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  • Shirley Bassey, famed singer of James Bond's "Goldfinger," releases a CD revamping some of her classic hits and introducing new songs, including a cover of Pink's "Get the Party Started."
  • The sound of New Orleans Jazz is unmistakable. If you're in the Crescent City, there's one place you're sure to find it: Preservation Hall. A new, jam-packed box set celebrates the Preservation Hall Jazz Band master tapes that survived Hurricane Katrina.
  • Many Muslim-Americans say the current political climate is worse than the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Many Muslims who once voted Republican, say don't feel like they have a home in that party.
  • When people ask me, "What was it like to grow up on Long Island?" I give them a copy of Alice McDermott's novel That Night. "Read this," I say.
  • Writer Jonathan Hayes was escaping a painfully dull Boxing Day dinner when he was introduced to Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors for the first time. Hayes says Sayers helped nudge the English mystery novel out of the drawing room and into the real world.
  • David Remnick has a nearly impossible task in his new biography of Barack Obama: writing "the most complete account yet" of the most famous man on the planet. The well-written and well-researched book may be ahead of its time; the events in it are so familiar right now that its scholarship may resonate better in 20 years.
  • What do Wikipedia and Craigslist have in common with the Tea Party movement? They succeed by being decentralized, says Rod Beckstrom, co-author of the management book The Starfish and the Spider.
  • Sebastian Mallaby's book is an expert primer on hedge funds — the "Ferraris of finance" — and a detailed portrait of Wall Street's daredevils. Reviewer Susan Jane Gilman says More Money Than God is illuminating ... and infuriating.
  • It's hard to imagine that people used to die from things as small as a scratch on the knee — but that's what life was like before penicillin. Author Lauren Belfer's new novel, A Fierce Radiance, follows the intrigue as pharmaceutical companies race to mass-produce lifesaving drugs during World War II.
  • English-Australian singer, songwriter and actress Olivia Newton-John has died at age 73. She was one of the the biggest pop stars in the 1970's and early 1980's.
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