P.D. JAMES
Crime Writer Extraordinaire
Aug. 3, 1920-Nov. 27, 2014
P.D. James was so delightful that I interviewed her three times over the years when she visited the U.S. from her home in Oxford, England.

three-part Book Beat broadcast 1986: listen

three-part Book Beat broadcast 1990: listen

The Book Beat broadcasts with James in 1993 are unavailable, but the unedited interview is (below).

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview 1986: listen

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview 1990: listen

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview 1993: listen

Who Killed the Robins Family? Bill Adler was one of the most quirky figures in publishing. Adler, who was 84 when he died in New York on February 28, 2014, was more of a book packager than a agent. He would come up with a gimmick, engage an author to create it, then peddle the book to publishers. Adler produced and sold hundreds. His clients included Ronald Reagan, Howard Cosell, Mike Wallace, and Ralph Nader. For his most famous book, in 1983 Adler hired Thomas Chastain (for which they received duel credit) to write a mystery that omitted the solution: Who Killed the Robins Family? Adler offered a $10,000 reward to any reader who could figure out the mystery. I came in later in a radio report produced for CBS with, not the solution, but with winners of the contest: LISTEN

Penelope Niven
Biographer of Carl Sandburg
Apr. 11, 1939 -- Aug. 28, 2014. In addition to the Sandburg history, Niven published five other books, including biographies of Thornton Wilder, Edward Steichen, and James Earl Jones. Penelope Niven became obsessed with the poet after she worked as a volunteer at the Carl Sandburg house, and helped to reorganize his effects and papers for an exhibit.

Don spoke to her on the publication of Carl Sandburg: A Biography: listen


Don Swaim outside of the Carl Sandburg house near Asheville, NC

Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Veteran Suspense Novelist
Apr. 25, 1916 -- Aug. 10, 2014. Davis, author of some 20 books, was 98 at the time of her death in Palisades, NY.

Don spoke to her on the publication of one of the four mysteries featuring her heroine Julie Hayes: listen

Louise Shivers
Writer of Rural South
Aug. 15, 1929 -- Jul. 26, 2014 Shivers's surprise critical hit was Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, published in 1983.

Don spoke to the charming Southerner on April 21, 1983: listen

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview: listen

Gene Maeroff
Education Writer
Aug. 15, 1929 -- Jul. 25, 2014 Maeroff was the education reporter for The New York Times before becoming a researcher and adviser on educational issues for foundations at Columbia and Princeton. He was the author of more one dozen books, including Don't Blame the Kids in which he asserted that the failure of education was not in the students but the educators.

Don spoke to Maeroff in 1982: listen

New Biography May Spark Renewed Interest in John Updike Adam Begley's 558-page biography, Updike, is not only sympathic but candid. It reveals that, while Updike often denied it, his personal life was a virtual blueprint for much of his most controversial fiction. I inteviewed Updike twice, the first after he came to New York for an interview with Diane Sawyer of CBS's Morning Show in 1984, the second during Updike's debate with E.L. Doctorow at the International PEN Congress in 1986. The Witches of Eastwick 1984: listen unedited CBS Wired for Books interview 1984: listen Updike vs. Doctorow 1986: listen ADDENDUM by Don S. I made a glaring error during the unedited CBS Updike interview of 1984 [above] when I insisted that E.M. Forster wrote the celebrated New Yorker story "The Hour After Westerly." I'm not sure Forster, an English author, ever even wrote for The New Yorker. Updike gently tried to correct me by saying he thought the author was Robert M. Coates. Updike was right, of course, and I was wrong -- but it's a testament to Updike that he was too polite to come down on me.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Publishing a New Memoir at 94 Ferlinghetti, famed for A Coney Island of the Mind, is ninety-four years old. He's the last living link to the Beat Generation, a brilliant literary figure who beat the censors by publishing Allen Ginsberg's classic Howl. Ferlinghetti's travel journals are to be published by Liveright in 2015. I interviewed Ferlinghetti for CBS on the occasion of his only published novel: Love in the Days of Rage: listen unedited CBS Wired for Books interview: listen

MAYA ANGELOU
Poet and Memoirist
Apr 4, 1928 -- May 28, 2014
I interviewed the great author Maya Angelou in 1987. She was petrified of heights and would not go above the second floor, so while she did visit me at the CBS building, I had to take a portable recorder down to the second floor for the interview.

three-part Book Beat broadcast: listen

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview: listen

Joe McGinniss
Journalist-Provocateur
Dec. 9, 1942 -- Mar. 10, 2014 McGinniss' first major book, The Selling of the Presidency, was an unflattering look at the Nixon presidential campaign. But McGinniss was best known for Fatal Vision in 1983, about the sensational murder trial of former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald, who claimed crazed hippies murdered his wife and family.

Don spoke to McGinniss about Fatal Vision: listen

Justin Kaplan
Pulitzer Prize-winning Literary Biographer
Sep. 5, 1925 -- Mar. 2, 2014 Celebrated for his biographies of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Lincoln Steffins, Kaplan was also the editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Don interviewed Kaplan on the occasion of Bartlett's sixteenth edition: listen

Amiri Baraka
Firebrand poet and activist
Oct. 7, 1934 -- Jan. 9, 2014 Both a poet and a revolutionary, Amiri Baraka -- born as Leroi Jones -- infuriated his peers by his provocative rhetoric, considered by some as anti-Semitic. Becase he could not be fired as New Jersey's Poet Laureate, the general assemnly abolished the position.

Don interviewed Baraka on this occasion of his memoir The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones: listen

unedited CBS Wired for Books interview 1984: listen