Motown Songwriters Strike Out on Their Own

Almendros worked on "Sophie's Choice," "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Days of Heaven," for which he won the Academy Award. He got his start making propaganda films in Cuba, but had a falling out with the Castro regime. Almendros later returned to make a documentary about the country's human rights violations.

Thomas started working professionally at seventeen. The 1970s were difficult for her career: a hurricane devastated the scene around New Orleans, where she often performed. Changing musical tastes kept her from getting gigs in her new home of Los Angeles. Now, Thomas is back with a new album, called The Way I Feel.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Eva Hoffman's new memoir, Lost in Translation, about the writer's childhood in Eastern Europe and later move to North America. Leonard says the book deserves the same praise as other literary memoirs like Nabokov's Speak, Memory and Kingston's The Woman Warrior.