Terry Gross

Professor Nicholas Negroponte's new book "Being Digital" explores the future of new information technology and how it will challenge today's perceptions of the future. Ten years ago, Negroponte created the now famous and innovative Media Laboratory at MIT. He believes a fundamental change in how we live is coming with the newest computer technologies. He is also a popular columnist for Wired Magazine.

The Australian director made the new film based on the popular nineteenth century novel. In 1978, Armstrong's career took off with the critically acclaimed film "My Brilliant Career" -- the first in Australia directed by a woman. Armstrong has garnered many film awards since, including the Australian Film Institute Awards, U.S. National society of Film Critics Award, and a best film at the Festival International de Creteil, France.

The New Yorker called Trevor"probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language." Besides his eight volumes of short stories, he has written eleven novels, several plays for stage and for radio and television, and stories for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other magazines. Early last year he published his memoir, "Excursions in the Real World," in which he writes about his family and childhood in Ireland. His most recent novel is "Felicia's Journey."

Professor Michael Kazin's new book, "The Populist Persuasion: An American History," explores the rise and change of populism and its effect on the political structure. He examines populism's roots as a leftist, liberal movement, and how populist ideas came to be used as rhetoric of conservative Presidents Nixon and Reagan.

Aciman is the author of "Out of Egypt: A Memoir." The book follows Aciman's close-knit, flamboyant Jewish family through 50 years of residence in Alexandria. The family was forced to leave Egypt when Aciman was 14, during a long wave of Anti-Semitism and Arab nationalism.

The NPR foreign correspondent has a new book, called "Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege." During the height of the conflict, the city was in ruins. But one symbol of hope remained constant for its people: Oslobodjenje, the city's multi-ethnic daily newspaper. When the siege began, the paper's editor vowed, "As long as Sarajevo exists, this paper will publish everyday."

Sexologist Leonore Tiefer has written a new book called "Sex Is Not a Natural Act: and Other Essays." She looks at our society's anxieties towards and ignorance about sex. She also questions what is "normal" sex. Tiefer received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology, and later specialized in clinical psychology to become a sex researcher, sex therapist and an Associate Professor at the Montefoire Medical Center in New York City. Tiefer has also been a sex columnist for the New York Daily News.

New York Times defense correspondent Michael Gordon and retired Marine Corps General Bernard Trainor. They have collaborated on a book about the Persian Gulf War, called "The General's War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf." The book examines why the war was "an incomplete success."

Golden in the author of the new memoir, "Saving Our Sons." She writes about bringing up her son in Washington D.C., where homicide is the leading cause of death for Black males between 18 and 24. In the preface, she says, "I stopped work on a novel in order to write this book. The unremitting press of young lives at risk, the numbing stubbornness of annual, real-life death tolls, rendered fiction suddenly unintriguing, vaguely obscene."

Graffin is the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion. The group started 15 years ago and helped pioneer the hard rock/punk style of bands like Green Day and Offspring. Bad Religion's eighth recording is "Stranger Than Fiction," and it's their first on a major label. When Graffin isn't performing, he's spending time with his wife and child or working on his Ph.D. in Biology at Cornell.