Photographer Rosamond Purcell's new book, Owls Head, is about her 20-year friendship with William Buckminster, an eccentric collector whose dilapidated antiques shop and 11-acre junkyard in Maine became something of a tourist attraction. Buckminster sold many of his items to Purcell, who took them home and photographed them in large-format Polaroids. Purcell, who's been called the "doyenne of decay," has also collaborated three times on books with the late paleontologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould.
David Denby is a staff writer and film critic for The New Yorker. His new book, American Sucker, is a memoir about his brief obsession with the stock market — during the height of irrational exuberance in 2000-2001. It started with his wife's announcement that she was leaving him. Denby began an attempt to make $1 million so that he could buy out his wife's share of their New York apartment. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).
Rock historian Ed Ward looks at the early days of the Neon Boys who became the band Television. The "lost" third album by Television has just come out on CD — a 25-year old live broadcast, and their first two albums have just been remastered.
Phillips is a former Republican strategist and a regular contributor to The Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio. And he's the author of nine books including The Politics of Rich and Poor. In his new book he takes a look at the Bush family legacy, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.
He just won a Golden Globe for the film Osama, which he wrote and directed. It was shot in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It's based on a true story about a mother who disguises her 12-year old daughter as a boy so that she can work and earn an income under the Taliban regime. Barmak also runs the Afghan film organization and is director of the Afghan Children Education Movement, an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts.
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.
Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new biography Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn. It's about the rivalry between Queen Elizabeth the First and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.
Landesman is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. He investigated the sex slave industry for this week's cover story (Sunday, Jan. 25), "The Girls Next Door." He found that tens of thousands of women, girls and boys are smuggled into the United States from Eastern Europe and held captive as sex slaves in American cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. Landesman reports that the U.S. government has done little to pursue the traffickers.
Plant formally fronted the band Led Zeppelin. His new solo CD includes tracks he recorded before Zeppelin and after. It's called Sixty Six to Timbuktu. (The interview continues through the end of the show.)
He wrote the introduction and commentary for the new book The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of The Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times. McPherson is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of many books on the Civil War era including Battle Cry of Freedom.
She is Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post. She has covered South Asia for the Post since 1999, reporting from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. She has a new memoir, Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia.
He is a founder of the conservative group rightmarch.com. According to the group's Web site, rightmarch.com "is an umbrella Web site for many conservative organizations." The group has launched media and e-mail campaigns, some of them against Moveon.org. They are planning to sponsor TV ads criticizing the liberal group. One of the group's members recently released a country song entitled "Hey Hollywood." The song pokes fun at so-called liberal actors and country musicians, like Willie Nelson and The Dixie Chicks, who speak out against the war in Iraq.
The group was founded by Boyd and Joan Blades, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, in the late '90s as a liberal political force. MoveOn.org recently sponsored the "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest. Some 1,500 contestants submitted ads and more than 100,000 people voted for them online. Moveon.org is now raising money to air the winning ad on TV this week and is even trying to get the ad aired during the Super Bowl.
