Find out why studying the international humanitarian intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s may help us understand what’s happening in Iraq right now. And then we go literary! Phillip Lopate talks about his new book of 2 novellas; then Salman Rushdie on what he thinks the best short stories of 2008 are. Plus: a look at why the years between 1815 and 1848 were such a tumultuous time in American history.