Terry Gross

Scholars, social critics, and futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, authors of Future Shock (1970). They've gotten a lot of publicity lately because of their association with Newt Gingrich. Gingrich sought them out 20 years ago because he was fascinated by their ideas about the "intersection of history and the future." He suggested that every member of Congress read the Toffler's newest, called Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave.

Biographer Deirdre Bair has written acclaimed biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Her newest subject is writer and diarist Anais Nin. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes, "Bair's Nin emerges as the complex woman she was, a woman who inspired both wrath and passion in those whose paths crossed hers. It's called Anais Nin: A Biography.

Frank Cardon is one of three teenagers who was given a video camera for a year to record his daily life in North Philadelphia. His footage is part of the documentary Teen Dreams. Cardon says he wanted to show a world composed of a lot of angry people trying to survive.

Peter Leschak battles forest fires in the Northwoods and the West. He’s not a smoke jumper; he’s a grunt-hiking to remote locations, putting out fires sometimes on his hands and knees -- spark by spark. For the rest of the year, he writes. His new memoir is called Hellroaring.

Soviet-born journalist Masha Gessen has just edited a new collection of post-Soviet fiction by women, called "Half A Revolution." She says that most of the writers in the collection belong to the "mute generation" that came of age under Brezhnev. Gessen immigrated to the U.S. in 1981 when she was 14 to be with her parents. She's been an editor, primarily in gay and lesbian press, and was international editor at The Advocate. Gessen has since repatriated to Russia.

Lee has written two volumes of poetry, Rose and The City in Which I Love You. He's won many awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He's just completed a memoir about his family's refugee experience in America, The Winged Seed. Lee was born in Indonesia; his parents were from China, where his father had been private physician to Mao. After escaping Southeast Asia, the family ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where his father headed an all-white Presbyterian church.

Pollster Stanley B. Greenberg was senior advisor to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign and currently works for the Democratic National Committee. He is credited with recognizing, nearly ten years ago, the dissatisfaction among middle class voters with the two political parties. Greenberg has a new book about the historic forces that put Bill Clinton in the White House, and consequently led to 1994's midterm Republican landslide. It's called Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority.

The British author's new book Night: Night Life, Night Language, Sleep, and Dreams is about the dark and the night, literally and figuratively. He examines night terrors, dreams, sleep research, fear of the dark, and "the dark night of the soul." He's also a poker enthusiast.

Manchevski, now based in the U.S., went home to make his first feature film, "Before the Rain." One critic at the Venice Film Festival said the film is "written and directed with surprising skill and ability, wonderfully filmed." Manchevski is also well known for directing the music video, "Tennessee" by Arrested Development which won an MTV video award in 1992.

Louganis has written a book, "Breaking the Surface," detailing the private life behind his diving persona. In 1988 he became the first diver in history to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in both the 10 meter platform and 3 meter springboard events. In 1994 he admitted he was gay. He has since revealed he has AIDS and knew it prior to the '88 games.