War is a major issue in the 2008 presidential election. But Yale University law professor and author Stephen Carter says the U.S. has a bigger problem than just withdrawal or escalation of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says the western theory of "just wars" makes it too easy for a nation to fight wars it should not fight ... and too difficult to fight wars that it should. Stephen Carter discussed the "Just War Theory" at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

In 2006, Australian mountain climber Lincoln Hall was left for dead on Mount Everest. Twelve hours later, he was found by a fellow climber, alive and sitting cross-legged on the ridge of the mountain. Lincoln Hall recounts this remarkable tale in his book, "Dead Lucky" and also in a speech at the Commonwealth Club of California.

You may have heard there's no such thing as a free lunch, but David Cay Johnston says there is -- and wealthy Americans do get richer because of it. In an April 14, 2008 speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Free Lunch, outlines how government-private sector collusion affects the middle class and the poor.

The human battle with bugs has been going on for centuries, but James McWilliams says chemical insecticides came into the picture by accident. McWilliams is a fellow in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University and an associate professor of history at Texas State University. His new book is "American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT" and he was one of the featured speakers at the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

In a July 1 panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Dalia Mogahed director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and Irshad Manji, author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in her Faith" debated the question: "Who Speaks for Islam?"

A half dozen pundits and commentators joined in this conversation, including David Brooks of the New York Times, Jim Wallis of Sojourner magazine, Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report, Amy Goodman of The Pacifica Network's Democracy Now! And Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post. Moderating the roundtable was Jonathan Alter, columnist with Newsweek magazine.

Bestselling author Paul Roberts argues in his new book "The End of Food," that our global food economy is careening toward disaster. In a June 18th speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Roberts discussed his book and how problems like food scarcity, food borne illness, obesity and malnutrition are all rooted in the industrial mass-production of food.

Weiner's latest book, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA," draws on hundreds of interviews and archival documents, revealing decades of blunders that have compromised the country's national security. During a recent speech at the Minneapolis Public Library, Tim Weiner discussed how the CIA evolved over the past six decades, and where it went wrong.

In 2004, NFL football star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. While the Pentagon initially said Pat Tillman died heroically in an enemy ambush, the military later disclosed what it knew all along: Pat Tillman was shot and killed by his fellow soldiers. Today, his mother Mary says she still doesn't have the full story of how her son died. She's written a new book about her search for answers, "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman," which she recently discussed at the Commonwealth Club of California.

After a prolonged primary season, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are now their parties' presumptive nominees for president. This week, Word for Word spotlights the speeches they made at the close of the primary season when Sen. McCain re-launched his campaign and Sen. Obama laid claim to his party's nomination in St. Paul.