Books & Literature

Comedienne and superstar Roseanne Arnold. Her show "Roseanne" debuted in 1988 and has consistently been a top TV series. She has often made news--she forced out the show's executive producer in a dramatic confrontation, she went public with accusations of incest, she performed a controversial rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at a baseball game. In 1989, she published her first book, "Roseanne: My Life as a Woman" which became a best seller. Now she has written "My Lives" (Ballantine Books).

Steven Pinker, a psycholinguist at MIT and director of its Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, has a new book on how language works: "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" (Morrow). He argues that language is not simply a cultural invention taught by parents and schools, but a biological system, --an instinct-- partly learned, and partly innate. To Pinker, a three year old toddler is a "grammatical genius", capable of obeying adult rites of language, similar to web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.

Donna Williams. Her first book "Nobody Nowhere" offered a journey through the mysterious condition of autism; it was an international bestseller. Once her case was properly diagnosed, Williams began therapy which took her out of the "world under glass" and into the real world of speech and emotion. This treatment is the subject of her new book "Somebody, Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism" (Times Books).

Commentator Maureen Corrigan on the return of the "dirty" book: Robert Olen Butler's "They Whisper" (Henry Holt) and Nicholson Baker's "The Fermata"

Political writer and correspondent in the Middle East for the New Yorker, Milton Viorst. Terry will talk with him about the massacre last week in the mosque in the West bank, and it's affect on the peace process between Israel and the P.L.O. They'll also discuss his new book "Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of The Modern World" (Knopf). Called by one commentator "a psychological and social tour of the Arab people and the wondrous cities they live in", "Sandcastles" features VIORST's travels in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon.

Former Major Leaguer Keith Hernandez. Called by some baseball purists the finest First Baseman in the game, Hernandez played with the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York Mets, and the Cleveland Indians. He is the winner of eleven consecutive Golden Glove Awards for fielding, and played in two World Championships. Hernandez's new book is "Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan" (Harper): analysis of two 1993 match-ups, with play by play commentary, based on his seventeen years in the game.

Doctor of Psychology and editorial writer for the New York Times, Brent Staples. His new memoir is "Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black & White" (Pantheon). In 1984, Staples' younger brother, a cocaine dealer, was murdered. Staples began a process of reconsideration of the major questions in his life: his distance from his family by graduate study at the University of Chicago; the demise and racial divisions of his industrial hometown in Pennsylvania. On missing his brother's memorial, Staples writes "Choose carefully the funerals you miss."

Reporter for The Washington Post Nathan McCall. He's written a new autobiography, "Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America." (Random House). When McCall was twenty years old he was sent to prison for armed robbery.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "Irrawaddy Tango," by Burmese novelist Wendy Law-Yone.

Drummer Arthur Taylor. He's played with Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk and he's put together a new expanded collection of interviews he's done with fellow musicians: "Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews," (Da Capo Press). It's one of the few books about black jazz musicians by a black man, and because of that Taylor's subjects were able to talk freely about the role of black artists in white society.

Sheila Rothman author of "Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in America."

Tribute to Randy Shilts who died of AIDS. (Rebroadcast of 07/05/1990 and 04/23/1993)

Lebanese-born author and journalist Hanan Al-Shaykh. Her novel "The Story of Zahra" (Anchor Books) has just been published in the United States. Several Arab countries have banned the book since its original publication 14 years ago. The Story of Zahra tells of a contemporary Lebanese woman struggling with life in her family and her war-ravaged native city of Beirut. Al-Shaykh's novel "Women of Sand and Myrrh" was published in the United States last year.

Author John Cavanagh. Cavanagh is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. He is the co-author with Richard Barnet, of "Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations & the New World Order" (Simon & Schuster), which examines the growth of multi-national corporations. They profile five of the world's most powerful corporations, and show how they are less accountable to public authorities, are paving the way for future political conflict, and are "stimulating political and social disintegration".

Poet and Professor of English at Yale, Wayne Koestenbaum explores the affinity of gay men for opera in his new book: "The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire" (Vintage). Koestenbaum traces the art-form back to its origins in The Camerata, a 16th century group of Florentine gentlemen, who studied ancient Greek musical theory. A self proclaimed "Opera Queen", Koestenbaum explores this rarely examined territory with what one critic has called "a brilliantly obsessive and funny memoir".

Rapper and actor Ice-T...one of the most popular of the "gangsta" rappers. Although he does not often get his songs played on the radio, all five of his albums have gone gold. Greg Knot of The Chicago Tribune has written that "Ice-T. is that rare gangster rapper who leads with his brain instead of his gun or his crotch." IIce-T.'s 1992 song "Cop Killer," landed him at the center of a controversy about gangsta rap--is it a legitimate form of expression or is it incendiary hate-mongering. Ice-T.

Dr. Sherwin Nuland is a surgeon, and he teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale. In his new book, "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter," (Knopf), he writes that few of us have an understanding of the way people die because 80 percent of Americans die in the hospital, and, for the most part their deaths are concealed. Nuland's new book is an attempt to "demythologize" the process of dying and he presents death in its biological and clinical reality.

Singer, actress, dancer, Ann-Margret (no last name necessary) has written her autobiography, "Ann-Margret: My Story," (with Todd Gold, Putnam). In the book she writes about her relationship with Elvis Presley, her battle with alcohol abuse, and the stage accident that almost ended her career. Ann-Margret has appeared in the movies, "Bye Bye Birdie," "Carnal Knowledge," "Tommy," and others.

Shanghai-born author, Anchee Min. She grew up in China during the last years of Mao's Cultural Revolution. In her memoir, "Red Azalea" (Pantheon), Min recounts her experiences as an 11-year old leader in her school's Little Red Guard, then as a laborer at a work camp where she became the secret lover of her female commander. When Madam Mao began her reform of China's film industry, Min was chosen from 20,000 candidates to become a screen actress because she had a face that was thought to represent the working class.

Caryl Phillips, author of five novels, a work of nonfiction and many scripts for film, theater, radio and television. His new novel,"Crossing the River" (Knopf), tells stories of slavery and the relationships forged by and among some of its perpetrators and victims. Phillips takes liberties with time in following the lives of three African children sold into slavery by their desperate father -- one freed and sent back to Africa as a missionary, one searching for her lost husband and child in the American wild west and one, a World War II GI stationed in Yorkshire, England.