Houghton Mifflin Books

Jeff Glor interviews Ian O'Connor about his latest book, "The Captain."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Ian O'Connor: As I say in the Introduction to The Captain, the answer is found in my son's closet, a mini-warehouse of youth baseball jerseys graced by the frayed No. 2. With Derek Jeter nearing the end of his iconic career, not to mention a milestone (3,000 hits) no New York Yankee has reached, I thought it was the right time to do a head-to-toe examination of his mass appeal. He is the DiMaggio of his time, a beloved but distant figure. My goal was to humanize Jeter. I wanted to paint a public portrait of a private man (warts included) while celebrating his dignified approach and explaining why his No. 2 is No. 1 in the closets of kids everywhere.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

IO: As a newspaper and Internet columnist I had covered Jeter's entire career, so I had a fairly good handle on him. I knew his opponents respected him and appreciated the way he carried himself, but I was struck by the depth and unanimity of that sentiment. Professional athletes are known to whisper harsh critiques about their most successful peers, sometimes with more than a hint of glee. Jeter? As I wrote in the book, his detractors were really admirers who were willing (when nudged) to address his human flaws (and likely felt about it afterward).

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

IO: I suppose it is too late in the game for me to replace Jeter someday as shortstop of the Yankees. That was my backyard dream as a kid, anyway - to play for the Yankees or Dallas Cowboys, take your pick. But in the real world, I believe I would be teaching American history at a high school or college, with a focus on the wars that shaped the nation. I love history, and I've always been fascinated by the hows and whys of war and inspired by the courage and sacrifice of those who serve. And in the end, what's more rewarding than helping young people grow?

JG: What else are you reading right now?

IO: Paul Solotaroff, a terrific writer for Men's Journal and Rolling Stone, has a book out called The Body Shop, and it is a raw and riveting memoir on his steroid use as a young man. I'm also halfway through Bill Carter's The War For Late Night, about the mano a mano between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien at NBC. Great, entertaining stuff.

JG: What's next for you?

IO: I will continue writing columns for ESPNNewYork.com, and hosting a weekly radio show on 1050 ESPN in New York. The Captain is my third non-fiction sports book, so after I catch my breath I'd like to expand my boundaries and try my hand at fiction.

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Ray Stanyard,Random House

Jeff Glor interviews Jeff Shaara about his latest book, "The Final Storm."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Jeff Shaara: After completing the European trilogy, I knew there was so much more to the story of the Pacific that I hadn't touched on. I knew I couldn't tackle that story in another trilogy, since I had gotten some resistance from my publisher about writing too many books dealing with WW2. So logically, I knew I should follow the third European book ("No Less Than Victory") in somewhat chronological order, thus bringing the war to an end in the Pacific in the summer of 1945. But the primary inspiration came when I began the research, and discovered who the voices would be- the characters who tell the story. I never expected to be so drawn into what they accomplished. I just didn't know the story. The more deeply I dug, the more excited I became.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

JS: I thought I knew the history better than I did. Most people learn all about the Second World War in school, or else, they see so many films put out by Hollywood, that it's easy to think we know exactly what happened. But I realized I didn't know nearly as much as I thought. I knew who dropped the first atomic bomb, but I knew nothing about him, what kind of man Col. Paul Tibbets was.  I knew who Admiral Nimitz was, but had no idea what kind of pressures he was under, and how difficult it was for him to share command with Douglas MacArthur. I had heard of Okinawa, but had no idea just how awful that experience was for the Marines and soldiers who waged that fight- and as well, I had no idea what the Japanese commander on Okinawa was like. He amazed me, and I was happy to include him as a fully fleshed out 3-dimensional character in this story.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JS: I've thought about that a great deal. When I began writing (in about 1994), I was at a point in my life when I was considering many changes- going back to school, getting an MBA (I was actually enrolled at the University of South Florida), or even going to law school, since my undergraduate degree was in Criminology. In some ways, my own uncertainty is what made it easier to make the decision to try to tackle the writing of "Gods and Generals". Had that book failed, or had I never begun the project at all, very likely I would be doing something completely different from what I'm doing now- but what? It's anybody's guess.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JS: The biography of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, written by his son in the late 19th century. It's part of my research for my next project, the first of a trilogy dealing with the western theater of the Civil War. That first volume will cover the battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee, April, 1862.

JG: What's next for you?

