Memoir

This nationally acclaimed comedian has recently released his book Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences. Pryor's memoir takes readers on a journey through his successful yet struggle-filled life. A strong man who has overcome such ordeals as a drug addiction, self immolation, and six marriages, Pryor is determined to overcome his most recent battle with multiple sclerosis.

Stahl has a new memoir called Permanent Midnight. He was a successful journalist, a scriptwriter for cult film classics like "Cafe Flesh," and "Dr. Caligari," who went on to write for the hit TV shows "Moonlighting," "ALF" and "thirtysomething." Stahl was also a junkie. He writes,"You might say that success ruined me. You might say I ruined success."

Hanan Mikhail-Ashrwai, former spokesperson for the PLO from 1991 to 1993. Ashrawi was the chief spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation at the Middle East peace negotiations. There are two books about her life and her role in the peace process: her personal account, This Side of Peace, and A Voice of Reason: Hanan Ashrawi and Peace in the Middle East by Barbara Victor.

Allende has published her first work of non-fiction, Paula. It's about her 28 year old daughter, who fell into an irreversible coma. Paula began as a letter to her dying daughter and turned into an autobiographical work about Allende's childhood in Chile, her exile in Venezuela and her move to San Francisco.

McNamara has written a book, In Retrospect, which contains the long awaited admission that he felt U.S. policy in Vietnam was wrong and the war was unwinnable. He details the behind-the-scenes decision-making that escalated the war, and the atmosphere of the times which made policymakers feel they had no choice but to do so.

Writer Scott Peck and his father Colonel Fred Peck. The younger Peck has written his first book, All American Boy, a memoir of his life growing up in an abusive home with his step-father and the rebuilding of his relationship with his father after a fourteen year estrangement. Peck was thrust on the national scene in May 1993 when his Marine Colonel father spoke against gays in the military to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Col. Peck went on to say his oldest son, Scott, was gay, and though he loved him, he should not be able to serve in the military.

Terry Gross talks with the Croatian writer about her book Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream. Part memoir, part short story collection, the book chronicles the writer's transplanted life as a lecturer in Middletown, Connecticut, a world away from the brutal Balkan war.

Writer Jan L. Waldron was 17 when she gave her baby daughter, Simone, up for adoption. Waldron's own mother was adopted, and in turn left her children when Waldron was eleven. In Giving Away Simone: A Memoir, Waldron tells of the parting and then meeting again with her eleven-year-old daughter, now renamed Rebecca. Rebecca is the fifth generation of women in the family to be abandoned by their mothers; in reuniting with her, Waldron is determined to break that cycle of leaving.

Dr. Jody Heymann is a physician, and author of the new book Equal Partners: A Physicians Call for a New Spirit of Medicine. She chronicles her own story of turning from physician to patient overnight after suffering a seizure and consequent brain surgeries. The extremes of care she received revolutionized her perception of a physician's role in patient treatment.

Peter Leschak battles forest fires in the Northwoods and the West. He’s not a smoke jumper; he’s a grunt-hiking to remote locations, putting out fires sometimes on his hands and knees -- spark by spark. For the rest of the year, he writes. His new memoir is called Hellroaring.