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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travels outside Baghdad to Mosul and Tikrit in northern Iraq, visiting with military leaders and briefly thanking troops. Rumsfeld is in Iraq to make a first-hand assessment of the U.S. occupation. Hear NPR's Emily Harris.

Commentator Andrei Codrescu laments the hard time non-blockbusters have catching browsers' attention on bookstore shelves. He details the thought-process that a potential reader goes through in making a bold determination if he or she should actual buy a lesser-known work. It is this detail that gives us insight into the difficulties of authors. Codrescu's latest book is It was Today: New Poems, available from Coffee House Press.

As the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, NPR's Pam Fessler reports on how Americans feel about their safety and security today. She talks to residents of Wilmington, Del.

Gen. John Abizaid and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz discuss the cost of rebuilding Iraq in a closed-door session with members of Congress. An emergency spending request that could run as high as $100 billion is expected in coming days. NPR's David Welna reports.

He's got a new series on CBS called The Handler in which he plays an FBI agent. It will premier on September 26, 2003. He is perhaps best known for his role as Ralph Cifaretto on the HBO series The Sopranos and has also appeared in more than 60 films, including Memento, The Matrix and The Fugitive. His memoir is called Who's Sorry Now: The True Story of a Stand-Up Guy. This interview first aired October 1, 2002.

In this edition of Director's Cuts, Weekend Edition Sunday's music director Ned Wharton reviews two new projects from Mark Oliver Everett, also known simply as "E." His group Eels has a new disc on DreamWorks called Shootenanny! and under the name MC Honky, the fictitious rapper produces "Self Help Rock" on the CD I Am the Messiah on spinART Records.

When George Plimpton and his friends, writers H.L. Humes and Peter Matthiessen, founded The Paris Review in 1953, they were young men whose curiosity exceeded their means. But they were determined to keep the literary journal going, publishing early interviews with E.M. Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and Italo Calvino. This year, The Paris Review celebrates its 50th anniversary. NPR's Jacki Lyden visits Plimpton at his Manhattan apartment talk about his career and the history of Review. Hear an extended interview.

Two years ago, a TV picture-tube plant moved from Scranton, Pa., to Mexico and left nearly 2,000 people without jobs. Many of the town's residents are still struggling to find jobs. In the second of this three-part series, NPR's John Ydstie reports on three former plant employees.

Tens of thousands of Muslims begin a three-day march to mourn Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, a revered Iraqi Shiite cleric killed by a car-bomb attack Friday. Al-Hakim, a long-time opponent of Saddam Hussein, was one of more than 100 people killed in the bombing of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. Hear NPR's Ivan Watson.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) confirms that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Kerry has campaigned and raised money for more than a year. The official announcement comes as he trails rival New England Democrat Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, in early polls for the critical New Hampshire primary. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.