Terry Gross

Kenneth Kamler is a surgeon who also climbs mountains. He was team doctor on three expeditions to the top of Mount Everest, including the disastrous 1996 trip. Kamler is both storyteller and advisor in his book, Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World A Personal Account including the 1996 Disaster. Blackened limbs due to severe frostbite were the least of his troubles: I-V fluids are frozen solid, and abrasions cannot heal at such high altitudes. Kamler's day job is Director of the Hand Treatment Center in Hyde Park, New York, where he is a microsurgeon.

Sherpa Jamling Tensing Norgay. Author of the new book Touching My Father's Soul, Norgay was Climbing Leader for the 1996 Everest IMAX Filming Expedition and summitted the Mountain that year. He's also the son of Tenzing Norgay, one of the first men in history to summit Mt. Everest. In his book, Jamling Norgay recounts his 1996 Mt. Everest ascent: the climb and its familial meaning. He now heads Tenzing Norgay Adventures which is based in India.

Writer Benson Bobrick. He's the author of the recently published "Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired." The book chronicles the difficulties scholars had in translating the Bible into English - efforts that culminated in the King James version. Bobrick is the author of several books and lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Shes a former staff writer for the Washington Post. Shes written a new memoir about divorce, Breaking Apart: Dreaming of Divorce (Hyperion). She writes about the slow unraveling of her 12 year marriage, and the impact on herself, her husband, and their two sons. She writes, "There are those who believe it is simple selfishness that leads people to divorce. For those of us who have lived it, its hard to see why anyone would rip out their veins for some immature or narcissistic desire to get what they want."

The Bay of Pigs invasion in which Cuban exiles trained by the CIA unsuccessfully tried to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. A talk with Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives. He edited the new book Bay of Pigs Declassified (The New Press). Among the documents released is the agencys post-mortem on the disastrous invasion, written after a six-month investigation. It was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War. Recently Kornbluh organized an international conference in Havana on the Bay of Pigs.

Alfredo Duran who was 24 years old when he was part of the Brigade 2506, the group that invaded Cuba. And Robert Reynolds who was chief of the CIAs Miami station during the Bay of Pigs.

His book The Human Stain about a classics professor accused of racism has just won the PENN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It's his second such award. He won his first in 1994 with Operation Shylock. The Human Stain is the third of a trilogy which includes his American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

Classical pianist and conductor Murray Perahia. Hes been exploring the music of J.S. Bach in his recordings. His latest is Bachs Keyboard Concertos vol. 1 which he recorded and conducted with the St. Martin in the Fields ensemble. He also recorded the Goldberg Variations and Bachs complete English Suites. (All are on Sony Classical). In 1994 Perahia suffered a thumb injury that left him unable to play regularly for a year. He took up his first conducting post as Principal Guest conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. They just completed a 10-city tour.

African novelist and chemist Emmanuel Dongala. He was born in the Congo Republic, was educated in the U.S., and left the Congo with the outbreak of civil war in 1997. Two of his novels have just been translated to English: “Little Boys Come From the Stars” and “The Fires of Origins” (both by Lawrence Hill Books). With the help of writers Philip Roth and William Styron, Dongala now has a visiting professorship in chemistry at Simon’s Rock of Bard College in Massachusetts. Dongala is also president of the Congolese PEN Centre.

Journalists Lou Michel (“Meh-SHELL”) and Dan Herbeck are staff writers for the Buffalo News. The two have collaborated on the new book “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing” (ReganBooks). MICHEL lived twenty minutes away from the McVeigh’s father, and over time he developed a relationship with the elder McVeigh which in turn helped him gain access to his son. Michel and Herbeck conducted nearly 80 hours of interviews with Timothy McVeigh.