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The British government is cutting nearly half a million public sector jobs over the next four years as part of a $130 billion cut in spending. Finance Minister George Osborne confirmed the cuts Wednesday in a widely anticipated announcement, saying the drastic budget cuts were the best way to reduce Britain's burgeoning debt.

David Grossman began working on his novel To the End of the Land while his son Uri was in the Israeli Army. He hoped it would protect him. It didn't. Uri was killed, and Grossman's fiction explores the fragility of families, nations and life itself.

The British government unveiled the largest planned cuts in public spending since World War II Wednesday. Britain's Treasury chief says he wants to cut more than $130 billion from the budget through 2015 in order to clear Britain's mounting debt.

The owners of the Boston Red Sox have finally acquired one of the world's most famous soccer clubs. After a ferocious boardroom battle, they've bought Liverpool Football Club, England's most successful team. But some people wonder if the new American owners realize what they have taken on. The port city of Liverpool is not like any other British city. It has its own distinctive subculture -- and some of the planet's most demanding, passionate and opinionated fans.

In his new memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Garry Wills explains his career as a lifelong observer. In Outside Looking In, he talks books, politics and family — and explains how his father's philosophy about the word "cannot" is one reason he became a conservative.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia has a disorder that makes him sleepwalk. He recounts his worst episode — as well as other painfully embarrassing moments — in his comedic memoir, Sleepwalk With Me.

It is easy to talk about great ideas as if they were light-bulb moments — sudden epiphanies where everything comes together for you. But Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, says the great ideas of the past have taken a lot more hanging out than you'd expect.

In the late 1960s, Tommy and Dick Smothers challenged those who tried to tame their wildly popular show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. TV critic David Bianculli joins host Terry Gross to talk about the legendary comedy duo who tackled political issues and censorship.

The British intervened three times in Afghanistan in the 80 years up to 1919. It was the western frontier of their empire, the gateway to their most precious possession, India. They wanted to keep the Russians out. The new exhibition at the National Army Museum in London has relevance today.

Roth, who has been writing novels for more than a half-century, explains how he comes up with his ideas — and why he continues to write every day. In his latest work, Nemesis, he imagines a fictional polio outbreak set in his hometown of Newark, N.J., during the 1940s.