Following is a grab-bag of items which you might find helpful and/or interesting.
The current book & film items will be changed periodically. 

Splendid Books:

David Fairbank White, Bitter Ocean.  The war for control of the Atlantic, 1939-45

David McCullough, John Adams.  Restores Adams to rightful equality with the other Founding Fathers

Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics.  A prescription for dealing with modern day warfare

Victor Davis Hanson, An Autumn of War.  Essays on going into Iraq

Jose Saramago, Blindness  (fiction)

Dava Sobel, Longitude.  The account of the man who made modern longitude navigation possible

Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter.  Perspective on Galileo from the viewpoint of his daughter's letters
Sebastian Unger, The Perfect Storm

Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About America? (see first page of schedule)

 

Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City (the building of the Columbian Exp., Chicago)

 

Simon Winchester, The Map That Changed the World.  Wm. Smith and the birth of modern geology

 

Stephen Ambrose, The Wild Blue.  An account of the WW II pilots who flew the B-24 Liberator bomber

 

Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man.  Genetic proof that 50,000 years ago, humankind literally walked out of southern Africa and peopled the entire world

History and Politics Out Loud:  www.hpol.org

A collection of audible speeches and conversations; e. g., Martin Luther King’s “Dream” speech and 12 ½ hours of the live Nixon tapes.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets:

The text of all 155 of them: http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/Poetry/sonnets.html

Movies on Shakespeare’s Plays (one actor identified for each to help you find them):

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Michelle Feiffer) is another entry in Shakespeare's recent renaissance on film.  Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh), Ian McKellen's Richard III, Al Pacino's documentary Looking for Richard, Laurence Fishburne as Othello, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (contains every line Shakespeare wrote for it), Helena Bonham Carter in Twelfth Night,  Baz Luhrmann's modern street version of  William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Leonard DiCaprio), the King Lear-inspired A Thousand Acres (Michelle Feiffer),  the remake of  The Taming of the Shrew as 10 Things I Hate About You,  Shakespeare in Love (Gwyneth Paltrow),  and Anthony Hopkins in Titus, based on the rarely staged Titus Andronicus ("All Rome's a wilderness of tigers").  We can look ahead to the forthcoming Hamlet with Ethan Hawke, Branagh's Love's Labor's Lost, and Mekhi Phifer as Othello in the modern urban drama O.

Some Fine Films Based on Novels by E. M. Forster

A Passage to India
Where Angels Fear to Tread
A Room with a View
Howard’s End

A Selection of Fine Sophisticated Films:

An Ideal Husband
Breaker Morant
Enchanted April
Remains of the Day
Six Degrees of Separation   

Chicago (a movie version of the musical)

A Number of Splendid Films of Jane Austen’s Novels (more than one version of some):

Emma, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park
Clueless (based on Emma)

 Some Films in the More Popular Mainstream:

L. A. Confidential

Million Dollar Baby (a remarkable film about hopes and dreams)
Moonstruck
Mighty Aphrodite
Scent of a Woman
The Usual Suspects
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead

 Some Recent Films:

The English Patient
The Cider House Rules
Shakespeare in Love

Elizabeth
Topsy Turvey

On Being John Malkovich.

Try very hard to view this film on DVD if possible.  It is Alice in Wonderland for the 90s.  It is about reality and fantasy and identity and fame and living our lives through others and so much more.  In fact, so much goes on here that you will need to view it at least twice, with perhaps a separate viewing just for the music.

Reviewers were virtually unanimous in their praise, but here is Roger Ebert, one of my favorite reviewers, with some related titles that you might enjoy:

"Every once in a long, long while a movie comes along that is like no other. A movie that creates a new world for us and uses it to produce wonderful things. "Forrest Gump" was a movie like that, and so in their different ways were "MASH," "This Is Spinal Tap," "After Hours," "Babe," and "There's Something About Mary." What do such films have in common? Nothing. That's the point. Each one stakes out a completely new place and colonizes it with limitless imagination. Either "Being John Malkovich" gets nominated for best picture, or the members of the Academy need portals into their brains."

(From his web site, AOL Keyword Ebert.

About Films and Film Making:

Following are a few sites which will tell you much about the art and craft of movies which we often take for granted.

http://www.learner.org/exhibits/cinema/
This has sections on writing, directing, editing, etc., as well as links to many related sites.

www.exposure.co.uk/eejit
Much of what is above, but here aimed at those who actually want to MAKE film.

www.cyberfilmschool.com
How the big guys and the nobodies do it plus movie news, active message boards and numerous links.

www.filmmaker.com
Another "how to" sites, including major "no-no's" and weekly updates on 10 top sites.

www.nextwavefilms.com
Another "how-to," but here you can actually see some clips.
 

Foreign Affairs: Our Government in Action Abroad:

http://usinfo.state.gov/homepage.htm
What's cooking all over the world, including weekly updates, "What's New"

www.epn.org/ideacentral/foreign
Some heavy-duty stuff so read slowly and beware of some agenda driven material. But it is all worthwhile.

www.state.gov
Much like the first two items, above, but very good for those who wish to travel abroad, especially students.

www.afpc.org
Apparently you must subscribe for a lot of the links, but the site does lay out areas of importance, including valuable books.

www.un.org
An excellent site for what is going on around the world, but remember that the UN has its own agenda which is not always in the best interest of our country