Books & Literature

Helen Bamber is the founder and director of the London-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. A biography "The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, A Life Against Cruelty" by Neil Belton has just been published. (Pantheon) When Helen Bamber was a little girl growing up in 1930s England, her father read her sections of Mein Kampf to inure her to the evil in the world. In 1945, at the age of 19, she traveled to the former concentration camp at Belsen to help with the physical and psychological recovery of Holocaust survivors.

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Stuart A. Herrington. He spent 30 years as a military intelligence officer, serving in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. He was the Army's authority on counterintelligence and on the interrogation and debriefing of defectors and prisoners of war. He's written the new book "Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World" (Presido).

Scott Anderson is author of the new book "The Man Who Tried to Save the World : The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny ." (Doubleday) He talks about the life of disaster relief specialist Fred Cuny who went to war-torn regions of the world to help the people rebuild their communities. CUNY disappeared in April, 1995 while working in Chechnya. Anderson is also author of the novel "Triage" set in the Kurdish occupied region of Iraq.

Kevin Bales is a leading expert on the modern-day practice of slavery. He is author of the new book "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy." (University of California Press) Bales is a principal lecturer at the Roehampton Institute, University of Surrey, England.

Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord is the first Navajo woman surgeon. She is the author of the new book "The Scalpel and the Silver Bear." (Bantam) In her practice, she combines modern surgery with ancient Navajo healing practices. Born and raised on a reservation near Gallup, New Mexico she now serves as an assistant professor of surgery at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Craig Stanford studies chimpanzees and gorillas in Uganda. In early March, Hutu rebels kidnapped 14 westerners including his field assistant. 8 of the hostages were killed. Stanford had left the region before the attack. Stanford talks about the political situation and its impact on the wildlife there. He is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "The Hunting Apes," and "Chimpanzee and Red Colobus."

William Karesh is a wildlife veterinarian in some of the world's most remote areas. He's written about his experiences in "Appointment at the Ends of the World: Memoirs of a Wildlife Veterinarian." (Warner Books) Karesh heads the International Field Veterinary Program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, located at the Bronx Zoo,in New York.

Carolyn Wyman is author of "Spam, A Biography: The Amazing True Story of America's "Miracle Meat."" (Harvest) She also wrote "I'm a SPAM Fan," and "The Kitchen Sink Cookbook." her syndicated weekly column, "Supermarket Sampler," present reviews of new food products in more than 100 newspapers around the country. She is a staff writer at the New Haven Register in Connecticut.

John Callahan has edited the manuscript, "Juneteenth," of a never before published book by Ralph Ellison who died in 1994. Ellison's first and only book released in 1952, "Invisible Man," won the National Book Award. Callahan was named Ellison's literary executor and is editor of "The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison." Callahan is a professor of humanities at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Mohammad Yunus is the founder one of the world's first "micro-lending" banks. These institutions loan money to poor people that other banks consider too risky. Founded in 1983. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has provided over 2.5 Billion dollars in micro-loans. He has written about his efforts in the new book "Banker to the Poor." (Public Affairs) He is the former head of the economics department at Chittagong University, in Bangladesh.

Dan Fesperman is the former Berlin Bureau correspondent for the Baltimore Sun 1993-1996. From there he extensively covered Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. He has drawn for his experience there for the setting of his new crime novel "Lie in the Dark." (Soho) It is about a Sarajevo homicide detective who must do his job while corpses pile up from the on-going civil war.

Linda Greenlaw has worked on commercial fishing boats for nearly 20 years. She has written about her experience leading a sword fishing boat to New Foundland in the new book "The Hungry Ocean." (Hyperion) Curiously, After completing the book, she says of writing "I'd rather be fishing." Boston magazine named Greenlaw as one of the most intriguing women of 1997. She lives on Isle au Haut, Maine.

Film director Paul Mazursky has written the new memoir "Show Me the Magic: My Adventures in Life and Hollywood." (Simon & Schuster) Mazursky films include "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "An Unmarried Woman," "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," and "Moscow on the Hudson." He wrote the screenplay for "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas."

Former Special Counsel to President Clinton, Lanny Davis. He served from December 1996 thru January 1998. During that time he saw the President thru various financial scandals and developed a style for dealing with bad news head on. Davis left the White House just as the Monica Lewinsky story was breaking. DAVIS has a new memoir, "Truth to Tell: Tell it Early, Tell it All, Tell it Yourself: Notes from My White House Education" (The Free Press).

Former president of South Africa, F.W. Deklerk. He dismantled apartheid, released Nelson Mandela from prison, and later shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela. Deklerk has a new autobiography, "F.W. DeKlerk: The Last Trek A New Beginning (St. Martin's Press).

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Music for Torching" (Weisbach Morrow) the new novel by A.M. Homes.

Tom Perrotta is the author of "Election: The Novel" which the new film "Election" is based upon. The book is set in a New Jersey high school amidst a hotbed of political activity: students are voting for their school president. earlier books, The Wishbones (1997), and, Bad Haircut (1994), were in similar fashion observing the agonies of growing up in suburban New Jersey.

Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, Frederick Kempe. As a journalist, he's covered Germany for over twenty years, and is also the son of German immigrants. His new book "Father/land: A Personal Search for the New Germany" (Putnam) is his exploration into his family's past in Germany, and an analysis of Germany today.

Actor and now author Bill Murray. He's co-written the new book "Cinderella Story : My Life in Golf." with George Peper. Cinderella Story is really two books. The first is a string of anecdotes about Murray's club-wielding adventures with a number of celebrities including: Jack Nicklaus, John Denver, Clint Eastwood, and Hunter Thompson. The book is also an autobiography of a kid who started out caddying for 60 cents a half-hour with his brothers.

Singer Mel Torme died Saturday at age 73 of complications from a stroke. We'll hear an interview Terry Gross did with Mel in 1988. For more than 50 years, Torme was one of most accomplished and versatile pop and jazz singers. Known for years as "The Velvet Fog," Born Melvin Howard Torme to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Chicago on Sept. 13, 1925, Torme first made his reputation in the Big Band era as a songwriter, arranger, drummer and singer. He later sang in MGM musicals.