New York City

In the 1947 film, It Happened In Brooklyn, Frank Sinatra plays a soldier who returns after four years at war and decides to pursue a singing career. Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the recently-released DVD version of the film.

Artist Suze Rotolo — the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — was Dylan's girlfriend in the '60s. She's written about the relationship, and about that era's New York, in a new memoir.

The new novel Thirty-Three Swoons by Martha Cooley is a detailed intrigue set in Manhattan, interweaving the worlds of theatre and the perfume industry. Cooley's previous work includes The Archivist. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

He died Monday at the age of 75. In 1964, his book Last Exit To Brooklyn, shocked readers with its salty language and explicit portrayal of prostitutes, thugs, ex-cons and striking dock workers along the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1950s. Selby's other books included The Room, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. (This interview was originally broadcast on May 4, 1990.)

His new semi-autobiographical novel, The Fortress of Solitude, tells the story of Dylan Ebdus, a white kid growing up in an African-American and Latino neighborhood in New York. His last novel, Motherless Brooklyn, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. His other books include Girl in Landscape and Amnesia Moon.

Doctor Elaine Abrams and Doctor Stephen Nicholas are pediatricians who work with babies born with HIV. While many children have died, some have survived into adolescence. Abrams is the director of the Family Care Center at Harlem Hospital Center, and Dr. Nicholas is the director of pediatrics there. They treated the first wave of babies infected with HIV at the height of the epidemic in Harlem in the 1980s. They have studied the effects of the virus on the children's physical and mental health as well as the toll on the community. Some of the children spent years in the hospital.

Painter Jacob Lawrence died on June 9th at the age of 82. For six decades, Lawrence had been widely regarded as one of America's most important black artists. His work depicted the black American experience from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. (REBROADCAST from 5/16/88)

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews “American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century” by Christine Stansell.

Writer Ernesto Quinonez His debut novel, “Bodega Dreams” (Vintage books), is set in Spanish Harlem. Like his narrator, Quinonez is half Ecuadorean, half-Puerto Rican. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes of the book, “Edgy, street-smart. . . An admirable debut, brimming with energy and refreshingly devoid of genre clichés.”

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Motherless Brooklyn" (Doubleday) by Jonathan Lethem, a mystery novel set in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Mark O'Donnell's new Christmas novel, "Let Nothing You Dismay."

New York writer Daniel Drennan has written a new collection of essays about life in Manhattan. His book "The New York Diaries: Too True Tales of Urban Tramau" is published by Ballantine Books.

Schiavelli just written a memoir about growing up in Brooklyn, New York. It's called "Bruculinu, America: Remembrances of Sicilian-American Brooklyn, Told in Stories and Recipes." (Houghton Mifflin) Schiavelli is a character actor who's been in the films "Ghost," "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "The People Vs. Larry Flynt."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Manhattan '45" by Jan Morris (Oxford University Press), "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer (Random House) and "Travelers' Tales Guides" (to Hong Kong, Paris, and San Francisco (O'Reilly and Associates.)

Rock historian Ed Ward profiles Apollo Records. Many of their albums are being reissued by Delmark.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir by Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new book, "Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s" by Ann Douglas, a critical look at cultural figures from the jazz age.

George is one of this country's most prominent chroniclers of black music and culture. He was the black music editor at "Billboard" for seven years and is a regular columnist for the "Village Voice." His new book "Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture," is a collection of his writings about the last two decades in Black urban culture. George also edited the book, "Stop the Violence," a collaboration of top rappers working to end black-on-black violence.

The debut writer's first book of short stories is "The Boy Without a Flag: Tales of The South Bronx." It's an autobiographical collection about the people in his neighborhood. He has said, "I write about the rancid underbelly of the American Dream." He's also in a punk rock band called Urgent Fury.

Maureen Corrigan reviews "Low Life," by Luc Sante (pronounced "luke sahn-tay"). The book explores the every-day existence of New Yorkers a century ago.