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Philipp Meyer talks about his dark novel American Rust, and how the story of life in a Pennsylvania steel town reflects broad trends in blue-collar America.

Molly Haskell has taken a new look at all the guilty pleasures and raging complexities that inhabit Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind in her book Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited. Haskell explains how the characters are looked at differently today.

Novelist Zoe Heller has a soft spot for selfish characters. But, the author says, just because her characters are unlikable, doesn't mean they are without virtue. Her new novel, The Believers, uncovers a tangled web of secrets inside a lefty New York family.

Psychologists seem to have a fancy word for every conceivable fear known to man or woman. Nyctophobia, fear of darkness. Phagophobia, fear of swallowing. Agyrophobia, fear of crossing the street. Blennophobia, morbid fear of slime. And the phobia de jour, triskaidekaphobia. Commentator Paul Hoffman explains.

There are so many ways to watch video on the Internet these days, stuff that could be watched on network TV or at the movie theater: Fox and NBC shows on Hulu.com, NCAA tournament games on the CBS Web site, Netflix streaming on your computer. But why is it so complicated to hook your TV up to your computer and watch whatever you want?

Organic farmer Dante Hesse needs to raise about $700,000 to upgrade his dairy. When Hesse couldn't get a loan through usual channels, he turned to his customers for help. Though he's got no collateral or co-signers, some say they're ready to invest.

Thousands of opponents to Pakistan's president plan to make their way to the capital Islamabad Thursday for an indefinite sit-in. The political crisis has been simmering for months. It erupted about two weeks ago when Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld a ban on on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding office. Sharif leads the country's largest opposition party.

The popular children's book author turns his attention to a macabre event at the orchestra, complete with music and illustrations. Daniel Handler, acting as Mr. Snicket's mouthpiece, investigates the mystery, starting with the death of the composer.

Elaine Showalter's A Jury Of Her Peers offers a literary history of American women writers spanning from the tales of Puritan Anne Bradstreet to the modern-day gay cowboy stories of Annie Proulx. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan details how Reagan's attitude toward the Soviet Union was transformed during the 1980s. Author James Mann describes how many politicians, including contemporary ones, were wrong in their views of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.