Susan Sontag

The essayist and novelist's new book, called AIDS and Its Metaphors, examines the discourse surrounding the disease. Sontag is a cancer survivor; a previous book about language and sickness is titled Illness as Metaphor. She joins Fresh Air to talk about how cancer changed her thinking and made her a more compassionate person.

Writer David Rieff (pronounced "reef"). his new book, "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," looks at how the millions of poor immigrants that have come to the Los Angeles area in the past two decades have changed the shape of that city...changing it from the "City of Dreams" that's long been L.A.'s popular image, to a much poorer, problem-ridden,and diverse, place. Rieff says something similar is in store for many other American cities. (The book's published by Simon and Schuster).