JS: Shiloh, to be followed by Vicksburg and Sherman's March. Each book (I hope) will be published to coincide roughly with the 150th anniversary of each event.

For more on "The Final Storm," visit the Random House website.

W.W. Norton Publishing

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor interviews Lila Azam Zanganeh about her book, "The Enchanter."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Lila Azam Zanganeh: I fell in love with Nabokov. With the light that radiates from his books. But also with the man himself, and his life. He was forced to leave Russia and flee the Bolsheviks in 1919, at 20, then again, he fled France and the Nazis in 1940, at 41 (his wife, V?ra, was Jewish.) His father was assassinated in Berlin in 1922. Yet he was able to collect himself and write himself into happiness. My own family was exiled from Iran. And my uncle was executed in 1979, in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, on the roof of a primary school in Tehran. He was half-Russian, half-Iranian. His death and the revolution changed the course of all our lives forever. And I became fascinated by the capability to reinvent oneself. In large part, this is what The Enchanter is about, its secret undercurrent.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

LAZ: How much joy it gave me. Writers often feel that the writing process is torture. I suppose I am also inspired in this by Nabokov. He was that rare bird: a happy writer. He was not only very happy in his private life, he adored his craft, as much as he reveled in butterfly hunting. So his happiness became contagious in a sense. Because what he teaches us is a singular way of looking at the world. And this is the leitmotiv of The Enchanter. Each chapter is one idea of happiness according to Nabokov, one way of looking: at time, at memory, at love, at nature, at colors, at words, and of course, at light...

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

LAZ: I would be an opera singer. I've been singing classical music since the age of 17. Mostly 18th-century music. Purcell, Haendel, and also Mozart (though his relatively simple melodies are extremely deceptive, they are the hardest to sing out of anything I have ever come across). Nothing, in my eyes, rivals with the crystalline joy of writing, save perhaps for classical music.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

LAZ: I find that a good way to clear one's mind in the morning, from the rush of the world coming at you, is to read poetry. It feels like praying in a sense, like a clearing of the inner chatter. Strangely, magically (and somehow, more so than prose), it takes one to a place of inner quiet. I try to do it every day, after I wake up. I read just a few poems at a time. Once in a while, if I feel very brave, I delve into Dante or Homer, two or three pages a day. Poetry has the advantage of being short. But then again, Dante and Homer are carved out in handy cantos and books...

JG: What's next for you?

LAZ: I am writing a novel, titled "The Orlando Inventions." It's an exploration on the nature of love, spanning 14 centuries, in sequences of fragments which will be very light on their feet. It starts in the 8th century in France and finishes in the 21st century in New York. The main character, a fanciful knight, is both a man and a woman, and experiences countless adventures. As Robert Frost would put it: miles to go before I sleep!

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Random House Publishing, Gasper Triangle

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor speaks with Justin Cronin about his book, "The Passage," now out in paperback.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Justin Cornin: I actually wrote "The Passage" on a dare from my then- eight-year-old daughter, Iris, who challenged me (her words) to write a book about "a girl who saves the world." I was banging around inside another manuscript that wasn't going very well, and since parenting is ninety percent pretending to know how to do things you don't, I took it up. At the time Iris and I were hanging out together after school, doing what we called our "run rides." While I jogged, she rode on her bike beside me. Usually we played some kind of word game. This time, I suggested we plan the story together. You asked for this, I said, fine, but you have to help me. My daughter was, and remains, a voracious reader, with a sharp sense of story, so this wasn't as strange as it seems. But the truth is, I had no intention of actually writing the thing. It was just a game to pass the time in the Houston heat, and maybe introduce my daughter to the family business. But after a couple of months, I found myself hopelessly in love with the story and its characters. I sat down record what we'd come up with and was shocked to lift my eyes from the keyboard a couple of days later to find I'd written a thirty page outline. I decided to write the first chapter to see how it felt. It felt terrific. You write the novel that wants to be written, and THE PASSAGE wanted to be written. I never looked back.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

