Biography & Memoir

ABC reporter Sam Donaldson is known for his loud, often aggressive manner of questioning President Reagan during press conferences and other news events. He believes his style is necessary, especially considering Reagan's predilection for secluding himself from the media.

Diane Johnson's first novel in eight years deals with an American woman's affair during the Iranian revolution. She joins Fresh Air to talk about writing biographies and screenplays and why it took her so long to finish her newest book.

Pat Conroy's abusive father tried to groom him for a career in the Marines. Conroy instead became a novelist who incorporates autobiographical details into his fiction.

Sydney Biddle Barrows' call girl service was shut down in 1984. She now has a memoir about her life as a madam. Barrows joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about how she recruited and managed the young women who worked for her.

Spalding Gray's career performing humorous, autobiographical monologues has sometimes been a detriment to his attempts to break into film and television acting; no casting director wants to be mentioned in one of Gray's stage shows.

In her new memoir, Dreamgirl, singer Mary Wilson outlines the history of the girl group, including their contentious legal and financial relationship with Motown Records.

Novelist Father Andrew Greeley has just published an autobiography called Confessions of a Parish Priest. He joins Fresh Air to talk about his seminary training, his early experiences leading a congregation in Chicago, and his perspectives on the Catholic Church's views on sexuality.

An anthology of the self-published comic book series has just been released by Doubleday. Pekar's joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about writing, jazz criticism, and the changing landscape of comic books.

Gail Lumet Buckley is the daughter of groundbreaking African American actress Lena Horne. Buckley's new book, The Hornes, traces her family's history from the Civil War to contemporary New York, untangling the unique experiences of the black bourgeoisie in the US.

In contrast to other women television news anchors, journalist Linda Ellerbee eschews fashion and formality to focus her viewers' attention on her reporting rather than her appearance. After a salary dispute, she recently left her post at NBC. Her new memoir is called And So It Goes.

Musician John Phillips was a member of the group The Mamas & The Papas, a pop-folk band that was popular in the 1960s. Phillips has recently written his autobiography "Papa John."

Writer Gail Sheehy is best-known for her book "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adulthood." While in Thailand researching Cambodian children in refugee camps, Sheehy met a 12-year-old girl whom she later adopted. Her book "Spirit of Survival" alternates between Sheehy and her daughter Mohm's perspectives on the events.

Crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, describes the heists and scams of a mid-level mobster.

Nat Hentoff writes about jazz and civil liberties, but describes his profession as "being a troublemaker." Hentoff began collecting jazz records and hanging out in jazz clubs as a young adult, and later hosted a jazz radio show and edited a magazine before co-founding the Jazz Review, a journal of criticism. Hentoff currently writes a column for the Village Voice and his subjects are often the First Amendment or civil liberties, and he is a staunch defender of free speech. His latest book, "Boston Boy," is a memoir about growing up in Chicago and Boston.

Albert Race Sample's autobiography "Racehoss: Big Emma's Boy" describe his experiences growing up as the son of a black prostitute and gambler and one of her white clients. Sample later ended up in "Retrieve" a unit of the Texas Prison System, which Race describes as sadistic.

R. D. Laing is a psychiatrist who challenged conventional views in the 1960s with his proposal that schizophrenia was an adaptive behavior, "a sane response to an insane world," as opposed to an illness. The counterculture embraced Laing's views, but they were controversial in academic circles. In 1965, Laing formed the Philadelphia (for brotherly love, not the city) Association, an alternative treatment center for schizophrenics.

Amiri Baraka, formerly LeRoi Jones, is a poet, playwright, essayist, and political activist who was of the first militant black writers to emerge in the 1960s. He addresses black life, music, and politics in his writing, and his works have often been seen as shocking. "The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones," Baraka's memoir, has just been released in paperback.

Actor Alec Guinness begin acting in classic English theater in the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, he began to appear in films, and won an Academy Award in 1957 for his work in the film "The Bridge Over the River Kwai." He is known to a new generation of viewers as Obi Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars films. Guinness has recently published a memoir "Blessings in Disguise." (PARTIAL INTERVIEW)

Nicholas Pileggi is a journalist and contributing editor to New York Magazine who specializes in stories about organized crime. His latest book, "Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family," is a biography based on his interviews with former mobster Henry Hill. The book offers as insider view of organized crime.

Photographer John Phillips has documented events such as the Nazi invasion of Austria, European high society, and the Jews and Arabs in Palestine before and after the establishment of Israel as an overseas correspondent for Life magazine. Phillips was born in Algeria, grew up in France, and moved to London as a young man. Phillips has collected over 500 of his photographs and written text to create his own "photo-biography," "It Happened in Our Lifetime." (INTERVIEW BY DANNY MILLER)