Health & Medicine

Dr. Jerome Groopman, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a book about how doctors make decisions regarding their patients. It's called How Doctors Think.

Groopman is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School.

Navy Cmdr. Richard Jadick earned a Bronze Star with a "V" for valor for his service as a doctor during the Battle of Fallujah, which featured some of the worst street fighting seen by Americans since Vietnam. His new memoir, written with Thomas Hayden, is On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story.

Dr. Mark Kline is president of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital. Kline discusses his efforts and the advances that have been made in treating HIV-infected children.

Last summer, Kline launched the Pediatric AIDS Corps, which sends doctors to six African countries to treat HIV-infected children and train medical professionals. Recently, BIPAI signed an agreement with UNICEF to get first-rate drugs to infected children throughout the world.

Writer Emily Rapp's left foot was amputated when she was four years old, and she has worn a prosthetic device ever since. Her book is Poster Child: A Memoir.

New York Times reporter Alex Kuczynski's new book is Beauty Junkies: Inside our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery. No stranger to "beauty maintenance," Kuczynski has had botox, an eye-lift, and liposuction, but gave it up after a bad experience with lip augmentation.

Richard Powers recently won the National Book Award for his book The Echo Maker. Part mystery and part science, the novel is about a 27-year-old man who falls into a coma after a car crash and wakes up with a rare brain disorder. Powers' previous books include The Gold Bug Variations and The Time of Our Singing.

Journalist Stephen Kiernan's new book is Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System. Kiernan writes that doctors are not well-trained in end of life procedures, and that half of those who die in hospitals suffer untreated pain, while those in nursing homes risk abuse and personal bankruptcy. Based in New England, Kiernan has written for the Boston Globe, the Burlington Free Press and other publications. He received the George Polk Award for medical reporting and the Joseph Breckner Center's Freedom of Information Award.

In his new book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, Richard Sloan examines the claim that prayer and religion can heal the sick. Using the scientific method, he shows that there is no compelling evidence that religion can actually cure medical ailments.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Styron died Wednesday of pneumonia at the age of 81. Styron's books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Confessions of Nat Turner (which won the Pulitzer) and Sophie's Choice, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Meryl Streep. His memoir Darkness Visible detailed his struggles with depression and suicidal impulses. This interview originally aired on Sept. 19, 1990.

Julia Sweeney is currently performing a one-woman show called "Letting Go of God" at the off-off-Broadway theater in Manhattan. A Saturday Night Live cast alum, Sweeney also wrote and performed the 1996 Broadway show "God Said, Ha!" Her films include Pulp Fiction, Clockstoppers and It's Pat, based on her gender-confused character on SNL.

Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter and Independence Day, has written a new novel entitled The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was the first book to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Journalist Tina Cassidy was inspired to write about cultural birth practices after hearing many accounts of birth experiences. Cassidy is a former reporter for the Boston Globe and writes for other publications including The New York Times Magazine.

William Cope Moyers is the son of journalist Bill Moyers. He's written a new memoir about his addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine and his recovery. He's been sober for twelve years and is the vice president for external affairs at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. His new memoir is Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption

Since the fall of communism, there have been few Eastern European directors who have become as internationally known as Roman Polanksi and Milos Forman. But now from Romania comes Cristi Puiu, whose film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, premiered at Cannes in 2005 and has been winning awards ever since. Now it's out on DVD. Our critic-at-large says the film does something few movies ever do.

Former gubernatorial first lady Kitty Dukakis and writer Larry Tye discuss their new book, Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, battled depression for over 20 years. She says electroconvulsive therapy dramatically changed her life for the better.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Half Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling. Gosling stars as a young inner-city junior high school teacher who develops a drug habit, and the friendship he strikes up with one of his students.

Our film critic has a review of Edmond, a thriller directed by Stuart Gordon, with David Mamet adapting his own stage play.

Edmund White has been writing about gay culture in fiction and nonfiction since the 1970s. He has a new autobiography, My Lives. White is director of the creative writing program at Princeton University.

Richard Linklater's new film, A Scanner Darkly, is based on the book by Philip K. Dick -- a haunting tale of drug addiction, paranoia and surveillance set in the America of the near future. Live-action footage is overlaid with an animation technique first used in Linklater's 2001 film Waking Life.

Trauma care professionals C. William Schwab and Therese Richmond work at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia. After years of treating patients in the emergency room, Schwab and Richmond have co-founded the Firearm Injury Center at Penn in an effort to systematically reduce the epidemic of gunshot wounds in the United States.