Search results for

Danny "Kid Delicious" Basavich was a depressed, overweight teen when he found his true calling in smoky billiards halls. In his new book, Running the Table, L. Jon Wertheim chronicles Basavich's rise as one of the country's best pool players.

The nomination of Michael Mukasey to be the next attorney general is back on track after a bit of a roller coaster ride this week. Two Senate Democrats — Charles Schumer of New York and Diane Feinstein of California — said late Friday that they would support Mukasey.

Robert Harris' new novel features a once-popular former British prime minister who becomes fiercely criticized for collaborating with the United States in war. The character's name is Adam Lang, not Tony Blair, but otherwise the similarities are unmistakable.

Heidi Squier Kraft, author of a new memoir called Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital, served more than seven months as a clinical psychologist at a remote air base in western Iraq.

The current debate over waterboarding may be new, but the practice is not. It predates the Inquisition and has been used, off and on, around the world ever since. The interrogation technique has been modified slightly but, in essence, has changed very little in the past 500 years.

Paul Tibbets, who piloted the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, has died at age 92. On Aug. 6, 1945, Tibbets' B-29 dropped the nearly five-ton bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tibbets always insisted that he did not have regrets.

In the 1800s, a chef in Paris created a liquid that deepened the flavor of everything it touched. Its flavor wasn't any combination of the four recognized tastes. It took a Japanese soup lover and scientists to acknowledge a fifth taste: umami.

The expansive new mob drama American Gangster stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Fresh Air's film critic says it's a panoramic portrait of a nation disintegrating from moral rot — although cinematically, it feels a little secondhand.

Investment brokerage firm Merrill Lynch is looking for a new CEO after ousting Stan O'Neal. Speculation is focusing on Laurence Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, which provides global investment management services, and Robert McCann, who heads Merrill's brokerage division.

The price of gold hit a 28-year high, topping $800 an ounce, after the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by a quarter point. It was the second cut by the Fed this year. The move to spark the economy comes as the price of a barrel of oil broaches $100.