Authors on the Air: Making Pianos; Guiding Artists; Remembering the Pen

-- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2006

This morning on The Diane Rehm Show, New York Times staff writer James Barron played Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand (Times Books, $24), which PW deemed “a thoroughgoing chronicle of how a New York immigrant family created an American cultural institution.”

On The Bob Edwards Show, Nora Ephron continued promoting I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Knopf, $19.95). Tonight, she will sit down with Tavis Smiley.

The Leonard Lopate Show’s guests today:

Actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith dispensed Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind (Anchor, $14; Blackstone unabridged audio CD, $36). From PW’s review: “What emerges most persuasively is Smith's sense of the complex interrelationship between one's art and one's everyday life. With a pithiness that wards away the preachy, Smith succeeds in conveying the pain, the joy and the effort that characterize a life on the stage and in the world.”

Wendy Kann discussed Casting with a Fragile Thread: A Story of Sisters and Africa (Holt, $23). PW starred its review: “Until recently, writers like Joseph Conrad and Paul Theroux have defined the white colonial experience in literature. Now, with Alexandra Fuller… and Kann, we're hearing from a different constituency: the daughters. Their tales, Kann's included, make for fascinating reading.”

Comedy legend Tommy Chong dealt The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint (Simon Spotlight, $23.95).

This evening on The Colbert Report: National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru introduces The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life (Regnery, $27.95).

Tonight, Tavis Smiley interviews African American history scholar Peniel E. Joseph, author of Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (Holt, $27.50). PW noted that it “brings to light less-known characters like the Rev. Albert Cleage Jr. of Detroit, who helped organize the 1963 Walk for Freedom a month before the March on Washington, as well as fresh judgments on figures like Malcolm X… Though it focuses more on politics than culture–e.g., the 1968 Olympics protest gets just a footnote–it's a good introduction to the topic.”

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.

For more information on these titles, click here.