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Robin D.G. Kelley's new book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, focuses on the career of the eccentric jazz pianist and composer. It reveals new details about Monk's life, music and mental health problems, and provides a glimpse into the New York jazz scene of the mid-twentieth century.

With the film Concussion playing in multiplexes, NPR's Rachel Martin revisits several perspectives on the injury and the role it's played in football. Is the game worth the risk of brain injury?

Carlo Corrieri, 18, is from Italy, but these days he lives in California and studies with legendary guitarist Christopher Parkening at Pepperdine University. "I've listened to his CDs ever since I was a child," Corrieri says. He performs Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Capriccio Diabolico. This segment originally aired Feb. 7, 2007.

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe plays the puzzle with listener Jean Kendrick and puzzlemaster Will Shortz.

In 1961, an integrated group of self-proclaimed "Freedom Riders" challenged segregation by riding together on segregated buses through the Deep South. They demanded unrestricted access but pledged nonviolence — and they kept that pledge even when attacked and bloodied by their racist opponents.

There are reports of at least two U.S. military strikes in Somalia, said to have targeted al-Qaida figures wanted for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The Pentagon refuses to confirm or deny the operation.

Filmmaker Oliver Stone couldn't wait for President Bush to leave office before he made a movie about him. And despite Stone's famously left-leaning views, his treatment of The Decider is surprisingly empathetic — though ultimately the film doesn't do justice to its characters.

In 1967, mathematician Ed Thorp revolutionized Wall Street with a method of using math and computers to predict the future of the stock market — and his hedge fund has been profitable ever since. Thorp's story, and those of many other market-driven math whizzes, is told in Scott Patterson's new book The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It.

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe plays the puzzle with WAMU and KETR listener Robert Flood of Allen, Texas, and puzzlemaster Will Shortz.

NPR's Elissa Nadworny plays the puzzle with NPR Puzzle Master Will Shortz and listener Eric Feinstein from Ossining, New York.