Terry Gross

Essie Mae Washington-Williams is the daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. While her mother, who was black, served as the maid for the Thurmonds, she had an affair with the future senator, at the age of 15. Thurmond was a long-time senator from South Carolina and an opponent of integration. Washington-Williams did not reveal her true identity as Thurmond's daughter until after his death at 100 a little more than a year ago. Now 78, she has written a new memoir, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond.

Novelist Mary Gordon's new book, Pearl, is about a mother's struggle to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women), and four nonfiction works.

Guitarist, songwriter and vocalist James Hetfield was a founding member of the metal band Metallica. His time in rehab is chronicled in the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which tracks the band at a time of crisis and is now on DVD. We rebroadcast an interview with Hetfield from Nov. 9, 2004.

Former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency head for the Bush administration Christine Todd Whitman. She is a moderate Republican and in her new book argues against the hijacking of her party by zealous "social fundamentalists." Her new book is It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid is a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph, reporting on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia . He is also author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and the bestseller, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

Robert Redford is an actor, a director -- and the founder of the Sundance Institute. He discusses the Sundance Film Festival, which is under way this week.

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch. He says the Justice Department's decision not to have the Geneva Conventions apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees has opened the door to the abuse of prisoners elsewhere.

John Yoo is a former deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel of the Dept. of Justice. He wrote some of the memos in the new book The Torture Papers, including some pertaining to the Geneva Conventions and the definition of torture. He signed off on the memo denying prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Yoo is currently a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley.

A new book compiles U.S. memos and reports on the interrogation and treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib was edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel.