Books

Brother Victor-Antoine D'Avila-Latourette cooks and tends garden at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery near Millbrook, New York. He's the author of several bestselling cookbooks including: "From a Monastery Kitchen" (Triumph Books), "Twelve Months of Monastery Soups" (Broadway books), as well as his introductory book to the Monastic Life: "A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery" (Taylor Publishing). (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane).

Dean Hamer is Chief of Gene Structure and Regulation at the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Biochemistry. He's the co-author of "Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think" (Doubleday). The book is about Hamer's research looking at how specific genes are linked to our behavior, traits like anxiety, thrill-seeking, and homosexuality. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Neil Jacobson is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington, and a pioneer in the scientific study of marital therapy. He is co-author (w/John Gottman, author of "Why Marriages Succeed or Fail") of "When Men Batter Women: New Insights into Ending Abusive Relationships" (Simon & Schuster). The book is based on their decade of research with 200 couples in which they observed the arguments of severely violent couples. Their research shatters a couple of myths: that women batter too, and that women often provoke men into battering them.

Former head of the FBI's Serial Crime Unit, John Douglas. His new book is "Obsession: The FBI's Legendary Profiler Probes the Psyches of Killers, Rapists and Stalkers and Their Victims and Tells How to Fight Back" (Simon & Schuster). For 20 years Douglas investigated serial murders for the FBI, and developed techniques to get criminals to talk, and to lure them into capture. He also pioneered criminal profiling. Many of his techniques have been adopted by police departments and prosecutors nationwide.

Journalists James Risen, investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and Judy Thomas, reporter for the Kansas City Star. The two have collaborated on the new book "Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War" (BasicBooks) about the rise of the anti-abortion movement. They'll talk about the movement, and about recent events, like the bombing of the women's clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in which a security guard was killed.

Food writer Jean Anderson. She writes regularly for the magazines Gourmet, Food & Wine, Family Circle, and Bon Appetit. She's also written over 20 cookbooks. Her latest is "The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipies of the Twentieth Century." (Crown Publishing). The book includes such classic recipies as Green Bean Casserole, Chicken Divan, and Stroganoff Casserole.

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Birthday Letters" by English poet Ted Hughes. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) This is the much anticipated collection by Hughes who was once married to American poet Sylvia Plath. Many blame Hughes for Plath's suicide in 1963 after he left her for another woman.

Photographer David Plowden. He's spent forty years chronicling the changing face of America. His new book "Imprints: A Retrospective" (Little, Brown & Co.) encompasses that work. Plowden's work is at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian and The Library of Congress.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Paradise" (Knopf) the new novel by Toni Morrison.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan list some of her best bets for the holidays, including Eudora: A Writer's Life by Ann Waldron, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman and Holes by Louis Sachar.