Terry Gross

Film Director and choreographer Stanley Donen He directed "On the Town," "Singin' in the Rain," "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "Funny Girl," and more. He collaborated with Gene Kelly as dance director on such films as "Cover Girl," and "Anchors Away." There's a new biography of Donen, Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and his Movies (Knopf), written by Stephen M. Silverman.

Hip-hop dancer Adesola Osakalumi otherwise known as D'Incredible. He's performed on the American Music Awards and in music videos. He comes from a family of dancers. His parents formed the group Africa I Dance Theatre. Osakalumi and other pioneering hip-hop groups formed Ghettoriginal Productions. Their production "Jam on the Groove" is at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York until February 18th.

Inventor and the man called "the greatest marketer/salesman of the television era," Ron Popeil. He's sold everything from the Veg-O-Matic to the Pocket Fisherman on television, amassing over one billion dollars in sales. He's written a new book about how he did it, Ron Popeil: The Salesman of the Century, (Delacorte Press, with Jefferson Graham).

The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. He created the web in 1989, as a way to organize his own projects. The Web has grown rapidly since then. In 1992 there were 100 sites on it, as of last May there were 22,000. Berners-Lee is dedicated to keeping the Web open as a public good. He now works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he heads the World Wide Web Consortium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing standards, protocols and new software for the Web.

Commentator Gerald Early reflects on his wife's work with the Junior League of St. Louis. She is the first African-American woman to be elected president of that city's chapter.

Historian Dan T. Carter. His book, Scottsboro was the winner of the Bancroft Prize in History for the best book in American History. Carter's newest book is a biography of George Wallace, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. (Simon & Schuster). In the book Carter contends that Wallace paved the way for the conservatism that is now a big part of Republican politics. Carter is Kenan Professor of History at Emory University.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "The Juror."

Laurie Pepper is the wife of the late alto saxophonist Art Pepper, who died in 1982 and was considered to be the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Terry talks with Pepper on the occasion of the updated version of her husband's autobiography, Straight Life, (which he wrote with the help of Laurie, published by Da Capo Press). There are also two new box sets of Pepper's music: "The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions," and "The Complete Galaxy Recordings."

National Political correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Ronald Brownstein. He has collaborated on a new book, Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival (Little, Brown and Company, written with Dan Balz, national editor of the Washington Post). In the book they look at how the Republicans captured Congress, so shortly after the defeat of George Bush in the presidential election, and how the Republican party has changed dramatically in the last ten years.

Biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook. She wrote a controversial book about the troubled writer Anne Sexton. The controversy surrounded Middlebrook's source material: she had access to transcripts of Sexton's psychiatric sessions with the approval of Sexton's daughter and psychiatrist. Sexton killed herself in 1974. Sexton began writing poetry in 1956 following a suicidal breakdown and after her therapist suggested she try writing poetry. Anne Sexton: A Biography, was published by Houghton Mifflin and is now a paperback. [Originally aired 8/30/91].