Terry Gross

Allende has published her first work of non-fiction, Paula. It's about her 28 year old daughter, who fell into an irreversible coma. Paula began as a letter to her dying daughter and turned into an autobiographical work about Allende's childhood in Chile, her exile in Venezuela and her move to San Francisco.

Writer/Director Kayo Hatta. Her film "Picture Bride," is the story of a young woman who moves to Hawaii as a "picture bride." Picture brides were Japanese women who moved to Hawaii in order to marry the Japanese plantation workers who settled there. The women would only have seen a picture of their future husband before they were married. The film is Hatta's first commercial release and the first Hawaiian production to gain a commercial release, and also won the 1995 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for best dramatic film.

Advocate for the aging Maggie Kuhn died last Saturday at age 89. She won national attention for the cause of the elderly when she formed The Gray Panthers, a highly successful lobbying group that pressured local, state and federal agencies recognize the rights of the aging. (Rebroadcast)

David Halberstam is a journalist and author who won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War for The New York Times. He was one of the first American reporters to contradict the government's optimistic picture of the war. He was attacked by officials of South Vietnam and the United States for negativism and inaccuracy in his reporting. (Rebroadcast)

Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and U.S. News and World Report Senior Writer Joseph Galloway. On November 14, 1965 they were together in the at the site one of the first and bloodiest major land battle of the Vietnam War, Ia Drang. Moore was in command of the 1st battalion of the 7th Cavalry, and Galloway, then a UPI reporter, accompanied them. They've cowritten a book about their experiences in the Ia Drang valley, called "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young. (Rebroadcast)

Herr wrote what's considered the definitive Vietnam book, Dispatches. The movie "Apocalypse Now" is loosely based on his writings. (Rebroadcast)

The two time Pulitzer Prize winning novelist joins us to talk about his new book Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery. Mailer says we must ask "Who was Oswald?" as a prelude to asking "Who killed JFK?" The book profiles Lee Harvey Oswald's life. It's Mailer's 28th book.

Rochelle and Anthony Yates. On July 18, 1988 the Yates' five year old son Marcus was killed in gun crossfire between two drug dealers fighting for turf in a corner store. There were 11 children in the store playing video games, two others were shot but survived; one of them was Marcus' six year old brother. Since the incident, the Yates' have become activists against senseless violence; they lecture to high schools, take in foster children who have lost family members to violence, run a day care center and organize community activities to take back neighborhoods.

Gallagher is starring in two soon to be released films, "The Underneath," and "While You Were Sleeping." The New York Times said, "the first hit of summer is here," about "While You Were Sleeping." Gallagher has been on the acting scene for over two decades but only recently garnered commercial success. Gallagher is well known on Broadway as the star of "Guys and Dolls."

McNamara has written a book, In Retrospect, which contains the long awaited admission that he felt U.S. policy in Vietnam was wrong and the war was unwinnable. He details the behind-the-scenes decision-making that escalated the war, and the atmosphere of the times which made policymakers feel they had no choice but to do so.