JC: I had to learn to do some new things. My other novels focused on small groups of people. But "The Passage" has literally hundreds of characters and over a dozen main characters. The relationships are complex and occur over many years, so keeping everything straight in my mind was a challenge, not just in terms of mental focus but record keeping. Most of all, what struck me was how much fun I was having with the story. I'd planned the whole thing very carefully, and as long as I stuck to this plan, I was on firm enough ground to do the things I most enjoy as a writer, playing in the sandbox of language and delving deep into my characters to see what's really on their minds. A kind of motto I have is that you can't fully understand a character until you know what they're not saying. What's the secret history they tell no one? What's their private pain, the stone they wear around their neck? Even if it doesn't come up directly in the story, you have to know it as a writer.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JC: I've been an English teacher for many years; that's my first career. In some other life I'm a jazz pianist, but that is, as I said, another life. One thing I know for certain is that if I weren't writing, I'd be driving my family crazy.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JC: The book on my nightstand is E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime". I read it many, many years ago and was prompted to re-read it by "Homer and Langley," Doctorow's most recent book, which I loved. Doctorow gave a talk in Houston not long ago and he charmed me completely. The man practically vibrated with wisdom. I remembered liking "Ragtime" a great deal when I first encountered it; twenty years later, I think the book is pure genius. It's a wonderful rediscovery for me.

JG: What's next for you?

JC: My current project is the second of the three books of "The Passage" trilogy, entitled "The Twelve." It's scheduled for publication in 2012, so it's keeping me pretty busy. In the back of my mind I'm simultaneously planning volume three. I'll also be traveling this spring and summer for the paperback release of "The Passage". Touring is like a magnificent desert after a long, filling meal. It surprises you how much appetite you have left.

For more on "The Passage," visit the Random House website.

Penguin Group, John Abromowski

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor speaks with Gordon S. Wood about his latest book, "The Idea of America."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Gordon S. Wood: Because the book is a collection of essays written over the past half century, it's difficult to pinpoint a specific moment. In each essay the inspiration was essentially my desire to answer a question that had emerged in my historical research.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

GW: Often it was the extent of stumbling and fumbling that people in the past had in working out solutions to problems that we now take for granted. For example, the idea of a constitutional convention to frame a constitution so that it would be different from a mere statute.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

GW: I can't imagine another career from the one I've had. Of course, as a university professor I did more than write history; I also taught students.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

GW: Right now I am reading the letters of John Adams from 1784 until his death in 1826. Of course, I read other works in the meantime including a new book on counterfeiting in early America.

JG: What's next for you?

GW: I am working on the Library of America volumes on John Adams's writings from 1784 to 1826. The first two volumes dealing with the period 1755 to 1783 have just been published.

For more on Gordon S. Wood, visit the Penguin Group website.

Harper Collins Publishers

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Stephen Marche: When I was a professor teaching Intro to Shakespeare at the City College of New York, I started telling the stories in this book to impress upon students the vital importance of his plays to their lives. To people largely unfamiliar with his genius, the word "Shakespeare" can produce a vague impression of British stuffiness, of Cambridge dons in tweed and Wednesday matinees attended by school groups in rose gardens. The truth is that he belongs absolutely to our moment, to our experience. The world he created and inhabited is filthy and exalted, cheap and rarified, gorgeous and vile, full of confusion and sudden epiphany; in short as full and complicated as our own.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

SM: I knew that there were some great Shakespeare stories out there. And I knew that he was a widely popular author. I had no idea just how popular he was and how powerful he became. He was the most popular playwright in the Wild West--his plays fully on par with prostitutes, whiskey and gambling as a source of pleasure. He was the most popular playwright in 19th century India and in 19th century Japan. I was AMAZED at how much he changed the world.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

SM: Well, obviously, I would be a Shakespeare professor. Also, in my fantasies, a gambling detective.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

SM: "The History of Arthur" by Arthur Phillips, which more or less feels like it's been written personally for me at this time of my life. It's a novel about a fake Shakespeare play (A big chunk of the book is about William Ireland, the great Shakespeare fraud.)

JG: What's next for you?

SM: More writing. I have a novel coming out in the fall, and of course my Esquire column.

For more on "How Shakespeare Changed Everything," visit the Harper Collins website.

Harper Collins

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Doug Brinkley: A few years back I wrote an article for The New York Times titled "Ronald Reagan's Pen Pal." It was based on an incredible cachet of Reagan letters I found in Philadelphia. I also wrote The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc about, in part, Reagan's D-Day Plus 40 years speech. That was followed by my editing The Reagan Diaries.

