Books & Literature

Kingston wrote two dreamlike memoirs before publishing a novel, Tripmaster Monkey. The story follows a Chinese American grad student in the 1960s who is as influenced by Chinese literature as he is Beat culture. Book critic John Leonard calls it brilliant.

Film mogul Samuel Goldwyn's son gave permission to A. Scott Berg to write the movie producer's biography. Berg says the elder Goldwyn entered the United States illegally, and later built himself by working at a glove factory before helping develop the studio system.

Matthiessen is a naturalist and novelist who co-founded The Paris Review. His nonfiction has explored Zen Buddhism and American Indians, among other topics. A new collection of his short stories, spanning his entire career, his nearly four-decade long career, just been published.

Rock critic Ken Tucker considers the recent trend of British bands taking their cues from American soul music, with varying success. Recent examples include songs by Simply Red, The Pasadenas, Boy George, and Fine Young Cannibals.

Tim Cahill writes for Outside and Rolling Stone about his adventure traveling. His humorous columns have been collected in a new book called A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg. Cahill joins Fresh Air to talk about some of his more memorable trips.

Despite his often misanthropic themes, Galway says he's been roused from his depression, in part because of his wonder of nature. He's known for exploring emotional extremes in his writing.

Book critic John Leonard says that Warner's third novel is her best. The book, about a family coping with the loss of its patriarch, succeeds because it questions ideas as much as it advances them.

Sautter says that, in order to break into the industry, aspiring television writers need to craft better material than what they see on air. His new book explains the mechanics and unspoken rules of scriptwriting.

Critic-at-large Laurie Stone says none of Stuart's past work could have prepared her for his newest novel. The story is narrated by a troubled adolescent boy who grapples with the incestual relationship between his father and sister.

Playwright and novelist Ntzoake Shange, best known for her play For Colored Girls, joins Fresh Air to talk about the diversity of the black experience, her childhood and early education, and the criticism she sometimes gets from black male authors and playwrights. Her new play is called Betsey Brown.

John Leonard reviews fellow book critic Jonathan Yardley's new memoir, Our Kind of People. Leonard disagrees with Yardley's world view, but his real criticism lies in how the author glosses over the enduring literary and cultural legacy of WASPs in the United States.

Scholar Kathryn Montgomery says that deregulation in the late 1980s has led to the rise of different advocacy groups who seek to influence television programming, often by targeting advertisers. Her new book, Target: Prime Time, explains how both minority and religious groups have mobilized in recent years.

Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story with his colleague Bob Woodward, has a new memoir about his parents, called Loyalties. Bernstein's mother and father were communist activists during the McCarthy era, and were monitored by the FBI.

Tan's first novel is called The Joy Luck Club, which is about a group of Chinese mothers who try to understand their American-born daughters. She joins Fresh Air to discuss her relationship with her own mother, and her mother's home country.

Writer Mark Ribowsky has a new biography on the prolific and reclusive record producer, called He's a Rebel. Phil Spector innovated new studio techniques; his airy, heavily-overdubbed music helped form the California sound. Ribowsky also describes Spector's severe, domineering personality, and his frustration with changing trends in pop music.

Baker's new book, The Mezzanine, documents a man's meandering and sometimes obsessive thoughts throughout the day.

Ted Schultz edited a new book called The Fringes of Reason, which compiles conflicting opinions of supernatural, New Age, and cosmological world views. Schultz is now studying entomology, which he says is related to his curiosity about what is and isn't real.

Critic and composer Gunther Schuller's new book, The Swing Era, examines the history of big band music. Though he is already a jazz enthusiast, Schuller says he researched his book as if he had no prior knowledge of the genre, hoping to craft a more comprehensive and objective account of that its development.

Gregory Djanikian, who has a new poetry collection published by Carnegie Mellon Press, reads a new work about American identity and the Midwest.

Peter Conrad studied in Englad on a Rhodes scholarship, but grew up in Tasmania -- an island once used as an Australian penal colony. His new memoir, about his return to his home country, is called Behind the Mountain.