Terry Gross

Michael Harrington, a political scientist, author and co-chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America. His 1962 book, The Other America, caught the attention of President John Kennedy and became the handbook for Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Harrington's central theme is that poverty is growing, not shrinking, and that the free market has proven inadequate to the task of reducing it. His more recent works include The New American Poverty and The Next Left. His latest work, The Long-Distance Runner, is his autobiography.

Dance writer Deborah Jowitt. In her new book, Time and the Dancing Image, Jowitt approaches dance as an anthropologist, trying to reconnect dance to history by placing dance's major developments in the context of the culture that spawned it. Jowitt, a former dancer and choreographer, is the principal dance critic of The Village Voice.

Financial writer Connie Bruck. Her first book, The Predators' Ball: The Junk Bond Raiders and the Man who Staked Them, is a profile of the controversial junk bond financier Michael Milken, and the junk bond department of the investment firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert. Milken's financing schemes, and Drexel Burnham's resources, have been the engine behind many of the hostile takeovers and mergers that have rocked Wall Street over the last six years. Bruck is a reporter for The American Lawyer magazine.

Three members of the New Orleans cajun band BeauSoleil, led by Michael Doucet, will perform several songs.

Map maker Stuart Allan. Allan is the principal mapmaker of Raven Maps & Images of Medford, Oregon, a company that specializes in wall-sized maps that are both visually striking and technically accurate.

Standup comic Richard Lewis. In his act, Lewis portrays a spastic, tortured, self-deprecating man living a life of unrelieved pain. He says of his comedy that after he's finished his act "people throw prescription drugs and the names of their therapists instead of roses. I'm the wreck they can't be." Lewis has appeared roughly 35 times on the "Late Night with David Letterman" show. His new HBO comedy special, "Richard Lewis: I'm Exhausted Concert," premieres on June 18th.

Screenwriter Shawn Slovo. Her first film, "A World Apart," is the autobiographical story of the relationship between a white woman, committed to fighting apartheid, and her 13-year-old daughter, who is struggling to cope with the political choices her mother has made. Slovo's parents were early members of the outlawed African National Congress; Her mother reported on the injustices of apartheid for alternative newspapers, while her father defended blacks in the court system. Slovo's mother was murdered in exile by a parcel bomb.

Detective Josiah Thompson. Thompson was a tenured professor of philosophy at Haverford College when he applied for a job at a San Francisco detective agency. He has since left academia and works full-time as a private eye. He's written an account of his work titled Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye. Thompson's cases run the gamut from recovering money from an attic in a drug case to saving an innocent man from the gas chamber.

Jazz singer Sylvia Syms. During the 40s and 50s, she perfected her stage style and voice in New York's jazz clubs, including The Village Vanguard and The Latin Casino where she became friends and collaborators with Erol Garner, Billy Holiday and Frank Sinatra. She appeared on stage as well, originating the role of Bloody Mary in "South Pacific," and still sings the musical's centerpiece "Bali Hai" in her cabaret show. Syms teaches voice and song interpretation at Texas' Northwood Institute.

Cinematographer and director Chris Menges. His new film, "A World Apart," opens soon. The film deals with the relationship between a white woman, politically committed to the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and her 13-year-old daughter's attempts to understand the political choices her mother has made. Menges is Britain's foremost cinematographer and the winner of two Oscars for his camera work on "The Killing Fields" and "The Mission." "A World Apart" is his first feature film as a director.