As a U.S. presidential historian, in other words, I was spending quite a bit of time in Reaganland. Out in Simi Valley, Calif., I heard rumor about Reagan's famous notecards being around. My dear friend Joanne Dranke found them when doing some library learning in preparation for the Reagan Centennial. All of Reagan's notecards were handwritten. It was quite a find.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

DB: I forgot how funny Reagan could be. He liked those Bob Hope zings.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

DB: I would have become a wildlife biologist or ornithologist or zoologist.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

DB: I'm writing a biography of Walter Cronkite for HarperCollins. It will be published in Spring 2012.

So I've been devouring books on Edward R. Murrow and the History of TV. Also because Cronkite was such a space buff I'm reading books about Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong was my boyhood hero.

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Harper Collins, Suzanne Kreiter

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Mitchell Zuckoff: Inspired is really the right word. The inspiration came in the form of an article I stumbled across in the Chicago Tribune from June 1945. It described the crash of a military plane in New Guinea, and explained that three survivors - one a beautiful corporal in the Women's Army Corps - were living with a Stone Age tribe in a valley nicknamed "Shangri-La." When the article described how they were waiting to be rescued using a half-mad plan involving gliders being snatched from the valley floor by passing planes, the inspiration turned into perspiration! I couldn't believe that this story had been lost to history, and I knew I had to write it.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

MZ: Beyond these incredible circumstances, you mean? Seriously, the surprises just kept coming. First I learned that the WAC had kept a diary during her nearly two months in the valley, and I could find a transcript - she had written it in secretarial shorthand -- in a little historical society in upstate New York. Then I found the chief rescuer still living quietly in a retirement home in Oregon - Earl Walter, who turns 90 this month, and I hope to be there at his party. Earl gave me an amazing firsthand account of the events, and then he handed me a journal he had kept while there. I was shocked also by how many family members connected to this crash and rescue had saved letters, documents, photos and other key materials, and then handed them to me with only the request that I tell the story well. My next surprise came when I learned that I could obtain a brief documentary film - A FILM! - shot in the valley during the events, by a wild ex-Hollywood actor and jewel thief who parachuted in to record the survivors and the tribe. (The actual film is on my website, www.mitchellzuckoff.com) But maybe the biggest surprise of all came when I went to New Guinea, climbed a mountain, and found not only the wreckage of the Gremlin Special, but old men and women who were children back in 1945 and could tell me the story from the natives' perspective.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

MZ: I suspect that I'm already doing it: teaching. I'm a professor of journalism at Boston University. As much as I love being a writer, I can't tell you how much I enjoy watching my students figure out how to do this work of telling true stories.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

MZ: I just finished Patti Smith's "Just Kids," and now I'm reading a terrific book by James Swanson called "Bloody Crimes," about parallel journeys taken by Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln.

JG: What's next for you?

MZ: Did my editor put you up to asking that? Actually, I'm eager to get back to writing. I have a couple of historical nonfiction narratives I'm considering. My decision will be based on which one I think I'll enjoy even half as much as I did writing "Lost in Shangri-La."

For more on Lost in Shangri-La, visit the Harper Collins website.

Penguin Group USA

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor speaks with Michael Willrich about his book, "POX: An American History."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Michael Willrich: A combination of historical questions and contemporary concerns inspired this project. I have for many years been deeply interested in the conflict between the dearly held American notions of individual liberty and the pressing collective needs of a modern society. When I began this project back in 2003, the escalating war against terror was raising serious questions about how best to balance national security and civil liberties. Bioterrorism was on everyone's mind, too, and the specific biological threat most discussed in Washington and in the media was smallpox -- the deadliest killer of all time. As I researched the origins of the modern civil liberties movement in the early twentieth century, I discovered that smallpox was hugely important to that history, too. During the great wave of smallpox epidemics that spread across much of the United States at the turn of the century, public health officials mounted an aggressive campaign to get everyone vaccinated, by force in many cases. This clash between modern medicine, state power, and individual rights triggered a full-blown civil liberties struggle, which had an important and enduring impact on American law, politics, and society. I soon realized I had my hands around a great story. I was hooked.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

MW: I think I was most surprised by the sheer scale of popular resistance to compulsory vaccination. The controversy filled the newspapers, public health reports, medical journals, and records of the courts, but I read almost nothing about it in history books. Today's vaccine wars simply pale in comparison to the vaccination battle that took place in the United States a little over a century ago. Today, government vaccination rules apply mostly to young children and so the opposition comes mostly from parents -- including many who have sadly bought into the myth that vaccines cause autism. (There is no credible scientific evidence for that claim.) But at the turn of the twentieth century, the smallpox vaccine carried significant risks. Even as the government compelled people of all ages to get vaccinated, particularly working-class people, immigrants, and African Americans, the government did virtually nothing to ensure that the vaccines on the market were safe and effective. So there was widespread opposition, including an organized antivaccination movement, antivaccination riots in working class communities, boycotts of the public schools, and a mass of lawsuits.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

MW: The only other careers I've ever considered are public service and music.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

MW: I've just finished reading Michael Klarman's magnificent book, "Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement". It examines the powerful political backlash triggered by the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate America's public schools.

