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'The Insurgents': Petraeus And A New Kind Of War

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Gen. David Petraeus is the subject of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, a new book by Fred Kaplan.

Credit Robin Resch / Courtesy Simon & Schuster

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate. A former reporter for the Boston Globe, he was a co-recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

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In a new book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, journalist and author Fred Kaplan tackles the career of David H. Petraeus and follows the four-star general from Bosnia to his commands in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Central to the story are ideas of counterinsurgency. Kaplan says that while counterinsurgency is not a new kind of warfare, it's a kind of war that Americans do not like to fight.

2:01 pm

Tue January 29, 2013

Aaron Embry On World Cafe

Credit Nikki Embry / Courtesy of the artist

Aaron Embry.

If Aaron Embry's name doesn't sound familiar, his previous collaborators will. Embry was recently the touring pianist with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and has worked with the likes of Elliott Smith, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris.

1:43 pm

Tue January 29, 2013

How A Spanish City Went Boom, Then Bust

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Credit Marie McGrory / NPR

Valencia spent more than $1.5 billion to build the City of Arts and Sciences, the museum complex shown here in a photo from summer 2011.

Credit Alberto Saiz / AP

In 2009, Formula One driver Fernando Alonso (from left), Ferrari President Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and Ferrari F1 driver Felipe Massa ride in a Ferrari driven by Valencia's then-regional government president Francisco Camps.

Originally published on Mon February 4, 2013 1:29 pm

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The Spanish region of Valencia has been called the "California of Spain" for its gorgeous Mediterranean coastline and modern architecture.

But now Valencia epitomizes the worst of Spain's problems. It had the country's most inflated property market and the biggest crash. Its landscape is littered with empty and half-finished buildings. Valencia has also had an unusually high number of politicians indicted for corruption.

1:19 pm

Tue January 29, 2013

Paul Krugman's Unconventional Outlook On The Economy

Originally published on Tue January 29, 2013 5:24 pm

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Over the past several years, Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on how address the problems of deficit and debt, but there's broad consensus that we need to reduce both by significant numbers, and soon. In his columns in New York Times and in a book called "End this Depression Now!" Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman defies the conventional wisdom. He argues for more spending, not less, says the deficit's not too bad, and that a little inflation might be a good thing.

1:18 pm

Tue January 29, 2013

In Night Clubs, The Steps Taken To Prevent Tragic Fires

Originally published on Tue January 29, 2013 5:24 pm

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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Boston, November 1942: 492 people died in a fire at the Cocoanut Grove. June 1974: 24 dead at Gulliver's in Port Chester, New York. In February 2003, 100 killed at The Station in West Warwick in Rhode Island. Tragedies that seared back into memory following the death of at least 230 on Sunday at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil, preventable tragedies that could have been mitigated or stopped altogether by adherence to fire safety laws.

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2:05 pm

Tue January 29, 2013