Journalism & Photojournalism

Washington Post staffer Paul Hendrickson has been writing about former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for years, but hasn't yet found a way use his extensive research to write a book-length profile. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about McNamara's reluctance to share his feelings on the Vietnam War.

Reed is best known for capturing scenes from Lebanon's civil war. Several of those photographs have been collected in his new book, Beirut: City of Regrets.

Celebrity financial advisor hosts the investment show Wall Street Week, which also features a number of colorful guests.

Critic-at-large Laurie Stone reviews a retrospective of the late photographer's work, which focuses on movement, urban settings, and harrowing portraits of animals. The exhibition, Stone says, reveals our own voyeurism and vulnerability.

Newsweek photojournalist William Gentile. Gentile covered the Nicaraguan revolution for UPI ten years ago, and he's the only foreign correspondent from that time still working in Nicaragua. Gentile's new book, Nicaragua, contrasts the violence of the Contra war with the natural beauty of Nicaragua and the lives of everyday people there.

Lawrence Weschler, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He writes about politics and art, and his profiles are gathered in a new book, Shapinsky's Karma, Bogg's Bill and Other True Tales.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg discusses the way the language of the drug culture has worked through the language of the mainstream.

Columnist Christopher Matthews. His first book, Hardball: How Politics is Played, is a humorous, anecdotal account of the 24-hour struggle for power and position that politicians happily immerse themselves in. The book has been described as a modern version of The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli. Matthews is a former speechwriter to President Jimmy Carter and senior aide and spokesman to former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.

Journalist Teresa Carpenter. Her new book, Missing Beauty, is the story of the obsession of a medical professor for a Boston prostitute, and obsession that ended with the prostitute's murder. Carpenter is a staff writer for The Village Voice and won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for her reports on three murders, including those of former congressman Allard Lowenstein and Playmate Dorothy Stratten.

Writer Gerald Clarke. Clarke's biography of writer Truman Capote has just been published. Capote was the author of the seminal work In Cold Blood, but his writing was overshadowed by the excesses of his lifestyle and his reputation as the clownish fixture of the talk show circuit. Clarke's biography was 14 years in the making and was undertaken with Capote's full cooperation. Clarke has written extensively for Time magazine.

Writer Dominick Dunne, who in his fiction and non-fiction writes about the troubled lives of New York City's jet setters. His latest novel is titled People Like Us, and is set amid Manhattan's upper class. Dunne's other novels include The Winner and The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, both bestsellers. Dunne contributes regularly to Vanity Fair, writing lengthy profiles of society celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Claus Von Bulow.

Television Critic David Bianculli previews the new Bill Moyers special on PBS. In the six-part series, Moyers speaks with the late mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Mal Sharpe, the self-described last of the Man-on-the-Street interviewers. Sharpe, who used to contribute to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," specializes in eliciting unusual responses from unsuspecting interviewees. He'll ask a screaming delegate on the floor of the Republican Convention in 1980 if they're happy with Reagan as the nominee.

Jim Lehrer, co-anchor of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, the nightly PBS news show. Lehrer is also a published novelist and playwright. His new novel is titled Kick the Can. Lehrer is also known to many viewers of PBS for his series on his own recovery from a heart attack.

Lehrer, who died Jan. 23, was a nightly figure on PBS news for more than three decades, and moderated presidential debates in every election from 1988 through 2012. Originally broadcast in 1988.

New York Times television critic Peter Boyer. His new book, Who Killed CBS? The Undoing of America's Number One News Network, explores the recent turmoil within the news division of CBS, and how it has effected the entire corporation. He reports on the ill-fated reign of CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, the tenure of Dan Rather as anchor of the CBS Evening News and the takeover of CBS by New York investor Laurence Tisch.

Baseball writer Roger Angell. His new book, Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion, is a compilation of essays published in The New Yorker magazine over the last five seasons. The essays cover subjects from spring training, Astroturf versus grass and drug abuse. Angell's previous books include The Summer Game, Five Seasons and Late Innings. Angell is the senior fiction editor of The New Yorker.

Essayist Harry Stein. Stein wrote the popular "Ethics" column for Esquire Magazine. He writes a syndicated column for the United Features Syndicate. He's written a book titled One of the Guys: The Wising Up of an American Man. In it, he shares his thoughts on why men are the way they are.

Television news commentator David Brinkley. For 14 years, starting in 1956, he and Chet Huntley co-anchored "The Huntley-Brinkley Report." He now anchors the Sunday morning ABC news program "This Week with David Brinkley." Brinkley has written an account of how Washington was transformed by America's entry into World War II. The book is titled Washington Goes to War: The Extraordinary Story of the Transformation of a City and a Nation. (Interview by Faith Middleton)

Hedrick Smith, the Washington correspondent for The New York Times. His new book looks at power and how it works in our nation's capital. (Interview by Faith Middleton)