Books & Literature

Writer Leonard Wolf. His latest book "Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide" is about our attraction to vampires and the curiosity they have provoked over the past 100 years. Wolf is thought of as a specialist on the subject, having written such books as "The Essential Phantom of the Opera," "The Essential Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde," "The Essential Dracula," and a number of other horror related books. Wolf is also the winner of the O.

William Ulrich's new book is "The Year 2000 Software Crisis" (Yourdon Press). It is a guide to solving the problems that will arise in the millennium when computer software will translate the two-digit shorthand '00 as 1900, not 2000. For companies world-wide this computer failure could lead to business failure. Ulrich is President of Tactical Strategy Group, Inc. and a strategic Year 2000 advisor for corporations and government agencies.

Fresh Air classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reads the title poem from his book "Good Night, Gracie"

Journalist Sean Kelly's 1993 book, "America's Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire" provides context for the unrest now in Zaire. Thirty years ago, Kelly covered Mobutu's rise to power. Kelly was with the Voice of America for twenty years. Now he teaches at American University in D.C.

Journalist Adam Hochschild's recent article in the New Yorker "Mr. Kurtz, I Presume" considers the colonial history of Zaire -- once known as the Congo -- looking for the prototype for Kurtz the fictional greedy ambitious white man of Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new book by our new poet laureate Robert Pinsky, "The Figured Wheel" (Noonday)." She also reviews other poetry books: "View with a Grain of Sand" by Wislawa Szymborksa (Harcourt Brace); "Meadowlands" by Louise Gluck" (Ecco); "Does Your House Have Lions" by Sonia Sanchez" (FS&G).

Pinsky joins Fresh Air to read his poem "House Hour."

Scholar and translator Robert Fagles. He is a professor at Princeton University and has gained recognition for his interpretation of "The Iliad." His latest translation of Homer is a new version of "The Odyssey" (Viking). Recently Fagles won the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for lifetime achievement in the field of translation.

Reich reflects on his four years in the Clinton administration and why he stepped down. His new memoir is "Locked in the Cabinet."

Shore's new collection of poems "Music Minus One" (Picador) reads like a memoir of her youth growing up in the 1950s in New Jersey. She's won several prizes for her two previous volumes of poetry and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

A Village Voice critic once wrote of Sundiata, "...like Billie Holiday, Sundiata surprises with images and tumbling phrases that blend with subtle rhythmic variations." Although he's an established and respected artist, he's just completed his debut CD, "The Blue Oneness of Dreams."

"Crooked Little Heart" is Lamott's follow-up novel to "Rosie," about the troubles she faces in school and with her mother, a recovering alcoholic. Lamott's most popular book is "BIrd by Bird," an instructional book on writing. She has also written four other books, including "Hard Laughter."

Sullivan was the editor of The New Republic for five years and the first openly gay editor of a national magazine. On leaving the position last year, he revealed he is HIV positive. His new book is "Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con" (Vintage Books).

Dorris died last week at the age of 52. In 1989, He won a National Book Critics Circle award for The Broken Cord. A first person account of how fetal alcohol syndrome affected his oldest son, Abel, who later died. He and his wife, Louise Erdrich, wrote several novels together, including Love Medicine, The Crown of Columbus and Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Both are part Native American, and Dorris spent several years of his childhood on an Indian reservation. In January, his new novel Cloud Chamber was published by Scribner Books.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan pays tribute to the late American poet.

Lea Rabin, the widow of the slain Isreali Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. She's written a new memoir: "Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy," (G.P. Putnam). Rabin was assassinated in November 1995.

Writer Eric Lax. He's written a new biography "Bogart" about actor Humphrey Bogart. Lax has also written a biography of Woody Allen.

Poet and countercultural activist Allen Ginsberg. He died over the weekend from liver cancer, at the age of 70. We remember him with a 1994 interview; at the time a four-CD boxed set of Ginsberg's work was released, "Holy Soul Jelly Roll - Songs and Poems (1949-1993). (REBROADCAST from 11/8/94)

The novelist and screenwriter's is new book "The Dogs of Winter" is the story of a photographer who hopes to jumpstart his career by capturing pictures of surfers on California's most dangerous waters.

Tucker became a star at 13 years old with the chart-topping song "Delta Dawn." Since then she has had countless other hit songs, grammy nominations, and in 1991 was voted the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year. But her success has not been without it's low points, such as problems with drug and alcohol abuse and controversy over the "mature" lyrics she sang as a teenager.