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Prohibition was meant to stop the sale of liquor, but it didn't. In New York City, which had as many as 32,000 speakeasies, the policy's failure was flagrant. In his new book, Dry Manhattan, Michael A. Lerner examines what happened.

Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the first preachers to wed Christian fundamentalism with Hollywood-style theatrics and tabloid-worthy controversy. The charismatic Sister Aimee's story is told in a new book and PBS documentary.

Poet Jehanne Dubrow shares several poems from her third poetry collection, Stateside, about her experience as a Navy wife, trying to understand her own life while waiting for her spouse to return from war.

Reichl edited The Gourmet Cookbook, which includes more than 1,200 recipes culled from 60 years of the magazine's back issues. Reichl is the author of two best-selling memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples. Before becoming editor of Gourmet, she was restaurant critic of The New York Times, and before that food editor of the Los Angeles Times.

The battle of Waterloo stopped Napoleon and made a hero of the Duke of Wellington. But historian Peter Hofschroer tells Liane Hansen that a scale model of the battle made by one Lt. William Siborne shows how Wellington supressed key details, including the key role of Prussian forces.

Author Jane Schoenberg teamed with her musician husband Steven to create a book and CD aimed at teaching children about their bodies. My Bodyworks offers a brief anatomical overview, and 12 songs.

After 44 years as a newspaper man, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. makes his debut as a fiction writer. His new novel, Rules Of The Game, features an investigative reporter on the beat of a hotly contested presidential election.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid says the Taliban is making advances in Pakistan. Rashid reports on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia for The Daily Telegraph and The Far Eastern Economic Review.

Sarah Chayes has been living and working in Afghanistan since she covered the fall of the Taliban government for NPR. She joins Fresh Air to explain how the hard-line religious movement is using both fear and persuasion as it works to once again expand its power in Afghanistan.

NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty spent a year exploring the emerging science of spirituality for her book, Fingerprints of God. She talks with Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen about what she discovered while writing the book.