Terry Gross

Comedian Bernie Mac has traced his own path to the top, staying in Chicago and other spots — anywhere but Los Angeles. Now he's the star of The Bernie Mac Show, a sitcom on Fox. As his book I Ain't Scared of You is released, we talk with Mac about his days honing his craft, his ideas about what makes a star — and who's better, Sinatra or Williams.

An interview with hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons.

LeRoy is the author of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, a collection of autobiographical stories, and Sarah, a novel about a 12-year-old hustler. LeRoy writes for NY Press, Shout and The Face.

Dalton Conley is the author of the memoir, Honky (Vintage books) about growing up white in a predominately African American and Latino neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York. Conley is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University.

Jazz trumpeter Steven Bernstein. With his quartet, Sex Mob, hes just released a new CD which pays homage to the music of James Bond films. Its called Sex Mob Does Bond (ropeadope records) and is the sextets third album. Bernstein also heads two other groups: Diaspora Soul which specializes in performing versions of ancient Jewish melodies, and Millennial Territory Orchestra with which he explores jazz from the 1920s and 1930s.

Ken Wells is senior writer and features editor for The Wall Street Journals Page One. He is also the author of two novels: his latest Juniors Leg (Random House), and Meely LaBauve (published last year). Both novels are set in south Louisiana on the bayou where he grew up himself.

Ruth Kluger is the author of the new memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Feminist Press). Kluger was ten years old when she and her mother were deported to the Jewish "ghetto" Theresienstadt. From there they were sent to Auschwitz and the young Kluger survived to go to the work camp Christianstadt by lying about her age. Her memoir, Still Alive, was published in Germany in 1992 and has just been published in the U.S. Kluger became a distinguished professor of German and is professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine.

A.E. Hotchner's book Papa Hemingway (Carroll & Graff) is about his friend and colleague, Ernest Hemingway. Hotchner met Hemingway when he was a 20-something journalist, on assignment to interview Hemingway for Cosmopolitan magazine. That first interview in 1948 developed into a 14 year friendship. In 1957, he wrote The World of Nick Adams, a dramatization of Hemingway's Nick Adams stores for CBS. The TV special starred Paul Newman and was scored by Aaron Copland.

New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed him the 40th police commissioner of the City of New York in August of 2000. Prior to that, he was the commissioner of the Department of Correction. Kerik began as a prison warden in New Jersey. He joined the NYPD as a beat cop on Times Square. He just written a book, called The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice.

Kim Phuc is the subject of the Vietnam War most famous photo: a 9-year-old girl running naked and screaming down a street. She has just been hit by napalm. Kim Phuc now lives in Canada with her husband and children. The 1999 book The Girl in the Picture, by Denise Chong, tells Phuc story. Wel find out what happened to Phuc after the photo was taken.