Why are guns and ammo considered “essential” elements of retail trade during the coronavirus pandemic?  It’s a complex question, but to people who hate the idea, and to people who love it, the answer to the question is: the political power of the National Rifle Association, the NRA. Investigative reporter Frank Smyth has written an excellent new book The NRA: An Unauthorized History.  Want to know why there is no “authorized” history and what the NRA is hiding about itself?

One thing we know about the coronavirus epidemic in  America: it’s going to get worse before it gets better.  And then what?  What do we know about the down-slope, about managing public health, reducing social distance and reviving the economy after Covid 19 has passed its peak?  Epidemiologist Justin Lessler of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the search for answers to those questions, and maybe, how soon we’ll near to shift gears from lockdown to recovery. 

The first of 2 programs on the coronavirus: the view from the eye of the storm, New York City as caseloads spike and healthcare systems show signs of strain. Shane Harris of the Washington Post had to report the inside view from the outside … journalism in the pandemic era, where it’s all hands on deck to cover Covid-19…but covering the virus gave Shane a fresh angle on a big story from his regular intelligence and national security beat. Who knew what when about this new disease?

Here’s a scenario: a Congressional candidate has an affair with her campaign manager.  She divorces her husband.  He divorces his wife.  They marry.  But all the while, she’s been paying his company for his political services.  Legal?  Probably.  Ethical?  Well that’s the question before the House Ethics Committee. What about the Congressional candidate who paid herself a salary for running?  Same 2 questions -- Legal? Ethical? Investigative reporter Robert Faturechi of Pro Publica says the record suggests you not expect a clear answer.

How to assess the future, especially the tricky futures of science and technology has long been the job of Daniel Gerstein, who has tried to assess coming threats and opportunities for both the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security.  Gerstein spells out his operating principles and how he makes them work in his new book The Story of Technology: How We Got Here and What the Future Holds. Among other revelations – what’s different and what’s the same about science and technology?

Another Federal Government program built to fail: The Veterans Administration has long had a whistleblower abuse problem.  Criticisms from the inside have always been most unwelcome.  So the VA set up an Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection.  But Daniel Van Schooten of the Project on Government Oversight (aka POGO) says the office doesn’t protect whistleblowers; it often re-abuses them, and accountability rarely reaches outside the agency.

What was it like to be a slave?  It was a question that went unasked for more than 70 years, until, in 1937, the Federal Government commissioned investigators with notebooks and cameras to seek out people who had been born into slavery.  Richard Cahan co-edited the new book River of Blood: American Slavery from the People Who Lived It which culls some of the best photos and most poignant stores of Americans who once were slaves.  Another example of how much can learn from once-hidden history.

American history includes some awful massacres, the kind of events people want to forget.  But should history forget ‘em, too?  Russell Contreras, Albuquerque-based reporter for the Associated Press (AP,) specializes in uncovering hidden history, like the story of the first and only massacre recognized in an official US Historical site.  A town next door to the massacre site might like to forget it’s named for the perpetrator of the war crime.  The story of the Sand Creek Massacre.

Living under lockdown, in Italy, the country with the currently most-deadly outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic.  How are people coping and how did the Italian outbreak get so bad? Why is the Italian death rate 3 times higher than almost everywhere else? Rome-based Foreign Correspondent Christopher Livesay has been living through and reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, where the economy was close to recession even before the new flu hit.

Whatever the crucial details are laying out the Taliban’s promises to keep the peace in Afghanistan and the United States’ expectations and plans for enforcement, the Taliban know them, but neither the Afghan Government nor the American people do.  What is the White House hiding and why? Long-time Washington Post Kabul Bureau Chief Pamela Constable has recently returned to the epicenter of anxiety.