise Now.

New Releases for March 21st, 2006

The dark thriller with contemporary political overtones was adapted by the Wachowski brothers, of Matrix fame. But the authors of the graphic novel, written in the 1980s, have distanced themselves from the film, which follows a masked rebel battling a fascist state.

'V for Vendetta' or 'W for Wachowskis'?

Thumb suckers of the world unite, the most hotly anticipated film of the, er, week, "V for Vendetta," has arrived, complete with manufactured buzz and some apparently genuine British outrage. Concocted by the same team behind the "Matrix" franchise, this future-shock story about a masked avenger at war with a totalitarian British regime was drawn along the usual Orwellian lines but is clearly meant to have more than a passing resemblance to our current political environment.

Is the man in the mask who wants to make Parliament go boom Osama bin Laden or Patrick Henry? Or just a Phantom of the Opera clone who likes to kick back to the cult sounds of Antony and the Johnsons? Your guess is as good as mine, and I've seen the film.

V for Vendetta - Review: Who Is This Masked Avenger?

Amazon says it likes Text Stats because it keeps readers at the site longer comparing and contrasting books. "It is definitely a feature that we view as having a 'sticky' aspect," said Brian Williams, the senior product manager in charge of the Text Stats functions at Amazon.

Book, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Words