Biography & Memoir

In his memoir Foreskin's Lament, author Shalom Auslander writes about his attempt to break free from the strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish environment of his childhood.

Auslander is the author of the short-story collection Beware of God. He's contributed to The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.

A new family memoir from the daughter of famed literary critic Anatole Broyard bears the subtitle My Father's Hidden Life — A Story of Race and Family Secrets. Bliss Broyard, raised as white in Connecticut, was 24 when she learned that her father had concealed his black heritage.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcom's joint biography of Gertrude Stein and her longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas.

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, the Nixon White House tried to discredit him. Among other things, Nixon loyalists burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

On this edition of Fresh Air, we spend the entire hour with Bud Krogh, who went to prison for his role in the Ellsberg affair — and who has a new memoir. It's called Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House.

As head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith led the team of lawyers that advises the presidency on the limits of executive power. During his tenure, he battled the Bush White House on the now-infamous "torture memos," as well as on issues of surveillance and the detention and trial of suspected terrorists. Goldsmith resigned his post after nine months.

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.

Canadian journalist Paul Watson won the 1994 Pulitizer Prize for his photograph of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu,Somalia. His war-zone work leaves him suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress, and he says the Mogadishu photo still haunts him. Watson has also reported from Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq; he earned three National Newspaper Awards for foreign reporting and photography while at the Toronto Star, and was recently posted to head The Los Angeles Times' Southeast Asia bureau in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Journalist Connie Schultz won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2005 for her work as a columnist for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland. The judges praised her for writing "pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged." "Pungent" is a good word, too, for the tone of Schultz's new memoir, about being the wife of a political candidate. Her husband, Sherrod Brown, was an Ohio congressman when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate; Schultz took a sabbatical from her job to help him campaign. Her book is . . .

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Circling My Mother, the new memoir by novelist Mary Gordon; the book chronicles Anne Gordon's battles with polio, alcoholism, and eventually with senile dementia, and details the author's acceptance of both "the burdens and blessings of caring for her mother in old age."

David Steinberg was big on the stand-up circuit back in the 1960s and '70s; he appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson over a hundred times. Now he's host of TV Land's Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg, on which he interviews other comedians. Steinberg went on to a career in TV production, directing episodes of Seinfeld, Mad About You and Friends. His new memoir is called The Book of David.

Actor Peter Fonda is probably best known for his role in the cult-classic road movie Easy Rider. His recent roles include one in the film 3:10 to Yuma, a 2007 remake of the 1957 Western of the same name, which was itself based on the 1953 Elmore Leonard short story. The movie also stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Fonda, the son of actor Henry Fonda, is also the author of the memoir Don't Tell Dad.

In The Center Cannot Hold, lawyer and psychiatry professor Elyn R. Saks chronicles her own struggle with schizophrenia. The battle began with early symptoms at age 8 and has continued throughout her life; she had her first full-blown episodes during her terms at Oxford and Yale. Saks, who has for years controlled her condition with daily medication and therapy, is an expert in the field of mental-health law, and teaches at the University of Southern California.

Journalist Jeff Gammage and his wife Christine have adopted two daughters from China; now Gammage, a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, has written a book about the experience. It's called China Ghosts: My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood.

Muslim feminist Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and co-founder of Muslims for Peace, recently spent a reporting fellowship covering a Muslim woman who was building a women's mosque in India.

Nomani was born in Mumbai, India's largest city, moved to the U.S. as a child, and grew up in Morgantown, W. Va.

Her new book is called Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

Maureen Corrigan recommends non-fiction books to read this summer.

Josh Rushing was a Marine Corps media liaison at Central Command, or Centcom, in the early days of the Iraq war. His job was to represent the Marines to the worldwide media covering the war in Iraq, including the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera, and he was featured in the documentary Control Room. After retiring from the Marines he took a job as a correspondent with Al-Jazeera, reporting from Washington D.C. His new memoir is Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World.

Arnold Rampersad's new biography re-examines the life of Ralph Ellison, the influential cultural critic and author of Invisible Man, and offers insights about why Ellison never produced a second masterpiece.

Comic Don Rickles is known for insulting his audiences on stage, but he doesn't consider himself an insult comic. His heyday was in the '50s and '60s, on TV and in Vegas. Frank Sinatra, an early fan, helped get him noticed. Now Rickles has written a memoir, Rickles' Book.