Places & Travel

Filmmaker Ketan Mehta (Kay-Tahn May-Ta). He's one of a group of young, politically committed directors in India today who believe movies can be effective tools for social change and not just entertainment, and his films have dealt with such issues as the caste system and feminism. His latest film, "Spices," tells the story of a young woman in a remote village in India and her struggle to resist the advances of a powerful feudal overlord.

Edmund (Pat) Brown, the former governor of California. From 1959 to 1967, Brown commuted the death sentences of 23 convicts, but allowed 36 others to go to the gas chambers. He has written a book, Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's Education on Death Row, about the extraordinary personal and political pressures that came to bear on each decision, and of the evolution of his thinking on the death penalty from his inauguration to his last day in office.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews First Light, a new novel by the British writer Peter Ackroyd.

Rock and roll historian Ed Ward profiles Memphis soul musician and producer Willie Mitchell. Mitchell was a trumpeter whose own tastes ran to jazz and soul. But Mitchell enjoyed his greatest success as a producer and talent scout. He launched the careers of Al Green, Ann Peebles and O.V.Wright.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews a posthumous collection of essays by writer Bruce Chatwin. The collection is titled What Am I Doing Here? Chatwin, who wrote extensively about his world travels and the collisions of cultures, died last year from a Chinese fungus that infected him on one of his trips.

Writer Martin Cruz Smith. His latest novel, Polar Star, is his sequel to his 1981 best-seller Gorky Park. In Polar Star, Cruz Smith revives Arkady Renko, the intrepid police investigator hero of Gorky Park. Smith is also the author of Stallion Gate, a novel about the making of the atomic bomb. (Interview with Sedge Thomson)

Ronald Takaki. He's the grandson of Japanese immigrants and a professor of Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. His book, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, tells the diverse stories of Asian immigrants who have come to the United States during the past century and a half. Takaki relates the personal testimonies of new immigrants and their American-born children.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews "Christopher Unborn," the new novel by Carlos Fuentes.

Writer Pico Iyer. His book Video Night in Kathmandu explores the subtle and often humorous Westernization of the Far East. Iyer, who reported for Time Magazine for four years, found the West's influence in mohawk haircuts in Bali, six Filipino girls doing a perfect rendition of a Madonna hit, Japan's baseball mania and a Chinese cafeteria that served dishes like "Yes, Sir, Cheese My Baby," and "Ike and Tuna Tuner." Video Night in Kathmandu has just been published in paperback. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews The Real Thing, by Miles Orvell. Corrigan says the book is one of those works that attempts to explain just about everything in terms of one theory. Orwell's theory is that American culture has been driven by the tension between imitation and the desire for authenticity.

Writer Joe Kane. In 1985, Kane, who had been a freelance writer living in San Francisco, was asked to follow the first attempt to navigate the entire Amazon River, starting in the Andes of Peru and ending in the Atlantic Ocean. Kane was going to follow the group at intervals, publicizing their progress for the American and European press.

Musicologist David Lewiston. Since the early 60s, Lewiston has traveled the world collecting the music of the indigenous cultures. He's recorded the Andean music of Peru, the fiestas of southern Mexico and the marimba music of Guatemala. In addition, he's travelled extensively in the Himalayas and other remote, mountainous areas of the Far East. These recordings have been released as part of the Nonesuch Record Company's Explorer Series. Over the last few years, Lewiston has focused on the music and rituals of the people of Tibet, now living in exile in northern India.

Filmmaker Wayne Wang. With the films "Chan is Missing," "Dim Sum," and "Slam Dance" to his credit, Wang is the first Chinese-American film director to make an impact in the American film industry. Wang has focussed his work around the problems of identity and assimilation, and other issues in the lives of Chinese-American immigrants. He made his first film, "Chan is Missing," on a budget of only $22,000, but the mystery set in San Francisco's Chinatown became both a critical and box-office success.

Poet and essayist John Haines. Haines' new book The Stars, The Snow, The Fire, recalls the 25 years he spent homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness. Haines is more than "one of our best nature writers," according to Hayden Carruth of Harpers Magazine. Carruth writes that Haines "knows the ecological crisis ... as a crisis of consciousness, the human mind in ultimate confrontation with itself.

Novelist Cynthia Kadohata. Her first novel, The Floating World, is a `road novel' about a second generation Asian American teenager who leads a nomadic life with her parents as her father travels the country from one job to the next. As her journey unfolds, the protagonist struggles to find her place in her family and in America. Kadohata's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and the quarterly The Pennsylvania Review. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Journalist Amy Wilentz. Her first book, The Rainy Season, Haiti since Duvalier, is an account of Haiti since the overthrow of President-for-Life Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and of how the country's hope for reform gave way to despair when it was clear Haiti's new leadership couldn't, or wouldn't, reverse 40 years of chaos and stagnation. The book is also an account of how Wilentz was transformed by the story, of how the epochal change Haiti was going through, and its stunning contrast of poverty and corrupted wealth, overwhelmed her first assumptions.

Writer Allan Gurganus. His novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, which is scheduled for publication later this fall, is the story of a blind 99-year-old widow, now confined to a nursing home, whose stories about her life and her husband's take in almost 150 years of American history. Mostly her stories focus on her husband and how his experiences in the Civil War, when he was only 13, haunted him, and her, until he died. Gurganus, a professor of writing at New York's Sarah Lawrence University, has written for The New Yorker, Harpers and The Atlantic Monthly.

Journalist MICHAEL KAUFMAN. His new book, Mad Dreams, Saving Graces - Poland: A Nation in Conspiracy, charts the rise, fall and resurrection of the democratic movement in Poland. Leading this drive has been Solidarity, the shipworkers' union headed by Lech Walesa. But Kaufman also traces the hidden spiritual undercurrents in Polish history and culture and that make this quest toward self-definition considerably more complex. Kauffman served as Warsaw bureau chief for The New York Times from 1984 to 1987. He has also been bureau chief for the Times in Nairobi, New Delhi and Ottawa.

Photographer Larry Sultan. In a photography exhibit now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Sultan is represented by work from a project he began in 1983 about his family's history. A key feature of the work, and a feature that appears in all of Sultan's work, is capturing subjects at "off" moments, situations where they least expect, or wish, themselves to be photographed.

Rock historian Ed Ward examines glam rock, the 70s movement that glorified glitter, fashion. The two best examples are David Bowie and T. Rex.