Authors on the Air: Religion, Revolution, Self-Amputation

Compiled by Diane Patrick, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 10/6/2005

Appearing on Good Morning America was Robert Oxnam, author of A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder (Hyperion, $23.95, Listen & Live unabridged audio CD, $34.95).

On the Early Show, author Debra Fine chatted about The Fine Art of Small Talk (Hyperion, $16.95; Small Talk Publishing, audio CD $17.95).

Today on The Diane Rehm Show, Bruce Feiler revealed Where God Was Born: A Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion (William Morrow, $26.95, Harper Audio abridged audio CD, $29.95). PW starred its review, which considered it “another absorbing blend of travelogue, history, Bible commentary, memoir, current events and passionate preaching.”

On The Leonard Lopate Show novelist Mayra Montero and her translator Edith Grossman talked about her new novel Captain of the Sleepers (FSG, $23). PW called it “a sensuous, languid novel, set in Puerto Rico during the 1950s nationalist movement…. Montero artfully choreographs the confluence of family, romantic and revolutionary ardor.”

Also on Lopate’s program: poet W.S. Merwin, whose newest and 24th volume of poems is Present Company (Copper Canyon Press, $22). PW thought the 101-poem collection “may be the poet's clearest and most unified in many years, and it is almost certainly his most moving.”

This evening on Larry King Live, Carole Radziwill discusses What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love (Scribner, $25.95; Audioworks abridged audio CD, $29.95). Radziwill, writes about her late husband’s battle with cancer (he was the nephew of Jackie Kennedy Onassis) and her friendship with John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

Tonight The Late, Late Show hosts Aron Ralston, author of the bestselling Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Atria, $14.00, Audioworks abridged audio CD, $29.95), his chronicle of the newsmaking self-amputation of his right arm during a 2003 hiking mishap. PW said “Ralston's prose is never gruesome, nor is it used to shock, even as he describes first breaking his forearm, and then slipping ‘into some sort of autopilot’ as he cuts through muscle fibers to detach the arm. It's truly thrilling when he finishes and is free.”

Last night on Lou Dobbs Tonight, economist John Ralston Saul, author of The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (Overlook, $29.95), discussed how globalization may well be in its death throes.

For more detailed information about author appearances on these shows and others as well as listings of book mentions and book reviews, see Motor Online. The service monitors nationally broadcast TV and radio programs and develops comprehensive listings of books, music, magazines, videos, film and software featured on more than 60 programs.

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