American history

Writer Edmund Morris. His biography of former president Ronald Reagan, "Dutch," (Random House) has garnered a lot of controversy. Morris uses a fictional narrator to tell much of the story, taking unprecedented artistic liberties. This is the first biography authorized by a sitting president, and it took Morris fourteen years to finally complete the work. Morris, a South African by birth, is the author of "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," which won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. He is currently at work on a second volume of the Roosevelt biography.

Actor Dan Hedaya. He's currently starring as President Nixon in the new comedy about Watergate, "Dick." His performance has been called "hilarious and sly." Though Hedaya stars in this film, he's best known for his supporting role in many other films and TV shows.

World War Two combat veteran Robert Kotlowitz has written about his experiences in "Before Their Time: A Memoir." 1997 Hard cover and just re-printed this year on Anchor Books. Kotlowitz was part of a platoon that was ordered to charge the German front, an order that killed all but 3 men. His previous books included: The Boardwalk, His Master's Voice, Sea Changes, and Somewhere Else. (THIS CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW.)

Guest host Barbara Bogaev interviews two women who are part of the new American Experience documentary on PBS: "Fly Girls" During World War II, more than 1,000 women signed up and flew airplanes in the U.S. military effort. Their careers were cut short by politics. It would be 30 years before women soldiers could take to the skies again. The two women are Barbara London and Dora Strother.

Historian John Dower is the author of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" (W.W. Norton) about the aftermath of the war on Japan, and the American military occupation. Dower says he wanted to capture a sense of what it meant to start over in a "ruined world" for people at all levels of society and how that time became a "touchstone for affirming a commitment to 'peace and democracy.'" Dower is the Elting E. Morrison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Terry Gross talks with writer Allen Barra ("Bear-ah"), the author of "Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends" (Carroll & Graff Publishers). It tells the story of the famous sometime lawman and the shootout at the O.K. Corral at Tombstone, Arizona where Wyatt Earp was the only man left standing. Barra is a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Analyst for the National Security Archives, Kate Doyle. She directed the Guatemalan Documentation Project, which lead to the declassification of documents from the CIA, the State and Defense Departments on Guatemala. These documents were handed over to the commission and filled the gap left by Guatemalan military which claimed its files had been lost.

Journalists Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew. They are the authors of the new book, "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" (PublicAffairs). The two spent six years researching secret submarine missions like how the Navy sent submarines wired with self destruct charges into Soviet waters to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. Sontag covered government and international affairs for the National Law Journal and has worked at the New York Times, and Drew is a special projects editor at the New York Times.

Tom Blanton is the Director of the National Security Archive, A research library at George Washington University in Washington D.C. His department, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained the transcripts of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The now declassified papers detail Kissinger's secret negotiations with key world leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping. The transcripts have been edited and published in the new book "The Kissinger Transcripts" (The New Press)

We remember writer and urbanologist WILLIAM WHYTE. He died yesterday at the age of 81. The former editor of Fortune Magazine began a second career studing the life of urban cities. Whyte was best known for his 1956 book "Organization Man," a groundbreaking work that examined the mechanized rituals and routines of the corporate culture. His other books included, "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" (1980), and "City" (1989). (REBROADCAST from 2/22/89)