Fresh Air

The second season of the HBO series premieres this month, and Fresh Air critic David Bianculli says "these young women — these girls — really are changing and growing and adapting to tough life in the big city."

The nature writer has an essay in January's Harper's Magazine that details the four years of his childhood during which he says he was routinely raped and molested by a family friend.

A new album of original songs from the Golden Globe-nominated TV series about Music City reflects the tastes of the show's musical producer, T-Bone Burnett, as well as the vocal talents of stars Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere.

The actor, who's currently starring in Glenngarry Glen Ross opposite Al Pacino, has been acting for the stage since he was a teenager in Union City, N.J. "It was the only thing I ever wanted to do, really," he says.

In a new book, Civil War historian Bruce Levine says that from the destruction of the South emerged an entirely new country, making the Civil War equivalent to a second American Revolution. Integral to the Union's victory, he says, were the nearly 200,000 black soldiers who enlisted.

In the early 1960s, Joe Barry combined Cajun and country music into a whole new sound. In honor of a new anthology of Barry's music titled A Fool to Care, critic Ed Ward tells the forgotten musician's story.

The 1971 John Schlesinger film, recently released on Blu-ray, tells the story of a love triangle and makes moving use of a trio from the opera Cosi fan tutte as the film's musical theme.

On the hit Masterpiece Theater series, the social rules the characters have always known are changing as the world events of the 20th century unfold. The series' creator, Julian Fellowes, says his relatives who lived through that era inspired his lasting interest in class.

With his latest film, director Quentin Tarantino was inspired by spaghetti Westerns and the Civil War. Christoph Waltz, who won an Oscar for his role in Inglourious Basterds, teams up with Tarantino again in 'Django.' On Sunday, the third season of 'Downton Abbey,' takes America by storm.

A new mystery by novelist Zygmunt Miloszewski explores Poland's relationship to its anti-Semitic past. Teodor Szacki, the likably washed-up hero, must sprint all over town interrogating suspects, including so-called Polish "patriots" — extremists who bombard him with their anti-Semitic rants.

Bass died on Dec. 27, 2012. We'll listen back to a Fresh Air interview from March 1995, in which she spoke about performing at funeral homes as a girl in St. Louis and how secular music wasn't allowed in her childhood home.

Frank Calabrese Jr. wrote a memoir about bringing down his father's murderous Chicago crime family. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank detailed how he helped the FBI convict his father of several murders by wearing a hidden wire and taping his father's conversations. His father died Christmas Day.