Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (Pantheon) a collection of stories of real women in China taken from a call-in talk show in China by journalist Xinran. Xinran was host of the talk show.
Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack's new book is The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. He has studied Iraq and Saddam Hussein for 15 years. During the Clinton administration, Pollack served as director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, where he was one of the people responsible for implementing U.S. policy toward Iraq. Before that, he was a Persian Gulf military analyst in the CIA. In 1990, Pollack was among the very few analysts to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He is also the author of Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991.
Actor Joe Pantoliano plays Ralph Cifaretto on the HBO series The Sopranos. He has appeared in more than 60 films, including Memento, The Matrix and The Fugitive. He has a new memoir called Who's Sorry Now: The True Story of a Stand-Up Guy (E. P. Dutton). Pantoliano talks about growing up in Hoboken, N.J., and his acting career.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg talks about presidents and language, and the pronunciation of nuclear as "nucular," a mispronunciation that dates all the way back to the era of Eisenhower. The underlying cognitive causes and social implications are considered.
His new film Pipe Dream opens in New York this week. Donovan has also co-starred in The Opposite of Sex, Insomnia, and many films with the independent director, Hal Hartley.
Actor Christopher Reeve. A 1995 horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. Recently, with intensive physical therapy, Reeve announced that he has regained motion and feeling in his fingers and in other parts of his body. This is incredible news to scientists, who assumed he would never move again. Reeve was totally paralyzed for five years. Then, one morning two years ago, he found he could move one finger. Reeve is still dependent on a wheelchair and respirator. He's just written a book, Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life.
Reeve died Sunday of heart failure at the age of 52. He was best known for starring in the Superman film series. A 1995 horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. After the accident, he became a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research. This interview was originally broadcast on Sept. 30, 2002.
Journalist Keith Bradsher is the former Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times and the author of the book, High and Mighty: SUVs — The World's Most Dangerous Vehicle and How They Got that Way. Bradsher finds that sport utility vehicles are dangerous not only for their occupants but for those who share the road with them. He finds that they block the road and vision for smaller vehicles, are more prone to roll over and get poor gas mileage. Bradsher is currently Hong Kong bureau chief for The New York Times.
Novelist Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives in Canada. His new novel is Family Matters. The book is set in 1990s Bombay and is about an elderly professor with Parkinson's disease who is forced to move into the crowded apartment of his daughter and her family. Mistry is also the author of A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey which were both short-listed for the Booker Prize.
Charles Tripp is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He's the author of A History of Iraq.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews trumpeter Steven Bernstein's new CD with the Sam Rivers Trio, Diaspora Blues (Tzadik label). He also mentions the reissue, Jewish Melodies in Jazztime by Terry Gibbs
Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of the novel The Virgin Suicides which was made into a movie. His new novel, Middlesex, is about a contemporary hermaphrodite. Eugenides' fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review and Best American Short Stories. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
Poet Sharon Olds. Her new collection of poems is The Unswept Room. She has a number of previous collections, including Satan Says and The Dead and the Living. Olds was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Phil Patton, author of Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile. It's a cultural history of the Volkswagen Beetle, the most produced and best-known car of all time. Patton writes for The New York Times, Esquire, Wired and ID. He also wrote Dreamland: Travels inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51.
Singer Linda Thompson is back performing after a long hiatus. She was formerly part of a British folk-rock duo with her husband, Richard Thompson. In 1985, Linda Thompson left the stage, diagnosed with hysterical dysphonia, a form of stage fright. Her new CD is called Fashionably Late and she collaborated with Richard and their son Teddy on the album's songs.
