Biography & Memoir

Sylvia Nasar is the author of A Beautiful Mind, the biography of mathematical genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, who also suffered from schizophrenia. The book won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and inspired the movie of the same name. Nasar is a former economics correspondent for The New York Times. She is currently the Knight Professor of Journalism at Columbia University.

With writer Penny Valentine, biographer Vicki Wickham recently published Dancing with Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield. Wickham was Springfield close friend and manager for over a decade of Springfield career.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. He's the author of a number of books including a memoir about his boyhood, An Hour Before Daylight His latest is a memoir, Christmas in Plains (Simon & Schuster). Carter and his family has spent the last 48 Christmases in Plains, through out his Navy career, his stint as Governor and his tenure as President. The only exception was 1979 when American hostages were being held in Iran.

U.S. Senator James Jeffords of Vermont. Last May he shocked his fellow Republicans when he defected from the party and became an Independent. Stating that he could no longer reconcile his beliefs with the party, he switched allegiences. In doing so he deprived the Republicans of their trifecta: control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. He explains how he came to make the decision in the new book, My Declaration of Independence

Dalton Conley is the author of the memoir, Honky (Vintage books) about growing up white in a predominately African American and Latino neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York. Conley is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University.

Ruth Kluger is the author of the new memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Feminist Press). Kluger was ten years old when she and her mother were deported to the Jewish "ghetto" Theresienstadt. From there they were sent to Auschwitz and the young Kluger survived to go to the work camp Christianstadt by lying about her age. Her memoir, Still Alive, was published in Germany in 1992 and has just been published in the U.S. Kluger became a distinguished professor of German and is professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine.

New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed him the 40th police commissioner of the City of New York in August of 2000. Prior to that, he was the commissioner of the Department of Correction. Kerik began as a prison warden in New Jersey. He joined the NYPD as a beat cop on Times Square. He just written a book, called The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice.

Musician, producer, arranger, composer Quincy Jones has a new autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, (Doubleday) and a 4-CD boxset collecting his work, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones (Rhino). In his fifty year career hes worked with just about anyone who is anybody in the music business. As a teenager he played backup for Billie Holiday, along with his 16 year old friend, Ray Charles. At 18 he began playing the trumpet in Lionel Hamptons band beside Clifford Brown.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews My Wars Are Laid Away In Books (Random House), the new biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger.

Writer Simon Winchester wrote the best seller The Professor and the Madman. His new book is The Map That Changed the World (HarperCollins) about William Smith, an obscure British 19th century engineer obsessed with creating the first geological map. His map, hand-painted in 1815, paved the way for modern geology, but Smith was swindled out of the recognition and profits due him until a nobleman intervened.

In 1999, Stephen King, the prolific and popular horror writer experienced something that could have come out of one of his books: he was struck by a car while walking along a rural road in Maine and nearly killed. Six operations and a long recovery followed. Five weeks after the accident King started writing again, and published the novella, The Plant over the internet. His latest book is Dreamcatchers.

He commanded the NATO troops during the Kosovo conflict, the first and only NATO war. His new memoir is Waging Modern War

Historian David Mccullough is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Truman. His new book is the biography of founding father and second President of the United States. The book is John Adams.

Paul Robeson Jr. has just written a new memoir called The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, the first of a two part series on his father, the famed actor, singer and athlete. He talks about his fathers rise in show business and what it was like growing up as the son of an icon. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Probably best known for his mystery writing, Sallis is the author of the new highly anticipated biography of African American mystery writer and realist Chester Himes. Himes wrote several books in the late 50s like The Real Cool Killers, and Cotton Comes to Harlem. Sallis has also published several science fiction stories as well as the Lew Griffin mystery series. His book about the lives of noir writers Difficult Lives, came out last year.

Former Chicago policewoman Gina Gallo. While she was part of the force, she also wrote about her work in columns for NYCop online magazine and Blue Murders online magazine. They were collected in the book Crime Scenes (Blue Murder Press). She has a new memoir, Armed & Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman

Bundles is former Washington deputy bureau chief for ABC News, and an award winning producer. Her new book is a biographer of her great-great-grandmother Madam C.J. Walker, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, . Walker was the daughter of slaves, and a widow at the age of 20. She built a business empire creating hair products for African-American women, and then turned her wealth into philanthropy. Her friends included W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Peter Hessler is the author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (HarperCollins). Its about his two years in Fuling, China as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English and American literature at a local college. The book was serialized in The New Yorker.

Kraft was NASAs first flight director, from the first forays into space in the 1960s to after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969. Kraft also created Mission Control. He has written a new book, –Flight: My Life In Mission Control.

FBI special agent Christopher Whitcomb. He was part of the agency hostage rescue team. The team is the equivalent to the Navy SEALs and the Army Delta Force. As such he particpated in the missions at Waco, Ruby Ridge and Kosovo. He is currently director of strategic information management for the Critical Incident Response Group. He written the new book: Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team