Terry Gross

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.

His new book is The New Great Game. The book is about the battle over the world's largest reserve of untapped oil and gas resources, located in the Caspian Sea and surrounding Central Asian republics. The oil alone is said to be worth $4 trillion. Kleveman claims that the United States, China, Russia and Iran are now engaged in a power struggle for control of the region's vast reserves and pipeline routes. Lutz Kleveman was born in Germany and studied at the London School of Economics.

Milhollin is director the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a non-profit research group in Washington, D.C. that has been tracking the spread of weapons of mass destruction since 1986. He will talk about who has nuclear weapons, who is developing them, who has intelligence about them and who poses the biggest threat. Milhollin is also professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin Law School. His op-ed pieces about nuclear weapons have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times.

He's written five novels featuring the working-class Boston private detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. They include A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone Baby Gone and Prayers for Rain. Lehane abandoned the duo for his book about the effect of an abduction on a group of boys. It's a thriller, Mystic River, and it's been made into a new film directed by Clint Eastwood.

Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller wrote Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. The book is a history of the late night comedy mainstay, which first aired on TV in 1975. Shales and Miller interviewed the shows' producers, writers, cast members and guest hosts. Shales is the Pulitzer-Prize winning television critic of The Washington Post and a movie critic for NPR's Morning Edition. James Andrew Miller is the author of Running in Place. He has written for The New York Times, Life and Newsweek.

Bill O'Reilly is host of Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor and the author of the best-selling books The O'Reilly Factor and The No Spin Zone. His new book is Who's Looking Out for You?

Her new book (with co-author Lou Dubose) is Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. Her stories have appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and The Nation. Her other books include Shrub, about presidential candidate Bush, and Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

In addition to heading the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia (pronounced JOY-ah) is the author of several collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon. He has also translated the poetry of Italian Nobel Prize winner Eugenio Montale. Before he quit to become a poet, Gioia was a vice president at General Foods.

Otherwise known as Bette Midler, she made a name for herself in the early 1970s at New York's Continental Baths, a club for gay men. Since then she's been nominated for two Academy Awards and earned Emmy and Grammy awards. She has a new CD, Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. It's produced by, and features duets with, Barry Manilow.