Terry Gross

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years. He says the compelling movie is a revealing look at how fans and musicians participate in the decadent culture of heavy metal music.

The New Orleans-based, twenty-year-old pianist and singer started performing when he was five, and later studied with Ellis Marsalis. Connick says, as a younger musician, he has more to prove -- which fuels his drive to learn more.

Mulcahy wrote for the New York Post's Page Six, and now works for New York Newsday. While the column she now helms features salacious stories, she considers certain topics off-limits, like AIDS and the outing of gay and lesbian public figures. Mulcahy's new memoir is called My Lips Are Sealed.

Writer Michael Tolkin's novel The Player is based on his experiences as a screenwriter interacting with film executives in Hollywood.

Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerry Casale were still in art school when they founded their band DEVO, which is equally inspired by high and low culture. They join Fresh Air to talk about their music's role in the current corporate-sponsored rock culture.

Journalist John Hoerr's new book, And the Wolf Finally Came, looks at the collapse of the steel industry in the Monongahela River region. He points to the breakdown between union-management relations post-World War II as the central cause for the closing of plants throughout Pennsylvania.

Washington Post staffer Paul Hendrickson has been writing about former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for years, but hasn't yet found a way use his extensive research to write a book-length profile. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about McNamara's reluctance to share his feelings on the Vietnam War.

George A. Romero's 1968 film, The Night of the Living Dead, is a classic of the horror genre. While his zombie flicks have become increasingly graphic over the years, his newest film, Monkey Shines, is more of a psychological thriller. Romero is careful to point out that no monkeys were harmed in the making of the movie.

Reed is best known for capturing scenes from Lebanon's civil war. Several of those photographs have been collected in his new book, Beirut: City of Regrets.

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about several case studies of patients he's treated over the years. His latest book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, has been adapted into an opera by Michael Nyman.