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In the mid-19th century, more than a million Irish fled the potato famine in search of a better life. But the fate they met aboard so-called "coffin ships" headed to the New World was often as bad as what they left behind. Not so for those lucky enough to find their way onto one ship. Kathryn Miles tells the story in her book, All Standing.

Spencer Geissinger headed the Presidential Advance Team for former President George W. Bush. Geissinger served Bush during both terms, doing advance work in 98 countries. He shares anecdotes with host Rachel Martin of arranging the scheduling, security and publicity for Bush's foreign trips, with a view toward President Obama's upcoming visit to Israel.

Next week marks the anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court decision that says defendants facing substantial jail time deserve legal representation in state courts, even if they can't afford it. Now, many lawyers say the system for providing defense attorneys for the poor is in crisis.

The Earned Income Tax Credit has been embraced by every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.

Anat Admati, finance professor at Stanford and co-author of a new book on American banks, argues that banks carry too much debt and have too little equity. Government support allows them to hide their risky behavior, distorting the economy as a whole, she says.

Irish cookbook author Rachel Allen shares a recipe for Molly Malone chowder, a soup inspired by the Irish folk song about a doomed fishmonger.

On Wednesday, it was announced that the 28-year-old fiction writer had won the Story Prize as well as the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her debut story collection explores the landscape, people and history of the American West.

In Ruth Ozeki's new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, a 16-year-old girl in Japan starts a diary, writing that it will be a record of her last days before she commits suicide, and gets an unexpected reader when that diary washes up in Canada.

Melissa Block talks to Philip Reeves about reaction to the selection of a new pope to lead the Catholic Church, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

An inspector general investigation exposed deep fissures within the unit for the past dozen years and gave rise to perceptions of politicized and partial behavior by lawyers there.