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President Obama tried a new way Monday to jump-start his stalled health care overhaul: He unveiled his own detailed health proposal and put it on the Internet. It's intended as a starting point for a bipartisan health care summit set for Thursday.

William Halsted is credited with creating the United States' first surgical residency program and transforming the way operating rooms are sterilized. He was also a morphine addict. Plastic surgeon Gerald Imber details Halsted's dual lives in the new biography Genius on the Edge.

Philip Hoare's book, The Whale, is an exploration of the role that the great animals have played in human history, from Moby-Dick to lamp oil to the author's own close encounter with a curious female sperm whale.

In 2001, CNN acquired a vast stash of audiotapes from a house in Kandahar that once belonged to Osama bin Laden. The tapes, bin Laden's personal collection, provide a rare glimpse into the minds and lives of al-Qaida militants.

U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn won an Olympic gold in Vancouver on Wednesday despite a painful shin injury. But Thursday, she wiped out in the super combined. Vonn, who had the day off Friday, criticized the course on Whistler Mountain.

The FBI announced Friday that it has formally closed one of its most controversial investigations: the inquiry into the 2001 anthrax attacks. They say that an Army researcher, Bruce Ivins, mailed envelopes with the toxin to politicians and news organizations, adding that he acted alone.

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante writes about alcoholism, drug addiction and failed attempts at literary success — all of which he has experienced himself. He discusses his novel, 86'd, battling his own emotional demons, and the process of reliving his past on paper.

Roman Polanski's deliciously unsettling new film, The Ghost Writer, is a dark pearl of a movie, made with the flair and precision of a director suddenly returned to the height of his powers. Kenneth Turan says it could spark a creative renaissance for the controversial filmmaker.

In Austin, Texas, a small private plane crashed into a federal office building that housed Internal Revenue Service workers. Initial reports indicate the pilot hated the IRS and may have crashed the plane intentionally.

NPR correspondent Margot Adler has read 75 vampire books in the past nine months. It was a fascination with the classic vampire's immortality that got her started — but it was her discovery of the modern vampire's sense of morality that kept her going.