Authors on the Air: Iranian Woman’s Memoir; Chinese President’s Visit; Delta Force’s Founder

Compiled by Diane Patrick, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 4/20/2006

This morning on Today: NBC News (and Today) correspondent Mike Leonard described The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family (Ballantine, $24.95; RH Audio abridged audio CD, $27.95).

The Leonard Lopate Show’s trio of authors included Time reporter Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (PublicAffairs, $25). PW’s review noted that it offers “intimate glimpses of domestic life: Moaveni lived among family and depicts clandestine partying, women's gyms and the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Eventually, Moaveni became ‘more at home than [her mother] was’ in Iran, and a visit to the U.S. showed how Moaveni, who now lives in Beirut, had grown unaccustomed to American life, ‘where my Iranian instincts served no purpose.’ "

Also on The Leonard Lopate Show: Camilla Gibb, who experienced Sweetness in the Belly (Penguin, $23.95). From PW’s review: “With sure-handed, urgent prose, Gibb chronicles the remarkable spiritual and geographical journey of a white British Muslim woman who struggles with cultural contradictions to find community and love. …the novel fluently speaks the ‘languages of religion and exile,’ depicting both the multifaceted heartbreak of those lucky enough to escape violent regime changes and the beauty of unlikely bonds created by the modern multicultural world.”

The final Leonard Lopate guest was history professor Philip Jenkins, author of Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (Oxford Univ. Press, $28), which PW called “a timely account… Jenkins presents an able contribution to the burgeoning historical literature on the 1970s and '80s, and a nice counterpoint to books like David Frum's How We Got Here.”

On this day of Chinese president Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington, The Diane Rehm Show hosted Bates Gill of CSIS who discussed China: The Balance Sheet (PublicAffairs, $25), as he will tomorrow on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Another Diane Rehm guest was Cesar Millan, host of the National Geographic Channel series The Dog Whisperer, who tried it Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems (Harmony, $24.95; RH Audio abridged audio CD, $27.95).

On CNBC’s Power Lunch, former Wall Street Journal China bureau chief James McGregor, author of One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Free Press, $27). PW’s review noted “The promise and perils-mostly the latter-that Western businesses face in China's huge but chaotic market are probed in this illuminating if not quite reassuring primer. Westerners contemplating a plunge into this shark tank will profit from McGregor's cautionary tales.” McGregor will also appear tomorrow on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Tonight, Tavis Smiley interviews Ret. Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Haney, founding member of Delta Force and author of the memoir Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit (Delta, $14), the basis for the new CBS series The Unit. PW’s review said “Readers of other special forces memoirs will find this one distinctive for Haney's attention to interservice rivalries (he has a lot of negative things to say about the CIA) that he believes compromised several missions, as well as for Haney's nuanced, often disgusted descriptions of the human cost of war.”

Programming is subject to change. For more detailed information about author appearances on these shows and others as well as listings of book mentions and book reviews, see TitleSmart.

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