Terry Gross

Actor, producer, writer, director George Clooney directed and co-wrote the new film Good Night, and Good Luck, about the showdown between legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy that took place in 1954.

Best-selling author Zadie Smith's new book, On Beauty, follows the lives of two mixed-race families in a fictional New England college town. Smith's previous work includes the novel White Teeth.

Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking is about grieving for her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne. He died suddenly at the end of 2003, while their daughter was hospitalized with pneumonia.