Terry Gross

His new book is Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer. Furia documents the life of the legendary lyricist whose songs include Moon River, Come Rain or Come Shine and Skylark. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Mercer dominated the popular song charts. Furia is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He's also written biographies of Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin. The interview continues throughout the entire show.

Her new book is Jung: A Biography. Bair chronicles the life and work of the influential Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Bair won the National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett, and she's also written books about the lives of Anais Nin and Simone de Beauvoir.

Michael Cogswell heads the Louis Armstrong House & Archives. The archive contains 5,000 photographs, 350 pages of autobiographical manuscripts, 270 sets of manuscripts band parts and 650 homemade tape recordings. We'll hear excerpts from the tapes. Cogswell has just opened a museum and educational center at the Louis Armstrong House in Queens, where Louis and his wife Lucille lived for almost 30 years. Cogswell's new book is Louis Armstrong: The Offstage Story of Satchmo.

Back in 1974, New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliet placed Blossom Dearie alongside Bobby Short and Mabel Mercer as part of the consummate triumvirate of supper-club singers who rule the upper regions of American popular song. A great singer with the tiniest of voices, Dearie says that voice coaches have called her trademark sound the result of improper breathing.

John Linnell and John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants, have just published a children's book (with companion CD) titled Bed, Bed, Bed. Linnell and Flansburgh have known each other since childhood. They started They Might Be Giants in Brooklyn, where they still have a phone machine called Dial-a-Song. You can call up every day and hear a new, original tune. TMBG has released numerous albums, including Factory Showroom, Mink Car and a children's record entitled No! Their best-of CD is Dial-a-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants.

We catch up with him about the latest news from Iraq. He's in the United States for just one day, and then he goes back to Baghdad. Burns has won several Pulitzer Prizes for his overseas war reports.

His new novel is Screaming With the Cannibals. Maynard has been an assignment writer for Reader's Digest for over a decade. He's also written for many other magazines and newspapers. Screaming with the Cannibals is a sequel to his 1988 debut novel, Crum.

He's just received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this year's National Book Award ceremony. The best-selling author is credited with ushering in a new era of horror with his first novel, Carrie, published in 1974. His newest novel is The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla.

Freeman was a favorite photographer of the Beatles. He shot the covers for five of their albums: With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul. He has a new collection of photos, The Beatles: A Private View.