Terry Gross

Gospel singer Marion Williams Her trademark, a long-lasting high A-flat "whooo," has been adopted by most gospel and soul singers singers like Little Richard and Aretha Franklin. A self- proclaimed "Holy Roller", Williams received the Kennedy Center Honors Award this month in Washington for her lifetime achievement in the arts. When she's not performing, Williams sings traditional gospel at the African-Methodist-Episcopal church in Philadelphia--the first black church formed in America. Her new album is "Can't Keep It To Myself" (Schananchie).

Film critic Stephen Schiff has his ten best of movies.

Chilean novelist Isabel Allende. She's the niece of Chile's ousted President Salvador Allende, who was assassinated during the 1973 coup there. Allende left Chile after the military coup and went to Venezuela. She moved to the U.S. five years ago after falling in love with an American, and now lives in California. Her newest book "The Infinite Plan," (HarperCollins) is about a white American family, and is the first time she's set a story in the United States.

Poet, writer, and teacher Nancy Mairs. She's Catholic, but started out Protestant; late in life she became a feminist. She calls herself, "the connoisseur of catastrophe." She's known for writing honestly about her struggles with multiple sclerosis, depression, and the life-threatening illness of her husband. MAIRS also writes about being a woman, a mother, and a wife. Her newest book of personal essays is "Ordinary Time," (Beacon). One reviewer calls it, "a small miracle of honesty mediated by dignity and humor." (REBROADCAST FROM 7/19/93).

Former hostage and journalist Terry Anderson. For seven years he was held hostage in Lebanon, the longest held western hostage. During much of that time he was blindfolded and chained to a wall. Madeleine -- who later became his wife -- was pregnant when he was abducted and gave birth to their daughter, Sulome Theresa, while Anderson was in captivity. In Anderson's new book, "Den of Lions: Memoirs of Seven Years" (Crown Publishers), Terry and Madeleine describe the challenges they were forced to face until his release in December of 1991. (REBROADCAST from 10/4/93)

One of the most respected war surgeons, Dr. Chris Giannou. He was Director of surgical operations in Somalia with the International Committee for the Red Cross, from February 92 until January 93. He helped set up field hospitals, taught war surgery, and performed surgery. Before that Giannou spent over two years in a Palestinian Refugee Camp, which was under constant siege. Giannou wrote a book about it, "Besieged: A Doctor's Story of Life and Death in Beirut." (Published by Olive Branch Press). (REBROADCAST FROM 2/25/93).

One of Bosnia's leading film makers, and professor of film at the Academy of Film and Theatre in Sarajevo Ademir Kenovic. His newest film "SA-Life" (SA stands for Sarajevo) is compiled of scenes shot by himself, other film makers, and film students in and around Sarajevo that capture the horror of the war. Each day, Kenovic and his fellow film makers would meet in his basement studio to plan the day's shoot, going out with hand-held cameras. Kenovic has made three other films.

Foreign Correspondent for NPR, Tom Gjelten. He's been reporting from Bosnia. Gjelten won the prestigious George Polk Award for his piece, "Massacre on the Mountaintop." The piece aired September 22, 1992 and described a massacre of 200 Bosnian Muslim men. The George Polk Award honors excellence in journalism. Gjelten also reported on the Gulf War and on the conflicts in Central America. (REBROADCAST from 4/6/93).

British religious scholar Karen Armstrong. Her new book, a bestseller in England, is "A History of God" (Knopf). "All religions have been designed to help us touch the God in each other" Armstrong says of her research, which traces 4000 years of Monotheism in the form of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The author, a Catholic nun for seven years in the 1960's, left the order to take a degree at Oxford, and now teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the study of Judaism.

How did a second tier New York department store called Bloomingdale's --where the city's domestic help bought their uniforms in 1950-- evolve into "the most celebrated store in the world": the pinnacle of designer fashion and self promotion? The answer can be found in Marvin Traub, the former chairman of Bloomingdale's for forty years. His new memoir is called "Like No Other Store..." (Times Books).