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Author Richard Conniff has written about the natural world for National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines.

The collapse of Bear Stearns caps an astonishing run for the Wall Street giant, which managed to survive the Great Depression and countless recessions. But the current mortgage debacle proved too much.

America's oldest sugar substitute has a long, tangled and not always sweet history. The gradson of the inventor of Sweet 'N Low, Rich Cohen has written a book about the family enterprise.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with author Jacqueline Woodson about her new novel Red at the Bone. It looks at race and history in America through the story of two families in Brooklyn.

In The Toothpick, author Henry Petroski looks at the odd and sometimes secretive history of the three-inch stick of wood. Picking your teeth, he finds, is among mankind's oldest bad habits.

In Britain, anti-German sentiments persist more than half a century after World War II -- so much so that the German Ambassador in London has called on British schools to update their curricula. Eighty percent of history majors in British high schools study Nazi Germany. Very few study post-war Germany. The trend is also reflected in popular culture: countless TV documentaries about the war and the Nazis, yet nearly nothing on Konrad Adenauer. The British do not seem inclined to abandon their stereotypes and cliches about Germans anytime soon, recyling them instead in comedy, satire and office chatter. Guy Raz reports from London.

Before it was a state, Colorado was part of Mexico. Evidence of its Mexican roots aren't always obvious unless one knows where to look.

For many Americans, the hula dance conjures images of grass skirts, coconuts and swinging hips. But a new documentary airing Tuesday on PBS looks beyond hula kitsch to explore its roots in ancient Hawaiian traditions. Hear Lisette Marie Flanary, co-producer of American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawaii.

Massive reconstruction efforts in the wake of catastrophes aren't without precedent in America. A number of U.S. cities have had to rebuild from the rubble.

News analyst NPR's Daniel Schorr says the flap over the falsified documents from George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, covered on CBS News, will occupy a place in the annals of political hoaxes.