Memoir

He is the author of the memoir, Blue Blood that begins with his first days on the street as a cop in the New York Police Department and goes back three generations. His great-grandfather was an "officer of dubious integrity" during the Tammany-era NYPD. Conlon also wrote the "Cop Diary" columns in The New Yorker and is a graduate of Harvard. One reviewer writes, "No one has written a book that grabs readers by the scruff of the neck and tells them what the life of a cop is really like as well as Edward Conlon."

His new memoir is called When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. As a teenager, Kashner left his comfortable suburban life on Long Island, N.Y. and became the first student to attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo. Kasher's teachers were the great beat writers William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Kerouac. Kashner is also the author of a novel, Sinatraland, as well as three non-fiction books. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.

Engel was the only American television correspondent who was in Baghdad before, during and after the war. On the next Fresh Air, Engel talks about how he bribed officials, woke to gunfire and witnessed atrocities of battle. His new book is A Fist in the Hornet's Nest.

He was the in-house humor writer of the Clinton White House. He's written the new memoir, Clinton & Me: A Real Life Political Comedy.

He's a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN with three Emmys to his credit. For the past 30 years he's lived with multiple sclerosis, even continuing to work in a war zone shortly after the diagnosis and with failing eyesight. He's written a new memoir called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness/A Reluctant Memoir.

David Denby is a staff writer and film critic for The New Yorker. His new book, American Sucker, is a memoir about his brief obsession with the stock market — during the height of irrational exuberance in 2000-2001. It started with his wife's announcement that she was leaving him. Denby began an attempt to make $1 million so that he could buy out his wife's share of their New York apartment. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).

She is Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post. She has covered South Asia for the Post since 1999, reporting from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. She has a new memoir, Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia.

Cowell is one of the judges on the talent show American Idol, a spin-off of the show he co-created in Britain, Pop Idol. The show has made him famous for his brutally frank criticism. Cowell has spent 25 years in the music industry, and is currently with BMG. His new book is Simon Cowell: I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But...

She earned wide critical and popular acclaim and an Emmy for her work on The Garry Moore Show (from 1959-62). The Carol Burnett Show debuted in 1967 and won 22 Emmys in a run of more than a decade. She has starred or appeared in a number of TV movies and specials. In December, she'll be a Kennedy Center honoree for her body of work. In 1981 she struck a blow for fellow celebrities by winning a lawsuit against The National Enquirer tabloid. Her memoir One More Time was recently republished in a paperback edition. There's also a DVD collection of The Carol Burnett Show.

She is the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped then killed by militant Islamists in 2002. Before Daniel was abducted, the Pearls were both foreign correspondents, reporting from Pakistan. She has a new memoir.