Books & Literature

Pulitzer Prize winning author, David Halberstam has turned his attention to Michael Jordan's impact on American culture in his new book "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and The World He Made." (Random House) His other books include: "The Best and the Brightest," "The Powers that Be," "Summer of 49," and "The Amateurs." Halberstam says Jordan is the most popular human being in the world.

Poet Seamus Heaney has released a new collection of his poems called "Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. He resides in Dublin, Ireland and in Boston where he teaches at Harvard University.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel by Elizabeth Strout, "Amy and Isabelle."

Journalist Mark Hertsgaard. He traveled around the world examining environmentally-damaged places. His new book about it is, "Earth Odyssey: Around the world in Search of Our Environmental Future" (Broadway Books). Hertsgaard also writes for the New York times, The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Nation.

Satirist Al Franken, former writer for Saturday Night Live, and creator of Stuart Smalley (author of "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!"). His new book is "Why Not Me: The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency" (Delacorte Press). It's the story of America's first jewish president, himself, Al Franken!

We remember writer and urbanologist WILLIAM WHYTE. He died yesterday at the age of 81. The former editor of Fortune Magazine began a second career studing the life of urban cities. Whyte was best known for his 1956 book "Organization Man," a groundbreaking work that examined the mechanized rituals and routines of the corporate culture. His other books included, "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" (1980), and "City" (1989). (REBROADCAST from 2/22/89)

Music writer Peter Guralnick has written volume two of his biography of Elvis Presley. "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley." (Little, Brown and Company). Part One of his biography is, "Last Train to Memphis."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman" (Viking) a biography of the mother of novelist Anthony Trollope.

Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the novel "Independence Day," has edited and collected a new selection of short stories by the great Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. It's called "The Essential Tales of Chekhov" (Ecco Press)

First violinist Arnold Steinhardt is one of the founding members of the Guarneri (Gwa-NAIR-ee) String Quartet, which has been playing together for 35 years. He's written a new memoir, "Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony" (Farrar Straus & Giroux). The Quartet is considered to be one of the finest string quartets performing today.

Book critc Maureen Corrigan chooses her favorite reads from this past year.

Bainbridge is well known in England, but little known here. She's been shortlisted four times for the prestigious Booker Prize, and twice won the Whitbread Prize for fiction. She's just completed her 16th novel. "Master Georgie" (Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc.) takes place during the mid 19th century. Bainbridge has been praised for her economic and poetic use of words, and her lack of sentimentality or melodrama.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Mark O'Donnell's new Christmas novel, "Let Nothing You Dismay."

New York writer Daniel Drennan has written a new collection of essays about life in Manhattan. His book "The New York Diaries: Too True Tales of Urban Tramau" is published by Ballantine Books.

Cooper helped popularize the Hammond B3 organ as part of rock music, performing on recordings of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. He was a member of the legendary Blues Project, and later founded the group Blood Sweat & Tears. Now he teaches at The Berklee College of Music in Boston, and writes a monthly column for EQ Magazine. His autobiography, "Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'n Roll Survivor" (Billboard Books) which was first published in 1977 has just been updated and reissued.

Dr. Norman Rosenthal is an expert on seasonal affective disorder a/k/a SAD. Commonly called the winter blues, Rosenthal talks about why many people get depressed during the winter months and how light therapy can help. His book "Winter Blues: Seasonal Affective Disorder, What it is and How to Overcome it." by Guilford Press.

Organizing expert Julie Morgenstern. She is the founder of Task Masters, a New York based consulting company that tries to improve people's efficiency through better organizing skills. Her new book is "Organizing from the Inside Out" by Owl Books.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" (Riverhead books,) by Harold Bloom.