Biography & Memoir

Jack Coughlin, a gunnery sergeant in the Marines, is the author of the new book Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper. He grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb and joined the Marines at age 19, spending the next 20 years behind the scope of a long-range rifle as a sniper. He has more than 60 confirmed kills, 38 of which took place during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Writer, actor, lawyer Edwin John Wintle has written his first book, a memoir about what happened when his 13-year old niece came to live with him. His book is Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle's Memoir.

Actress Brooke Shields has written a new memoir about what she experienced following the birth of her daughter: Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression. After struggling to become pregnant, Shields was faced with more difficulties.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Them: A Memoir of Parents, by Francine du Plessix Gray.

Mirta Ojito is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times. Ojito and her family were part of the Mariel boatlift out of Cuba. Her new memoir is Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus. Ojito has interviewed Fidel Castro himself in researching the boatlift.

Former senator and Republican leader Bob Dole has written a new memoir about his experience in World War II. Late in the war in Italy, Dole was injured; he nearly died, and spent years in recovery. He was left with a paralyzed right arm. His new book is 'One Soldier's Story.'

Lewis Black is a playwright, stand-up comic, actor, and a commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's been described as having the mouth of a shock-jock and the heart of a liberal. His new book is entitled Nothing's Sacred.

Writer Samuel G. Freedman's new book is Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life. Freedman's mother died many years ago, when he was just 18, and as he approached his mother's age when she died, he decided to find out all about her life. The result is a narrative fueled by facts.

Writer James Atlas' new book is a collection of essays called My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor's Tale. James Atlas is the founding editor of the Lipper/Viking Penguin Lives Series. He writes for The New Yorker. He was also an editor at The New York Times Magazine. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and Vanity Fair. He is the author of Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer gave daily briefings to the press from 2001 to 2003. He acted as the Bush administration's primary spokesperson during both 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq War.

Bill "Spaceman" Lee's new memoir is Have Glove, Will Travel: The Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond. The book picks up where Lee's previous memoir, The Wrong Stuff, left off in 1984.

Miller died Thursday night at the age of 89 at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. Miller was the author of many plays, including the legendary Death of a Salesman, for which he won a Pulitzer. He was married briefly to Marilyn Monroe. This interview was originally broadcast on November, 25, 1987.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams is the daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. While her mother, who was black, served as the maid for the Thurmonds, she had an affair with the future senator, at the age of 15. Thurmond was a long-time senator from South Carolina and an opponent of integration. Washington-Williams did not reveal her true identity as Thurmond's daughter until after his death at 100 a little more than a year ago. Now 78, she has written a new memoir, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond.

After being introduced at the age of 12 to a set of religious rules, Jennifer Traig developed a hyper-religious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as "scrupulosity." She chronicles her disorder in the memoir Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood.

Rock historian Ed Ward reviews Bob Dylan's new autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. I.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Wodehouse: A Life, by Robert McCrum.

In his last season with the Los Angeles Lakers, Jackson was as much diplomat as basketball coach. He resigned at the end of the season. His new book is The Last Season.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt.