Vietnam war

Eleanor Coppola filmed a documentary called "Hearts of Darkness." It's a behind-the-scenes view of the making of Apocalypse Now. Coppola is the wife of director Frances Ford Coppola.

Cartoonist and novelist Jeff Danziger. Danziger is the political cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor, and his cartoons are featured in more than one hundred newspapers around the country. Danziger's just written his first novel. It's called "Rising Like The Tucson," and it's a dark comedy about the Vietnam War. (It's published by Doubleday).

Writer John Balaban. Balaban was one of the very few Vietnam-era conscientious objectors who volunteered to go to Vietnam. Once there, he was overwhelmed with the paradoxes of the war...among other things, he found himself picking up a gun, in order to defend a hospital from attack. His memoir of that time, called "Heaven's Face: A Moral Witness in Vietnam" has just been published by Poseidon Press. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Vietnamesse-American Pham Thanh and American filmmaker Elizabeth Farnsworth. As a child, Thanh was seriously injured when the Americans bombed his village. He eventually was brought to America and raised by foster parents. Farnsworth has made a documentary about Thanh's life, and the legacy of the Vietnam war on that country's children. It's called "Thanh's War," and it's being shown this week on PBS.

James Fallows, the Washington editor for "The Atlantic Monthly." Fallows will discuss the ways America is still punishing Vietnam through economic means, despite the end of hostilities between the two countries.

Marian Faye Novak was pregnant when her husband, David, a Marine, was sent to Vietnam. Her daughter, Jeannie is now an army officer serving in the Gulf war. We talk with Marian about her new memoir about the Vietnam War, Lonely Girls with Burning Eyes, and her feelings today about her daughter's military service. We also talk with David about what it's like for him to be waiting at the other end.

After serving in the Vietnam War, Peacock sought solace in nature. While camping in the woods, he had several encounters with grizzly bears. He wrote about his observations of the animals in his new book, Grizzly Years.

Part I of the Fresh Air interview. Stone's newest movie, about the rock band the Doors, will soon be in theaters. The director is a Vietnam War veteran who earned a Purple Heart; his was experiences informed his early movie, Platoon.

Journalist Morley Safer. His first book is "Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam" (published by Random House). In 1965 Safer went to Vietnam as CBS'S correspondent. His famous report of U.S. marines torching the Cam Ne hamlet in August 1965 angered the White House with threats to expose SAFER'S "Communist ties" unless CBS fired him. Safer went back to Vietnam in 1989 as a correspondent for 60 Minutes, and out of this trip came "Flashbacks," a look back at the war and an examination of Vietnam today.

Novelist Tim O'Brien. He was writing about Vietnam long before it became fashionable to do so. His Vietnam memoir, "If I die in a Combat Zone," was published in 1973. O'Brien's 1979 novel "Going After Cacciato" was praised for its depiction of the Vietnam War. It also was the surprise winner of the 1979 National Book Awards -- beating out books by John Irving and John Cheever.