Clarinetist, jazz musician, and klezmer virtuoso Don Byron. He's an unlikely candidate to play klezmer, a product of Eastern European Yiddish culture: Byron is African American and dreadlocked. Byron has become best known for klezmer, but musically he's all over the map: He plays jazz with his Don Byron Quintet, modern classical music with the Semaphore quintet, and he toured Europe last fall with Music for Six Musicians, an Afro-Cuban ensemble. He's also currently writing a classical piece for the avant-garde Kronos Quartet.
Physicist James Trefil. His new book, "A Scientist in the City," (Doubleday) is a exploration of how the laws of nature and technology came together to make our cities. Trefil starts by looking at cities as natural ecosystems, and then looks at the key scientific discoveries that made cities possible. Trefil has written more than ten books on science, including, "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science." Trefil is also a regular commentator for NPR, and he teaches at George Mason University.
Journalist Erik Larson of the Wall Street Journal. Larson has been on the show before to talk about polling, privacy and direct marketing and about how a gun goes from the manufacturer to the hands of a teenager. In fact he's written a new book, "Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis," (Crown Publishers). Today Terry will talk again with Larson about guns, about gun control laws, the NRA, etc. Larson is also the author of "The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities."
Novelist Stephen Wright. He's written three novels, all described by one critic as creating a "bleak vision of America haunted by Vietnam, desperate with boredom, eager to kill, gaga over flying saucers, addled by drugs, lobotomized by television." Wright's latest novel is "Going Native," (Farrar Straus Giroux) about a serial killer who seems to come from out of nowhere. In fact, he emerges out of a suburban neighborhood, steals a car, and heads for California.
Mary Fisher was the face of AIDS/HIV at the Republican National Convention in 1992 where she gave a speech imploring the party to lift the "shroud of silence" about the disease. Fisher comes from a wealthy prominent Republican family. Her father, Max Fisher was Honorary Chairman of the Bush/Quayle '92 National Finance Committee. Since she went public about her HIV-positive status, Fisher has been an eloquent voice in the fight against AIDS misinformation and discrimination. She's also the founder of the Family AIDS Network, Inc.
The final report on Iran contra by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh has just been released. Terry talks with Peter Kornbluh about the reports findings. Kornbluh is senior analyst on U.S.-Latin America policy at the National Security Archive and editor of "The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History," (published in 1993 by the The New Press).
War correspondent and CNN's international correspondent Peter Arnett. He's best known for his reporting from Baghdad during the allied bombing raid which heralded the start of the Gulf War. Arnett has over 30 years of experience reporting, mostly for the Associated Press. He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Vietnam war . Later he covered wars in Cyprus and Lebanon. In 1981 he made the switch to television, when he joined CNN. After learning the ropes, he was sent to El Salvador, Moscow, and then Iraq.
Musical theater historian Robert Kimball. Kimball compiled and edited The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin (Knopf) and is artistic advisor to the estate of Ira Gershwin. Kimball knew Ira Gershwin and his wife Leonore. He also edited The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter.
Documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus. Their film, The War Room, is a behind the scenes look at the Clinton presidential campaign from the New Hampshire primary to the election. Pennebaker and Hegedus chronicled the campaign through the eyes of its two main strategists, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
Richard Prelinger is a archivist of films you probably thought were not worth saving: educational, industrial, and public-service films made from the 1930s through the 1960s.
The former head of NBC's television programming Pat Weaver (Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver, Jr.). He began that job in the early days of the medium - in 1949 - and was the creator of two of television's longest running shows, the "Today" show and the "Tonight" show. Weaver started his career in radio, where he worked with comic Fred Allen. And he was advertising manager for the American Tobacco Company, under the eccentric tobacco magnate George Washington Hill. Weaver has a new memoir of his career, "The Best Seat in the House," (Knopf).
British Journalist Timothy Garton Ash. George Kennan has compared Garton Ash's powers of political observation to those of de Toqueville's. ASH's beat is Eastern Europe, and he has been on hand to chronicle the popular disavowal of Communism there (Garton Ash's classic account of the Prague Uprising in 1986 is "The Magic Lantern"). His most recent book concerns the German Re-Unification, and what Germany's role will be in the new Europe: "In Europe's Name: Germany & the Divided Continent" (Random House).
Medical Examiner and "detective of death", Michael Baden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City. Baden argues that there is a national crisis in forensic medicine. He writes that the search for scientific truth is often sullied by the pressures of expediency and politics. His memoir is "Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner" (Ivy Books).