JG: What's next for you?

MW: I'm finishing up a great year of teaching at Brandeis and am looking forward to spending my summer hunting around for a new story to tell in my next book project.

For more on Michael Willrich, visit the Penguin Group website.

Little, Brown and Company

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Pete Hamill: The sense that time was running out for many of my friends in the newspaper trade. Circulation is down, along with profits. Staffs are smaller, and still shrinking. I wanted to capture that reality, along with its deepening melancholy. At the same time, I wanted to make real the people who are the subjects of great tabloid journalism. Not celebrities. Ordinary human beings, moving through the big, bad city, their regrets, fears, furies, beliefs, nostalgias. Along with their deep loneliness in the most populated city in America. If the newspapers die, who will tell their stories?

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

PH: How little has changed since I was a young reporter, a half century ago. Among the enduring truths: deep personal loneliness can lead to murder. Sometimes the loneliness is made worse when experienced in the most densely populated city in America.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer

PH: A painter. Perhaps a sculptor. When I was growing up in a Brooklyn tenement, I wanted to be a comic strip artist. Like Milton Caniff or Roy Crane. After serving in the Navy, the GI Bill allowed me to go to school in Mexico City. There I failed out of painting into writing. But the impulse has never died. I still sometimes lift a sable brush and start making marks on canvas...

JG: What else are you reading right now?

PH: I've just finished a wonderfully acerbic (and frequently obscene) novel call "Sicilian Tragedee" (sp. is correct) by a Sicilian writer named Ottavio Cappellani. Shakespeare meets the Mafia...Last night I started Umberto Eco's "Confessions of a Young Novelist". As always with Eco, it's full of intelligence and wit.

JG: What's next for you?

PH: I have at least three ideas fighting for space in my thick Celtic skull. Ask me again in a month!

For more on "Tabloid City," visit the Hachette Book Group website.

Random House Publishing, Robert Lane Greene

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Robert Lane Greene: Writing about politics and society was my day job as a journalist, and writing about language was a personal passion. I started to see a book in the overlap between the two. First I started thinking about a book about language, and my question to myself: why do so many people seem so angry, anxious or otherwise upset about language so much? Then came the question of cause: what are its deeper roots in society? In our culture? That got me asking where a language comes from, how languages get their "rules", why people are so attached to the rules, and what the wider consequences (politically, socially) for all this anxiety about language correctness.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RLG: I was pleasantly surprised at the joys of working in an actual library. For all the talk about books being dead, writing a book being surrounded by books at NYU's library was a pleasure because when I would look for a specific work that I knew existed, I'd get lost in thought in the stacks looking through other books I'd never thought about. That serendipity led me to learn many things I wouldn't have learned otherwise, things that made their way into the final product. If you write exactly the book you set out to write, you've probably done something wrong.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RLG: I teach occasionally at NYU; if I weren't writing full-time I might teach full time. I do love explaining the things I've tried to figure out for myself, as my friends and family will tell you. I like the back-and-forth. Students ask questions I've never thought about before, and so I learn from them too. And they bring life experiences -- the program I teach in is very international -- that enrich my understanding of the world too. And the really great students are inspiring; you see them learning from you, but they take what they get and go off in directions of their own. You just want to follow and see where it leads them.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RLG: I have a bad habit of reading about three or four things at a time, and I read slowly, which means it takes me eons to finish anything. So I'm reading Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby's book about the history of secularism in America; The First Word, Christine Kenneally's book about the evolution of language; What Hath God Wrought, Daniel Walker Howe's history of America from 1815-1848; and Martin Amis's memoir, Experience. Plus I dip all the time into The Limits of Language, a quirky book by Mikael Parkvall that tells many strange-but-true stories about languages around the world.

JG: What's next for you?

