Terry Gross

Inventor and the man called "the greatest marketer/salesman of the television era," Ron Popeil. He's sold everything from the Veg-O-Matic to the Pocket Fisherman on television, amassing over one billion dollars in sales. He's written a new book about how he did it, Ron Popeil: The Salesman of the Century, (Delacorte Press, with Jefferson Graham).

The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. He created the web in 1989, as a way to organize his own projects. The Web has grown rapidly since then. In 1992 there were 100 sites on it, as of last May there were 22,000. Berners-Lee is dedicated to keeping the Web open as a public good. He now works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he heads the World Wide Web Consortium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing standards, protocols and new software for the Web.

Historian Dan T. Carter. His book, Scottsboro was the winner of the Bancroft Prize in History for the best book in American History. Carter's newest book is a biography of George Wallace, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. (Simon & Schuster). In the book Carter contends that Wallace paved the way for the conservatism that is now a big part of Republican politics. Carter is Kenan Professor of History at Emory University.

Laurie Pepper is the wife of the late alto saxophonist Art Pepper, who died in 1982 and was considered to be the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Terry talks with Pepper on the occasion of the updated version of her husband's autobiography, Straight Life, (which he wrote with the help of Laurie, published by Da Capo Press). There are also two new box sets of Pepper's music: "The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions," and "The Complete Galaxy Recordings."

National Political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Ronald Brownstein. He has collaborated on a new book, Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival (Little, Brown and Company, written with Dan Balz, national editor of the Washington Post). In the book they look at how the Republicans captured Congress, so shortly after the defeat of George Bush in the presidential election, and how the Republican party has changed dramatically in the last ten years.

Biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook. She wrote a controversial book about the troubled writer Anne Sexton. The controversy surrounded Middlebrook's source material: she had access to transcripts of Sexton's psychiatric sessions with the approval of Sexton's daughter and psychiatrist. Sexton killed herself in 1974. Sexton began writing poetry in 1956 following a suicidal breakdown and after her therapist suggested she try writing poetry. Anne Sexton: A Biography, was published by Houghton Mifflin and is now a paperback. [Originally aired 8/30/91].

Singer-songwriter-poet-performance artist Maggie Estep. Estep calls herself "an angry, sweaty girl." As a teenager, she settled in New York City, and she's been in rock bands since the age of 17. She was the cover girl on the February 1994 issue of "High Times" magazine; the article inside called her "the leader of the spoken word pack." Her debut album was "No More Mr. Nice Girl." NUYO Records. [Originally aired 6/23/94].

Author Linda Gray Sexton's book Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton is out in paperback, [Little, Brown]. She spent a long time coming to terms with her relationship with her mother who committed suicide in 1974. [Originally aired 10/10/94]

Former British diplomat Lord David Owen has written a new memoir about his efforts to broker a peace plan in the Former Yugoslavia. It is called Balkan Odyssey published by Harcourt Brace. Owen along with Cyrus Vance drafted the Vance-Owen peace plan that was considered but never adopted by the warring sides.

Senator Bill Bradley has written a book about his life called Time Present, Time Past published by Knopf. Bradley announced last year that he would not seek re-election in 1996. In addition to his political career, Bradley was also a star basketball player with the New York Knicks.