David Gates

The old "Everyman" is a crude, all-talk allegory, whose "characters" include such scene-stealers as Beauty and Knowledge. The dying Everyman finds himself deserted by friends and family, health and strength, even his five senses; only Good Deeds follows him all the way to death.

When vacationers see those signs for First Encounter Beach on Cape Cod, they may imagine tall-hatted Pilgrims and befeathered Indians passing around beads and peace pipes.

In "American Dreamz," Mandy Moore plays a conniving contestant in a talent show that's a lot like "American Idol." She chatted with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.If you weren't famous now, would you have auditioned for "American Idol"?MANDY MOORE: I probably would have and been more obsessed with the show than I am now, which is kind of scary.

Even Jesus recognized that there was something paradoxical about his betrayal by Judas Iscariot--in three of the four canonical Gospels, with a kiss. "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined," he says in Luke 22, "but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" In other words, Judas is damned for helping bring about the salvation of humankind.

One of Samuel Beckett's favorite things about himself—and this depression-prone man probably didn't have many—was that he'd been born on a Good Friday that was also Friday the 13th.

You've done your usual thorough preparation before going to interview Sebastian Junger: you've put on a hoodie, work boots and sunglasses, and you've got a day's growth of beard.

I still don't know exactly who I am," Gordon Parks wrote in 1979. Anyone would have been confused. Photographer, filmmaker, novelist, memoirist, poet, composer--where to begin?

KIRBY PUCKETT, 45 It's hard to believe a figure so gifted--and so beloved--could be gone when a man his age, the Mets' Julio Franco, is still playing baseball.

Garry Wills's latest book, "What Jesus Meant," should affront most of his fellow Christians--right from the foreword, which argues that Christ was not one of them.

This Friday, Conan O'Brien airs his fantastic Finnish jaunt, where he hobnobbed with his look-alike, Finnish President Tarja Halonen. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.How did this all start?

Her professors were astonished," Deborah Eisenberg writes of a character in "Twilight of the Superheroes," her irresistible new story collection, "by her leaps of thought, by the finesse and elegance of her insights...

Britney spears admitted she "made a mistake" by driving down Malibu's Pacific Coast Highway last week with her 5-month-old son, Sean Preston Federline, in her lap rather than restrained in a car seat.

There comes a time when you just can't do it anymore," Merle Haggard said recently. Not quite yet. Last year, Haggard, 68, opened shows for Bob Dylan and released both a Christmas album and "Chicago Wind"; in 2006 he'll tour with the Rolling Stones.

Wilson Pickett, 64, was the purest and most intense of the classic soul singers. Even his covers of "Hey, Jude" and the Archies' "Sugar Sugar" sounded raw--and, unlike Al Green or Otis Redding, seemed to have no sensitive side.

PAT MORITA, 73 Morita spent his early years hospitalized with spinal tuberculosis--then went to a wartime Japanese-American internment camp. "One day I was an invalid," he recalled. "The next, I was public enemy No. 1." His break came on TV's "Happy Days"--before his role as the wise, witty mentor in the "Karate Kid" films (the first, in 1984) made him a beloved presence.

It's been 30 years since Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" transformed him from a critics' darling in danger of losing his record deal to... Bruce . No such milestone should go unmarketed, and Columbia Records' "Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Edition," has gone the extra mile.

Katrina has made this intimate portrait of the New Orleans rap scene even more poignant than it might have been. Cohn knows what an absurd figure he cut in this violent, tragic, now vanished world: an old white writer trying to be a hip-hop mogul.

Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end--and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean.

Only a year and a half ago, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a principal architect of the Iraq war, told the Senate armed services committee it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself ...

Q&A: TONI COLLETTEShe charmed us in "Muriel's Wedding," scared us in "The Sixth Sense"--and is about to make us cry in the tear-jerker "In Her Shoes." She spoke with a fellow Aussie, NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.Hi, Toni Collette.

Criminal Minds Wednesdays, 9 p.m., CBS This may be the most gruesome, obnoxious, over-the-top crime drama yet. "Criminal Minds" follows a team of FBI profilers who analyze the personalities of suspects--the cars they drive, the board games they play, what their bedrooms look like--and magically solve murders.

On Beauty by Zadie SmithEveryone loved "White Teeth," but Smith's third novel won't win her new fans. A white British art historian, living near Boston with his black American wife and their kids, has predictable travails: adultery, academic politics, a born-again son, a hip-hop son, a wife and daughter with body-image issues, and rivalry with a right-wing scholar.

But Of Respect For The Land, A West Virginia Librarian Takes On Mining Companies--In The Name Of Jesus Christ.

Gen. William Westmoreland, 91"What is the answer to insurgency?" he was once asked. Westmoreland had a one-word answer: "Firepower." As commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, Westmoreland oversaw the buildup from a few thousand "advisers" to 500,000 ground troops, and pursued a strategy of "attrition": killing communist North Vietnamese soldiers faster than they could be replaced. ("Life is cheap in the Orient," he said.) He asked for more troops--he later estimated he would...

Billy Bob ThorntonIn the new remake of "The Bad News Bears," Billy Bob Thornton plays the role of the curmudgeonly Coach Buttermaker. He talked about baseball (and his ex-wife) with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.Don't you think it's weird that this remake is toned down from the original?Yeah, our society is really screwed up.

Jennifer Connelly does a lot of crying and screaming in her new scary movie, "Dark Water." But she spoke calmly about skin care and apartment hunting with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.This movie takes place on New York's Roosevelt Island.

Q&A: RACHEL HUNTER TV's surprise summer hit "Dancing With the Stars" features model Rachel Hunter (Rod Stewart's ex) hoofing her little Kiwi heart out. She spoke with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin.Excuse me, Miss Dancer extraordinaire!Oh, God.

To be blunt, I had about given up on the novel before reading Charles Chadwick's "It's All Right Now." Supposedly important new fiction (from Ian McEwan to Jonathan Safran Foer) suffers from--no, dies from--overcalculation, as if novelists sense critics and fellow writers watching the words creep across the screen.

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals 'Cold Roses'This 18-song double CD is the first in a trilogy of releases this year from the prolific Adams. He gives the spaciousness of '70s rock an alt-country update, and wears his heart--and influences--on his guitar strings.

"The Adventures of Augie March" may or may not be, as both Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie have suggested, the Great American Novel, but Saul Bellow came as close as anyone in his time to being the great American novelist.