Terry Gross

LaHaye is the co-author of the extremely popular Left Behind series of books. On March 30, the 12th and final book in the series, The Glorious Appearing, goes on sale. The entire initial print run of nearly 2 million copies has already been snapped up by bookstores in anticipation of demand. LaHaye is also the former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign and served on the original board of directors of the Moral Majority.

His new book is Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive. It is a large-format book with photos and text by Waterman. In the early 1960s, Waterman became interested in traditional blues music. He rediscovered blues legend Son House living in Rochester, N.Y. Waterman then formed Avalon Productions, the first agency dedicated to promoting blue artists. Waterman managed many acts, including Bonnie Raitt. He's been representing and photographing blues artists for more than 40 years. He is the only non-performer to be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

He's now the area security manager for KBR, a division of Halliburton, a private military firm. Vargas has been stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, for the past year. He talks about the capture of Saddam Hussein, which took place in Tikrit. Vargas is a retired Command Sergeant Major of the U.S. Special Forces. He's written the foreword to the new book Hunting Down Saddam: the Inside Story of the Search and Capture, by Robin Moore.

His new book is At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. Reed recounts America's fight against communism at the height of the cold war. Reed was director of national reconnaissance, a special assistant to President Reagan for national security policy, and a consultant to the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a well-known center for nuclear weapons research.

The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet traces the relationships between Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice. The group calls itself "The Vulcans." Some of its members have known each other 30 years. Mann is a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

When Armstrong decided to leave the Roman Catholic convent where she was a nun in 1969, she entered a world vastly different than the one she had been isolated from for seven years. She had no idea what was going on in Vietnam and had little idea what was happening in popular culture. She's written a new memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, about her life in the convent and the spiritual quest that followed. Her other books include The Battle for God and A History of God.

Weide is executive producer and a writer for HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show stars Larry David, who co-created Seinfeld, as himself. One reviewer calls Curb Your Enthusiasm "a comedy of hostility, resentment, paranoia and obsessiveness." The show is currently in its fourth season.

He's been called the "reigning portraitist of the Information Age." He creates jumbo-size faces on canvas (8 or 9 feet high), copying them from photographs. They are painted in a dotted faux pointillist style. In 1989 Close suffered a stroke, which left him paralyzed from the neck down. Gaining partial use of his hand with a brace, he learned to paint all over again. There's currently a retrospective of his print work exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York titled Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration.

She has reported on Haiti for a number of years and is the author of the book The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. She also edited and translated the book In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti by deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Wilentz is a contributing editor for The Nation, and a former associate professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Kathie Klarreich is a freelance writer who has covered Haiti for more than 15 years. She is a Christian Science Monitor stringer and op-ed writer — and is currently reporting for Time magazine. She'll talk to us from Port-au-Prince.