Biography & Memoir

Sue Graham Mingus' new memoir Tonight at Noon is about her love affair with the late jazz musician and composer Charles Mingus. She is a former magazine editor and publisher, and now works as a music producer. She also created and directs repertory ensembles that carry on the music of her late husband. Tonight at Noon... Three or Four Shades of Love, a CD featuring tracks by the Mingus Big Band and the Charles Mingues Orchestra, was recently released on the Dreyfus Jazz Label.

Writer Richard Lourie. His new book, Sakharov, is a biography of the Russian scientist, dissident and Nobel peace prize winner Andrei Sakharov. He's considered one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. Sakharov created Russia's H-bomb, but later confronted his country over issues of nuclear responsibility and human rights.

Writer Daniel Harris. His new book is A Memoir of No One in Particular: In which our author indulges in naive indiscretions, a self-aggrandizing solipsism, and an off-putting infatuation with his own bodily functions. (Basic Books) Harris is the author of Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic, as well as The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture. He written for Harpers, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

Human rights leader Jeri Laber. Shes one of the founders of Helsinki Watch, which eventually became Human Rights Watch. Her new book, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement is a memoir that is part personal history and part history of the human rights movement. Laber was executive director of Helsinki Watch from 1979 to 1995 and has written many articles for newspapers and magazines. She's been awarded the Order of Merit by President Vaclav Havel on behalf of the Czech Republic, and she's also won the prestigious MacArthur Grant.

South African surgeon, journalist and documentary filmmaker Jonathan Kaplan has treated patients in many war torn locations, including Kurdistan, Mozambique, and Eritrea. He writes about his experiences in his new book, The Dressing Station: A Surgeons Chronicle of War and Medicine (Grove Press). He began his medical career in South Africa, where he first cared for patients wounded by political violence.

Singer Brenda Lee is one of the early rock 'n' roll singers, with hits such as "I'm Sorry," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and "Break it To Me Gently." She's just been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, class of 2002. She's also in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta. At the age of 13, in 1957, she made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry. She's performed around the world. Her new memoir is Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer whose latest book is Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. (Steer Forth Press) He is a founder of the nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East. Shehadeh lives in Ramallah.

Sylvia Nasar is the author of A Beautiful Mind, the biography of mathematical genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, who also suffered from schizophrenia. The book won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and inspired the movie of the same name. Nasar is a former economics correspondent for The New York Times. She is currently the Knight Professor of Journalism at Columbia University.

With writer Penny Valentine, biographer Vicki Wickham recently published Dancing with Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield. Wickham was Springfield close friend and manager for over a decade of Springfield career.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. He's the author of a number of books including a memoir about his boyhood, An Hour Before Daylight His latest is a memoir, Christmas in Plains (Simon & Schuster). Carter and his family has spent the last 48 Christmases in Plains, through out his Navy career, his stint as Governor and his tenure as President. The only exception was 1979 when American hostages were being held in Iran.

U.S. Senator James Jeffords of Vermont. Last May he shocked his fellow Republicans when he defected from the party and became an Independent. Stating that he could no longer reconcile his beliefs with the party, he switched allegiences. In doing so he deprived the Republicans of their trifecta: control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. He explains how he came to make the decision in the new book, My Declaration of Independence

Dalton Conley is the author of the memoir, Honky (Vintage books) about growing up white in a predominately African American and Latino neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York. Conley is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University.

Ruth Kluger is the author of the new memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Feminist Press). Kluger was ten years old when she and her mother were deported to the Jewish "ghetto" Theresienstadt. From there they were sent to Auschwitz and the young Kluger survived to go to the work camp Christianstadt by lying about her age. Her memoir, Still Alive, was published in Germany in 1992 and has just been published in the U.S. Kluger became a distinguished professor of German and is professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine.

New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed him the 40th police commissioner of the City of New York in August of 2000. Prior to that, he was the commissioner of the Department of Correction. Kerik began as a prison warden in New Jersey. He joined the NYPD as a beat cop on Times Square. He just written a book, called The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice.

Musician, producer, arranger, composer Quincy Jones has a new autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, (Doubleday) and a 4-CD boxset collecting his work, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones (Rhino). In his fifty year career hes worked with just about anyone who is anybody in the music business. As a teenager he played backup for Billie Holiday, along with his 16 year old friend, Ray Charles. At 18 he began playing the trumpet in Lionel Hamptons band beside Clifford Brown.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews My Wars Are Laid Away In Books (Random House), the new biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger.

Writer Simon Winchester wrote the best seller The Professor and the Madman. His new book is The Map That Changed the World (HarperCollins) about William Smith, an obscure British 19th century engineer obsessed with creating the first geological map. His map, hand-painted in 1815, paved the way for modern geology, but Smith was swindled out of the recognition and profits due him until a nobleman intervened.

In 1999, Stephen King, the prolific and popular horror writer experienced something that could have come out of one of his books: he was struck by a car while walking along a rural road in Maine and nearly killed. Six operations and a long recovery followed. Five weeks after the accident King started writing again, and published the novella, The Plant over the internet. His latest book is Dreamcatchers.

He commanded the NATO troops during the Kosovo conflict, the first and only NATO war. His new memoir is Waging Modern War

Historian David Mccullough is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Truman. His new book is the biography of founding father and second President of the United States. The book is John Adams.