Books & Literature

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle.

She's the author of the new memoir, Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity: One Season in a Progressive School. It's about her brief stint as a midyear replacement English teacher in Queens, N.Y. Gold teaches writing at several branches of the City University of New York.

Musical legend Johnny Cash died today at the age of 71. We remember him with a rebroadcast of a 1997 interview with the singer and musician. Cash began recording albums and performing in the 1950s. Representing Cash's varied musical styles, he was inducted into the Songwriters, Country Music, and Rock and Roll halls of fame. Cash recorded over 1,500 songs in his career. Some of the most famous were "I Walk the Line," "Ring of Fire" and "A Boy Named Sue." Cash died of complications from diabetes.

NPR's Senior Foreign Correspondent Anne Garrels was one of the few journalists still in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq. Often she reported from her room at the Palestine Hotel as bombs flew overhead. In her new book, Naked in Baghdad, she writes about the war and its aftermath. The book also contains the e-mails that her husband Vint Lawrence sent to friends keeping them informed of her daily life in Baghdad. Garrels has also reported from the former Soviet republics, China, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Israel, and is the recipient of the Alfred I.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan considers Lucky Girls (Ecco), the debut short story collection by Nell Freudenberger.

Keillor's new book is Love Me: A Novel. It's about the ambitions of a frustrated writer who publishes a piece in The New Yorker, writes a disappointing debut novel, and ends up penning an advice column in the local newspaper. Keillor is the host of A Prairie Home Companion, on the air since 1974. He has written 13 books, including Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Wobegon Boy and Wobegon Days.

Enter MeFranken's new book is Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Franken recently made headlines when the Fox News Channel tried to sue him over the phrase "fair and balanced," which Fox claimed as its own. Fox lost, and Franken got lots of publicity for the book, which is now a bestseller. Al Franken is an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, where his most memorable character was the simpering self-help sap Stuart Smalley.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis (Pantheon).

Writer Eric Dezenhall, a damage control expert, is president of the PR firm Nicholas-Dezenhall Communications Management Group based in Washington, D.C. He has in the past described his business as a response to "the culture of the attack." He appears regularly on Hardball and The O'Reilly Factor. Dezenhall worked for the Reagan administration.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Breaking Her Fall by Stephen Goodwin.

Writer Carlo Rotella takes a look inside the world of boxing in his new book, Cut Time: An Education at the Fights. Rotella is also the author of Good With Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt. Rotella is a professor at Boston College, where he teaches American literature, American studies, urban literatures and cultures, and creative and nonfiction writing. His essays have appeared in Harper's, Washington Post Magazine and Best American Essays 2001.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new film American Splendor.

In the 1990s he covered Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and the Congo for Reuters. Three of his colleagues were killed by a mob in Somolia during a rebellion against the presence of U.S. forces, and he witnessed the atrocities in Rwanda. Hartley grew up in Africa, the son of a British colonial officer. After the death of his father, Hartley found in a chest his father had given him the diaries of his father's best friend who had died mysteriously 50 years earlier. Hartley set out to find out what happened.

Writer Vivian Gornick responds to a commentary we broadcast last week by book critic Maureen Corrigan about Gornick's admission that she had invented some scenes and conversations in her acclaimed memoir. Book critic Maureen Corrigan responds to Vivian Gornick's comments.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Jacqueline Winspear's debut novel, Maisie Dobbs.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers dictionaries today and yesterday.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan comments on Vivian Gornick's recent admission (which she has since denied) that she had invented some scenes and conversations in her memoir.

Underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner. In 1976 Pekar published the first in a series of comic books about his mundane life as a veterans hospital clerk and record collector in Cleveland. It was called American Splendor, and he has continued to publish them since. In 1987 one of them earned him an American Book Award. Now he is the subject of the new film American Splendor which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.