Biography & Memoir

An excerpt from a 1985 interview with baseball legend Mickey Mantle. He died yesterday of liver cancer.

TV producer, writer, director and actor Garry Marshall. He's considered a "One man Who's Who" of Television. He's written for The Lucy Show, The Danny Thomas Show, The Tonight Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Jack Parr Show, and Love American Style. He created 14 prime time sitcoms including Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, The Odd Couple. During one week in 1979, Marshall boasted four of the top five rated TV shows.

Writer Clifton Taulbert grew up in the segregated South in the 1950s. His experiences growing up black in America are chronicled in his two memoirs When We Were Colored and the Pulitzer Prize nominated The Last Train North, (Penguin Books). Taulbert lives in Tulsa Oklahoma where he is a businessman. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Veteran journalist Ben H. Bagdikian discusses the recent buyout offers for ABC & CBS. Bagdikian's book The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press 1983) examines the influence corporate ownership has on programming. Bagdikian newest book Double Vision, (Beacon 1995) is his personal memoir. He has been a Washington bureau chief and foreign correspondent for the Providence Journal, an assistant managing editor for the Washington Post and a dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Freelance firefighter Peter Leschak battles forest fires in the Northwoods and the West...He's not a smoke jumper he says, he’s a grunt-hiking to remote locations, putting out fires sometimes on his hands and knees-spark by spark. His memoir is called Hellroaring. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. We talk with James Yamazaki, the Japanese-American pediatrician who was sent to Nagasaki four years later to study the impact of radiation on children. Yamazaki has written a memoir about his life and work in Nagasaki called Children of the Atomic Bomb. He is currently clinical professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine at the University of California. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Activist Claudia Brenner, one of the prominent voices against anti-gay violence. Her new book Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Anti-Gay Violence, (Firebrand) which she co-wrote with Hannah Ashley, is a personal account of her lover's murder and its aftermath: her path to recovery and activism. Brenner is an architect who lives in upstate New York with her lesbian family.

Poet and writer Michael Ryan. His first book of poems won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was nominated for a National Book Award in 1974. Ryan's book Good Hunger won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award for the most outstanding book of poems published in 1989. His new book Secret Life (Pantheon) is his autobiography in which he shares his experiences of childhood molestation and sexual addiction. (Contains brief excerpt of 12/12/1989 interview).

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Last House: Reflections, Dreams, and Observations, 1943 - 1991, (Pantheon) the third in a trilogy of books of unpublished essays, letters and journals by M.F.K. Fisher, published after her death.

Former New York Daily News reporter and author Lorenzo Carcaterra. His first book, A Safe Place: The True Story of a Father, a Son, a Murder, was about growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen, the son of a violent, abusive man who none-the-less loved his son. Carcaterra learned as a teenager that his father had murdered his first wife. Carcaterra's newest book Sleepers, (Ballantine Books) is also about growing up in Hell's Kitchen and the bond of friendship between him and three friends.

Hockenberry spent more than a decade with National Public Radio as a general assignment reporter, Middle East correspondent, and program host. Until now, he made a point of never mentioning that he is paralyzed from the waist down. He writes of his life's obstacles and accomplishments in his new book Moving Violations (Hyperion).

Karr has two volumes of poetry The Devil's Tour, and Abacus. She won Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essays, and her work appears in such magazines as Granta, Ploughshares, and Vogue. She has a new memoir called The Liars' Club, about growing up with her eccentric and secretive mother.

At age 46, Foreman still retains the title. He is presently a preacher, community leader and dedicated child advocate. His new book By George: The Autobiography of George Foreman (Villard Books) written with Joel Engel, reveals the man behind the champion.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews No Ordinary Time (Simon and Schuster) by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Babe (University of Illinois Press) by Susan E. Cayleff.

Child Advocate and Writer Geoffrey Canada's book, Fist Stick Knife Gun; A Personal History of Violence in America (Beacon Press), provides a look into the lives of children living in violence. Canada is President and CEO of Rheedlan Centers for Children and Families in New York. He is dedicated to serving at risk children in the inner-city.

Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, fell in love with Roald Sagdeev, who worked for the Soviet space program. She details the start to their politically fraught relationship in her new memoir, "Breaking Free."

This nationally acclaimed comedian has recently released his book Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences. Pryor's memoir takes readers on a journey through his successful yet struggle-filled life. A strong man who has overcome such ordeals as a drug addiction, self immolation, and six marriages, Pryor is determined to overcome his most recent battle with multiple sclerosis.

Stahl has a new memoir called Permanent Midnight. He was a successful journalist, a scriptwriter for cult film classics like "Cafe Flesh," and "Dr. Caligari," who went on to write for the hit TV shows "Moonlighting," "ALF" and "thirtysomething." Stahl was also a junkie. He writes,"You might say that success ruined me. You might say I ruined success."

Hanan Mikhail-Ashrwai, former spokesperson for the PLO from 1991 to 1993. Ashrawi was the chief spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation at the Middle East peace negotiations. There are two books about her life and her role in the peace process: her personal account, This Side of Peace, and A Voice of Reason: Hanan Ashrawi and Peace in the Middle East by Barbara Victor.

Allende has published her first work of non-fiction, Paula. It's about her 28 year old daughter, who fell into an irreversible coma. Paula began as a letter to her dying daughter and turned into an autobiographical work about Allende's childhood in Chile, her exile in Venezuela and her move to San Francisco.