Terry Gross

He is the all-time hits leader with 4,256. He played in over 500 games at five different positions. But he was banned from baseball 13 years ago when he was accused of gambling on the game. In his new book "Peter Rose: My Prison Without Bars" (with Rick Hill) Rose admits for the first time that he gambled on baseball. Rose still hopes — and so do many of his supporters — that one day he will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. (This interview continues in the second half of the show.)

Lewis and a team of researchers at the Center for Public Integrity have investigated the financing of all of this year's presidential contenders in the new book The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers — and What They Expect in Return.

He wrote the book Touching the Void about his ill-fated climb of Siula Grande mountain in Peru with his climbing partner Simon Yates. Now there's a movie adaptation of the book. During the climb, Simpson fell and broke several bones in his leg, crippling him. His friend, determined to find a way to get Simpson home, tied their two lengths of rope together (each was 150 feet) and lowered his friend down the mountain 300 feet at a time. When Simpson failed to respond to Yate's signal to retie the rope, Yates made the agonizing decision to cut the rope.