Terry Gross

Judith Warner is the author of the new book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. In it she writes about the "choking cocktail of guilt and anxiety and resentment and regret" that is poisoning motherhood for American women. Warner is a former special correspondent for Newsweek in Paris.

Wagner hangs out with the rich and famous, and then writes satirical novels based on Los Angeles life. His new book is The Chrysanthemum Palace. The three main characters are actors who are the children of wealthy, successful parents. Wagner is known for his dark wit and nasty portrayals of show business elite.

When Karen Armstrong left the Roman Catholic Convent where she was a nun in 1969, she entered a world vastly different from the one she abandoned 7 years earlier. She had no idea what was going on in Vietnam and had little idea who The Beatles were. Her memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness about her life in the convent and the spiritual quest that followed has just been published in paperback. Her other books include The Battle for God and A History of God.

Former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle has been in the Darfur region of Western Sudan monitoring the humanitarian crisis there for the African Union. Steidle says there's no doubt that Sudan is in the midst of genocide.

John Prendergast is Special Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group. He has 20 years of experience attempting to resolve conflicts in Africa, and shaping U.S. foreign policy toward the region.

Journalist Hugh Miles is the author of Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera, the premier news channel in the Arabic-speaking world, plans to launch an English channel sometime in the next few months.

Patrick Radden Keefe is the author of Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. For his book, Keefe researched the possibility that the United States has a planet-spanning surveillance network, known as Echelon. Keefe is a third-year student at Yale Law School and was a Marshall scholar and a 2003 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

It's the longest running drama on network television. After more than 300 shows, and 13 years, the "ripped from the headlines" half cop/half law show is still going strong. It's also inspired Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The latest spin off is Law & Order: Trial by Jury.