Biography & Memoir

Engel was the only American television correspondent who was in Baghdad before, during and after the war. On the next Fresh Air, Engel talks about how he bribed officials, woke to gunfire and witnessed atrocities of battle. His new book is A Fist in the Hornet's Nest.

He was the in-house humor writer of the Clinton White House. He's written the new memoir, Clinton & Me: A Real Life Political Comedy.

He's a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN with three Emmys to his credit. For the past 30 years he's lived with multiple sclerosis, even continuing to work in a war zone shortly after the diagnosis and with failing eyesight. He's written a new memoir called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness/A Reluctant Memoir.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton.

David Denby is a staff writer and film critic for The New Yorker. His new book, American Sucker, is a memoir about his brief obsession with the stock market — during the height of irrational exuberance in 2000-2001. It started with his wife's announcement that she was leaving him. Denby began an attempt to make $1 million so that he could buy out his wife's share of their New York apartment. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).

She is Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post. She has covered South Asia for the Post since 1999, reporting from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. She has a new memoir, Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia.

Cowell is one of the judges on the talent show American Idol, a spin-off of the show he co-created in Britain, Pop Idol. The show has made him famous for his brutally frank criticism. Cowell has spent 25 years in the music industry, and is currently with BMG. His new book is Simon Cowell: I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But...

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Gatekeeper, the new memoir by British academic superstar Terry Eagleton. Also, his new book After Theory (to be published this month in the United States) is a recant of his widely read 1983 book Literary Theory: An Introduction.

His new book is Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer. Furia documents the life of the legendary lyricist whose songs include Moon River, Come Rain or Come Shine and Skylark. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Mercer dominated the popular song charts. Furia is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He's also written biographies of Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin. The interview continues throughout the entire show.

Her new book is Jung: A Biography. Bair chronicles the life and work of the influential Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Bair won the National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett, and she's also written books about the lives of Anais Nin and Simone de Beauvoir.

Shehadeh is the author of the new memoir When the Birds Stopped Singing: Life in Ramallah Under Siege. His previous book is the memoir, Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. Shehadeh is a founder of Al-Haq, a pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization.

She earned wide critical and popular acclaim and an Emmy for her work on The Garry Moore Show (from 1959-62). The Carol Burnett Show debuted in 1967 and won 22 Emmys in a run of more than a decade. She has starred or appeared in a number of TV movies and specials. In December, she'll be a Kennedy Center honoree for her body of work. In 1981 she struck a blow for fellow celebrities by winning a lawsuit against The National Enquirer tabloid. Her memoir One More Time was recently republished in a paperback edition. There's also a DVD collection of The Carol Burnett Show.

She is the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped then killed by militant Islamists in 2002. Before Daniel was abducted, the Pearls were both foreign correspondents, reporting from Pakistan. She has a new memoir.

After the Russians denied her press access to Chechnya, she disguised herself as a peasant and snuck across the border. For six months she followed the war, traveling with the underground rebels and staying with families. Nivat, based in Moscow, is the author of Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War In Chechnya.

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.

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.