Society & Culture

Michael Tonry is a professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. His new book, Malign Neglect: Race Crime, and Punishment in America, discusses how our current approach to fighting crime victimizes disadvantaged black Americans. He calls for a reform of sentencing and parole policies.

Director of the National Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition at Tufts University, Dr. Larry Brown. He directed a recent study titled "Statement on Key Welfare Reform Issues: The Empirical Evidence." It revealed the assumptions behind the Republican "Contract With America" regarding welfare reform to be wrong. He agrees reform is necessary but must be focused on the right target.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new CBS series "Under One Roof," starring James Earl Jones and Joe Morton. It's notable for being the first television drama focusing on an African American family.

Biographer Deirdre Bair has written acclaimed biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Her newest subject is writer and diarist Anais Nin. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes, "Bair's Nin emerges as the complex woman she was, a woman who inspired both wrath and passion in those whose paths crossed hers. It's called Anais Nin: A Biography.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on his five-year-old daughter's developing literary tastes.

Lee has written two volumes of poetry, Rose and The City in Which I Love You. He's won many awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He's just completed a memoir about his family's refugee experience in America, The Winged Seed. Lee was born in Indonesia; his parents were from China, where his father had been private physician to Mao. After escaping Southeast Asia, the family ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where his father headed an all-white Presbyterian church.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg comments on metaphors used for the Internet -- which he says are all wrong.

Louganis has written a book, "Breaking the Surface," detailing the private life behind his diving persona. In 1988 he became the first diver in history to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in both the 10 meter platform and 3 meter springboard events. In 1994 he admitted he was gay. He has since revealed he has AIDS and knew it prior to the '88 games.

Chicago police officer Eric Davis, known as "21" in the rap group the Slick Boys. Davis and two other officers founded the group in 1991 to provide positive role models for the inner-city kids they encountered on their jobs every day. The group has received national acclaim for their songs about the importance of getting an education and staying off of drugs and out of gangs. Davis grew up in the Cabrini-Green development of Chicago, where the three officers work.

Williams spent the first ten years of his life believing he was white in segregated Virginia, and that his dark-skinned father was Italian. When his parents' marriage ended, his father took him and his brother to Muncie, Indiana, where the boys learned that they were half black. Williams' new memoir "Life on the Color Line" is about the struggle and repression he faced growing up between the races. Publisher's Weekly calls it "(an) affecting and absorbing story."

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg considers who was and is now considered a visionary.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Washington Post, David Maraniss. He's just completed a new biography of President Clinton, "First in His Class." In researching the book, Maraniss interviewed more than 400 people, including Clinton's friends, relatives, and colleagues. One reviewer writes, "the portrait of Mr.

TV critic David Bianculli previews tonight's episode of "Mad About You," which features a guest appearance by Carl Reiner as Alan Brady -- the character he played on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Professor Michael Kazin's new book, "The Populist Persuasion: An American History," explores the rise and change of populism and its effect on the political structure. He examines populism's roots as a leftist, liberal movement, and how populist ideas came to be used as rhetoric of conservative Presidents Nixon and Reagan.

Poet Mark Halliday reads "Separated Father," a poem about the differences between familial and romantic love.

Monette died of complications from the AIDS virus on Friday, at age 49. His 1988 book "Borrowed Time: An Aids Memoir," was the first memoir to be published about AIDS, and won a National Book Award. In it, Monette told the story of his "beloved" friend and lover's two year struggle with AIDS. The book was called "a gallant, courageous love story." In 1992, he wrote a memoir about his own life before he came out of the closet at the age of 25, "Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story." (Rebroadcast)

Sexologist Leonore Tiefer has written a new book called "Sex Is Not a Natural Act: and Other Essays." She looks at our society's anxieties towards and ignorance about sex. She also questions what is "normal" sex. Tiefer received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology, and later specialized in clinical psychology to become a sex researcher, sex therapist and an Associate Professor at the Montefoire Medical Center in New York City. Tiefer has also been a sex columnist for the New York Daily News.

Golden in the author of the new memoir, "Saving Our Sons." She writes about bringing up her son in Washington D.C., where homicide is the leading cause of death for Black males between 18 and 24. In the preface, she says, "I stopped work on a novel in order to write this book. The unremitting press of young lives at risk, the numbing stubbornness of annual, real-life death tolls, rendered fiction suddenly unintriguing, vaguely obscene."

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "Boys on the Side," a new movie about the friendship among outlaw women in the vein of "Thelma and Louise."

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Wedding," by Dorothy West, one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance.