American history

Popular culture junkie Michael Barson's latest book is a collection of postcards. The pictures are the covers from vintage romance comic books. It's called "Boy Loves Girl, Girl Loves Boy."

Ronald Walters, chairman of the department of political science at Howard University. He'll discuss the influence of the black vote in the presidential election.

Veteran political journalist Jules Witcover. His new book is "Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice On the Vice Presidency." It examines the caviler method in which we choose our vice presidents.

On Martin Luther King, Junior Day, we devote the show to a look at the present and future of the Civil Rights movement. Terry talks with columnist, radio commentator, and professor Manning Marable. He'll discuss what issues the civil rights movement should address, now that the basic legal rights that Martin Luther King, Junior worked for have largely been secured.

Continuing our look at the future of the civil rights movement, Terry talks with journalist and professor Roger Wilkins. He'll discuss how there's a vacuum in leadership in the civil rights movement. Wilkins says more and more, the traditional organizations like the NAACP are seen to be of a previous generation, and not adequately addressing the current issues.

Iraqi dissident Laith Kubba. Kubba is living in exile in London, where he heads an opposition group called the Democratic Reform Movement. Kubba discusses a meeting of Iraqi dissident groups that was held in December in Damascus.

We look back on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait one year later:
1) CNN producer Robert Wiener (wee-ner). Wiener was executive producer in Baghdad for 5 months leading up to and including the beginning of the war. His book, Live From Baghdad, tells how Wiener worked with Iraqi officials to cover the war from inside.
2) We speak with Aziz Abu Hamad, senior researcher on Kuwait for Middle East Watch about the current state of human rights in Kuwait..

The second half of a two-part interview with historian Ann Charters. She's spent 30 years studying the literature of Beat movement writers such as William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. She's the editor of a new compilation called "The Portable Beat Reader" (published by Viking).

On the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King, junior, we discus his legacy with Clayborne Carson, the Director and Senior Editor of the Martin Luther King, Junior Papers Project. Next month, they release the first of 14 volumes of Kings's writings. Carson is a professor of history at Stanford University.

Biographer Robert Lacey. Lacey's new book, "Little Man" is an examination of the life of gangster Meyer Lansky. (It's published by Little, Brown). Lacey and Terry Gross will discuss how the movie's portrayal of gangsters differs from reality.