Terry Gross

Washington Post chief defense correspondent George Wilson. His new book, Mud Soldiers: Life Inside the New American Army, is an analysis of the efficiency and morale of the all-volunteer Army Infantry, the combat branch that would bear the brunt of any war, and which almost certainly sustain the highest loses. Wilson spent a year with 200 recruits, following them from basic training to maneuvers in the Mohave Desert, to their first assignments. Wilson's other books include Army in Anguish and Supercarrier.

Grammy Award-winning blues singer John Hammond performs two songs in Fresh Air's weekly performance segment. Hammond has performed for nearly twenty years, and in that time his style has evolved from straight-forward, rural blues to a harder-edged, urban style of blues. He is the son of music impresario John Hammond Sr. who helped launched and nurture the careers of Bob Dylan, Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday.

Writer Michael Dorris. He and his wife, Louise Erdrich, have written several novels together, including Love Medicine and Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Both are part Native American, and Dorris spent several years of his childhood on an Indian reservation. He has adopted many children, one of which he later discovered was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Dorris's new book, The Broken Cord, is about this syndrome, and also his personal story of dealing with it in his family.

Writer Mary Kay Blakely. In 1984, shortly after a divorce, a recent diagnosis of diabetes, the suicide of a brother and a series of missed deadlines in her job as a journalist, Blakely collapsed into a coma. The coma lasted nine days, and when Blakely awoke, she saw the coma as a signal that the crush of commitments and societal pressures had overwhelmed her body, that "the life she planned no longer fit the woman she had become." Blakely writes about her journey back from her coma and her decision to redirect her life in her book Wake Me When It's Over.

Medical examiner Michael M. Baden. In his new book, Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York City, reviews the record of famous autopsies of the last 30 years as evidence of a pattern of bungled investigations of unnatural deaths. Baden, who has been a medical examiner for 30 years, views his profession as a historian or anthropologist who revisits ruined or questionable autopsies in the hopes of correcting history. Baden is now director of the forensic sciences unit for the New York State Police.

Journalist Amy Wilentz. Her first book, The Rainy Season, Haiti since Duvalier, is an account of Haiti since the overthrow of President-for-Life Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and of how the country's hope for reform gave way to despair when it was clear Haiti's new leadership couldn't, or wouldn't, reverse 40 years of chaos and stagnation. The book is also an account of how Wilentz was transformed by the story, of how the epochal change Haiti was going through, and its stunning contrast of poverty and corrupted wealth, overwhelmed her first assumptions.

Novelist Cynthia Kadohata. Her first novel, The Floating World, is a `road novel' about a second generation Asian American teenager who leads a nomadic life with her parents as her father travels the country from one job to the next. As her journey unfolds, the protagonist struggles to find her place in her family and in America. Kadohata's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and the quarterly The Pennsylvania Review. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Writer Jack Olsen. He's been called a master of the `true crime' genre, and in his new book, Doc, he tells the story of how Dr. John Story, one of the most respected citizens of Lovell, Wyoming, systematically raped his patients, and how, in this ultra-conservative, God-fearing environment, the women either couldn't speak up, or, when they did, were dismissed. Lovell is set in Mormon country, and many of the women the doctor victimized feared excommunication for "fornication" if they when to the authorities, who, invariably, were also elders in the Mormon church.

Writer Allan Gurganus. His novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, which is scheduled for publication later this fall, is the story of a blind 99-year-old widow, now confined to a nursing home, whose stories about her life and her husband's take in almost 150 years of American history. Mostly her stories focus on her husband and how his experiences in the Civil War, when he was only 13, haunted him, and her, until he died. Gurganus, a professor of writing at New York's Sarah Lawrence University, has written for The New Yorker, Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly.

Comic Andrea Martin. She was an original member of the Canadian SCTV comedy troupe and one of its brightest stars for seven years. Her co-stars included John Candy, Eugene Levy and Martin Short. Martin brought to life the neurotic talk show host Libby Wolfson, cleaning lady Pirini Scleroso, and, perhaps her best known character, the TV station manager Edith Prickley. Martin recently starred in her own cable TV comedy special on the Showtime channel.