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Writer Alec Wilkinson is the author of new memoir, My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin) about his relationship with writer and editor William Maxwell. Maxwell was fiction editor for the New Yorker from 1936-1976 and worked with such authors as J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Eudora Welty and scores of others. Maxwell was the author of a number of novels, including Time Will Darken It, and So Long, See You Tomorrow, as well as several short story collections. He died at the age of 91 in August 2000. Wilkinson is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and has been there since 1980. He's the author of several books including, Midnights, Moonshine, and Big Sugar. We'll listen to a rebroadcast of a 1995 interview with Maxwell (3/29/95), and to an interview with Alec Wilkinson shortly after Maxwell's death (8/4/2000).

If Cole Porter and George Gershwin provided a soundtrack for the city, then Hoagy Carmichael was the voice of America's heartland. A new Carmichael biography and song collection — both called Stardust Melody — lead a resurgence of interest in the prolific songwriter's work. Sing along Wednesday on All Things Considered

Dr. Brewster Higley never knew the poem he wrote while sitting near a creek would become one of America's best-loved songs. On Morning Edition, NPR's Steve Lickteig reports on "Home on the Range" and how it changed its tune over time. The story is part of the Present at the Creation series.

An expert in climate change research, Paul Mayewski led the National Science Foundation's Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2. The project extracted ice cores chronicling 100,000 years of climate history. Mayewski, with co-author Frank White, writes about their expeditions in the new book, The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change (University Press of New England). Mayewski is also co-director of the Institute of Quaternary and Climate Studies at the University of Maine.

In the close-knit village of Oakwood, Ohio (population 742), residents are reeling from a financial scandal involving one of their own -- a banker who is accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel visited Oakwood, and reports on the community's crisis of trust.

Science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper is the author of over a dozen novels including, The Fresco, The Family Tree, Grass and her newest, The Visitor. (Harper Collins).

Senate debate begins this week on ways to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Fifteen years ago, Congress passed such a measure, only to repeal it a year later under a storm of criticism. NPR's Julie Rovner reports for Morning Edition.

Fifty years ago, Folkways Records released a six-album set of recordings that had a profound influence on the folk music revival and later on rock music. Morning Edition has the story of Harry Smith's The Anthology of American Folk Music. NPR Online offers a selection of songs from the collection.

Researchers and activists are in Barcelona this week to talk about the global AIDS epidemic. But another epidemic of similar size is sweeping the globe: tuberculosis. A major push is on to expand TB treatment, and as NPR's Richard Harris reports from Kenya, the treatment is working, even under some of the most challenging conditions.

Brazilian physicist Marcelo Gleiser is the author of the new book, The Prophet and the Astronomer: A Scientific Journey to the End of Time (WW Norton). In it he explores our relationship to the sky and how it has influenced religion and then in turn - science. He writes, 'one of my goals. . is to humanize science, to argue that our scientific ideas are very much a product of the cultural and emotional environment where they originate'. Gleiser is Professor of Natural Philosophy and professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.