Terry Gross

Will Friedwald has written a new encyclopedic guide to the music legacy of Frank Sinatra: "Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer's Art" (Da Capo Press). The work chronicles Sinatra's five-decade career, drawing on interviews with his many collaborators, and interviews with Sinatra himself, and includes a discography of his well know, as well as little known recordings. Friedwald is also the author of "Jazz Singing."

Poet, editor, and novelist Seamus Deane. His first novel, Reading in the Dark," (Knopf) came out earlier this year, a chronicle of a boy growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1950's. Deane recounts the story of a family haunted by a missing uncle and his tie to the greater Troubles surrounding them all. "Reading in the Dark" was short-listed for the United Kingdom's esteemed literary prize, the Booker. Deane is the editor of the Norton "Field Day Anthology," the definitive collection of Irish literature.

Author and historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg. Her new book, "The Body Project," attempts to trace back through the century to discover why young women report unhappiness with their bodies now more than ever. Working with girls' diaries from the 1830's up to the present day, Brumberg outlines the shifting pressures that have altered the way females define themselves.

Our newest poet laureate Robert Pinsky. His latest book "The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems" is in paperback (Farrar Straus & Giroux).

Poet Jane Shore. Her new collection of poems "Music Minus One" (Picador) is out in paperback. It reads like a memoir of her youth growing up in the 1950s in New Jersey. She's won several prizes for her two previous volumes of poetry and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. (REBROADCAST from 4/16/97)

Actor Danny Aiello. He starred in "Moonstruck," and "Do the Right Thing." Also in "Ruby," about Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. He used to be an official with the New York transit union and quit it when he was 35 to take up acting. This Fall he stars in the CBS series "Dellaventura" (REBROADCAST from 3/19/92)

Director Curtis Hanson and actor Russell Crowe from the new film "L.A. Confidential" which is adapted from the 1990 novel by James Ellroy. (James Ellroy is a previous Fresh Air guest whose memoir "My Dark Places" was about his mother's murder in L.A. in 1958) The film, which has received a lot of attention at film festivals including Cannes, and Toronto, is about corruption and retribution in L.A. in the 1950s and 60s. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW)

Veterinarian Nicholas Dodman, the author of "Dog Who Loved Too Much" and a recent Fresh Air guest. He has a new book about cats, "The Cat Who Cried for Help" (Bantam Books) which, among other things, is about mortifying cat behaviors like aggression, and out-of-the-litter-box wetting.

Novelist Paul Auster has written a new memoir about his struggling years as a young writer, "Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure" (Henry Holt). Auster has written eight novels, including "The New York Trilogy" and the screenplay for the film "Smoke."

Ann Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg, at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies Department where they have been visiting professors since 1993. They also lived six years in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip where they studied and researched the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. In their forth coming book, they look at the psychology of the young men in the Hamas movement, by interviewing one of them who survived an attempt at a suicide bombing (to be published by Oxford University Press)