Books & Literature

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).

Contributing Editor and essayist for Newsweek magazine Ellis Cose. His new book, "The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why are Middle-Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care?" (HarperCollins) is about what many middle-class blacks feel, but few white americans understand: that middle-class blacks still struggle against racial stereotyping, discrimination, and alienation, despite their financial success and their best efforts to "play by the rules." Cose argues that many white americans make assumptions about Blacks which are at odds with reality.

Harry Wu is a resident scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He came to the U.S. from China where he was held in a prison labor camp for 19 years. The son of a wealthy banker, Wu was a newly graduated college student when he was arrested in 1960 and denounced as an "enemy of the revolution." In the camps he endured torture, starvation, and he learned to "stop thinking in order to survive." In 1979 he was released.

Wu, who survived 19 years in Chinese labor camps, died Tuesday. Born in China, Wu had lived in the United States since 1985 and was an active proponent of human rights. Originally broadcast in 1994.

Astrophysicist George Smoot. Since 1974 he's worked on NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, leading the instrument team that detected cosmic "seeds." In 1992 he announced that he and a team of researchers had detected the biggest, oldest objects ever observed in the universe, the "cosmic seeds" that were the origin of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

Poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje. He won Britian's highest literary prize, the Booker Prize, for his novel set in post World War II, "The English Patient," (Vintage Books). Ondaatje was born in Cyelon (now Sri Lanka), emigrated to England, and now lives in Canada. He also has written a personal memoir, "Running in the Family," (Vintage) about his eccentric family. Both books are now out in paperback. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Former special assistant for National Security Affairs under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, McGeorge Bundy. He's co-authored a new book with Admiral William Crowe, "Reducing Nuclear Danger," XXXX. Terry will talk with Bundy about the threat that still exists of nuclear disaster from such countries as Iraq and North Korea.

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a pioneer in the area of behavioral medicine. Since 1979 he has used Eastern "mindfulness meditation" techniques in treating chronic pain, stress, and life-threatening disease. He founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, Mass. His clinic was featured in Bill Moyer's PBS series, "Healing and the Mind." Kabat-Zinn's new book is "Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life." (Hyperion).

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "French Lessons," by Alice Kaplan.

British religious scholar Karen Armstrong. Her new book, a bestseller in England, is "A History of God" (Knopf). "All religions have been designed to help us touch the God in each other" Armstrong says of her research, which traces 4000 years of Monotheism in the form of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The author, a Catholic nun for seven years in the 1960's, left the order to take a degree at Oxford, and now teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the study of Judaism.

How did a second tier New York department store called Bloomingdale's --where the city's domestic help bought their uniforms in 1950-- evolve into "the most celebrated store in the world": the pinnacle of designer fashion and self promotion? The answer can be found in Marvin Traub, the former chairman of Bloomingdale's for forty years. His new memoir is called "Like No Other Store..." (Times Books).

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "The Pelican Brief", another film made from the works of John Grisham.

Writer Annie Proulx. She just won the National Book Award for Fiction, for her second novel, "The Shipping News," (Scribner's). Proulx describes herself as "incautious, heedless, reckless, stupid." Her characters are often compared with Dickens', and her books are rooted in a particular landscape: "The Shipping News" takes place in a barren Newfoundland. It's been called, "a strange book, a stunning book, full of magic and portent." (Boston Globe).

Moroccan sociologist and Koranic scholar, Fatima Mernissi. Her new book explores how the sacred texts of Islam are used both by feminists and defenders of democracy as well as the violent fundamentalists which oppose them: "Islam & Democracy" (Addison-Wesley). An earlier book, "The Veil and the Male Elite" (Addison-Wesley) was a feminist interpretation of Women's rights in Islam. Her new book, due out in the summer of 1994 is "Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood".

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Because she is black and female, she's considered an atypical science fiction writer. She's won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, science fiction's two most prestigious awards. Butler often describes her work as "speculative fiction" rather than science fiction. She says, "Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce." Her main characters are usually black women, and the fictional world they inhabit are racially diverse. Butler has written nine novels.

Former Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy in the Bush Administration, Charles Kolb. He's written a new memoir about what went wrong with the Bush administration, how they dropped the ball on "gains" made by the Reagan administration. It's called, "White House Daze: The Unmaking of Domestic Policy in the Bush Years." (The Free Press).

Irish author Roddy Doyle, winner of the 1993 Booker Prize for his novel "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" (Viking). Doyle taught school in Dublin for fourteen years; during that time he wrote and self-published his first novel, "The Commitments" about a band of musicians who bring soul music to Dublin. (It was made into a popular film here).

Maureen Corrigan reviews "A Very Long Engagement," by French novelist Sebastien Japrisot.

Writer Gloria Wade-Gayles. Growing up in Memphis in the 1940's Wade-Gayles experienced Jim Crow discrimination first hand. In her new book of autobiographical essays, "Pushed Back To Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home" (Beacon), she reflects on her childhood, the civil-rights movements, abortion in the African-American community, and the death of her mother. Wade-Gayles is a professor of English and women's studies at Spelman College. She also wrote "No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Sex in Black Women's Fiction" (Pilgrim Press).

Pop artist David Hockney. He's worked in many mediums-- from painting and drawing to working with fax and copy machines. Hockney made waves in the art world with his take on photography--compiling hundreds of polaroid snap-shots in a photocollage. In 1979 Hockney started to lose his hearing. Now, near deaf, his art reflects his insights on his loss of hearing. Hockney's new book, "That's The Way I See It" (Chronicle Books), is his second volume of reflections.