RLG: I don't know yet; I've had ideas as broad and ambitious as a book on the contested meaning of America and as narrow as explaining language and the mind through jokes. I'm also fascinated by religion lately, and everyone's got this book in their house they've never read called The Bible. I thought about reading the Bible really slowly and carefully and trying to make sense of it, and write about this book that is both incredibly familiar and surprisingly unfamiliar to us.

For more on "You Are What You Speak," visit the Random House website.

Penguin Group USA, Evan Kafka

James B. Stewart's columns and books about markets and the economy are must reads. But he writes about more than just money. You won't waste your time, no matter what subject you watch him tackle. His latest, "Tangled Webs," is about false statements, and how he believes an epidemic of high-profile perjury is undermining America.

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

James B. Stewart: I remember exactly when I decided I had to write this book. I was giving a speech about all the corporate scandals of the last decade - Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, Tyco-when it dawned on me that they had a common theme: chief executives lying to the public. Perjury and false statements are almost always essential to fraud. This seemed like an epidemic. What was so striking to me was that these were people at the top - rich, successful, role models and community and business leaders. And then I started seeing perjury and lying everywhere, from media to sports to politics. It was becoming the norm.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

JS: I tried to start out with an open mind about whether these people accused of lying were actually guilty. But I assumed that if they had lied, they must have been good at it, even world-class liars. They were all smart, successful, well educated people. I figured Bernie Madoff must be brilliant since he'd gotten away with lying for over 20 years. But once I saw all the evidence, I was stunned at how bad they were at lying, and Madoff may have been the worst. They couldn't keep their stories straight. Yet they all seemed to think they'd get away with it.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JS: I started out as a lawyer, and I'd enjoy being a federal prosecutor. They're underpaid, but they do tremendous work and render a public service. If I could be a top partner at a big firm, advising clients and in the middle of major events, I'd enjoy that, too. I love ferreting out the truth and sharing it. My main hobby is playing the piano, and I used to dream about being a concert pianist. I did play a concerto with orchestra a few years ago, and it was an unbelievable amount of work. I'm in awe of people with the talent, discipline and drive to pull that off as a career.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JS: When I'm on book tour I like a diversion. I'm about to finish "The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters which is a terrific Gothic thriller. I just finished "Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer," by Wesley Stace. On my last book tour I took up the Harry Potter series and read them all, even though I was a bit self-conscious about being seen in public with them.

JG: What's next for you?

JS: When I was a young journalist I used to worry that there wouldn't be another great story. I don't worry about that any more. I've put out some feelers on a new idea, but book ideas take some time to gestate. Meanwhile I'm busy on some New Yorker stories and my regular column.

For more on "Tangled Webs," visit the Penguin Group USA website.

Robert Yager,Harper Collins Publishing

"CBS Early Show" News Anchor Jeff Glor interviews Richard Ford about his latest book, "Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Richard Ford: I was inspired by wanting to contribute in some way to the 826 initiative, which now exists all over the country - helping young school-age kids to write. The Michigan affiliate in Ann Arbor invited me to dream up something I could do. And this anthology was it. Michigan being Michigan (the State that is), work is an abiding preoccupation, and one the place is sort of famous for. I have a lot of Michigan in my background - went to college there, taught at UM, taught high school in Flint, wooed my wife there. I was happy to seize an opportunity to be useful.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RF: Well, "editing" is probably a misstatement. I rounded up the stories I put in the book; but there was no real editing, just choosing. Maybe it's the optic through which I was gazing, but so much of American fiction and its representative human-like characters find plausibility in work. If stories have work somewhere in them (people going to jobs, not having jobs, being happy or sad with their employment), then the stories and the people themselves seem to make completer, easier sense to me. We get it, and them. I wasn't so surprised as much as pleased to see how much good fiction contributes to what we might think we already know (but really didn't) about work. So much of what we say about work emerges from conventional "wisdom." Fiction can teach us things here, as well as please us. And it does both.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RF: I'm sixty-seven, so I'm probably too old to be doing anything else. Once upon a time I went to law school; so I'd likely be one of those poor guys, possibly deceased. Compared to almost anything I can now think of writing's about the easiest thing a person can do. And you can't really retire from it - they're no benefits. You just schlump forward on your desk one day and somebody comes and takes you away. I was once a sports writer, and I liked that.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RF: I'm about to read Franzen's novel "Freedom," which I think I'll probably love. I read a lot, and not surprisingly a lot of what I read is just so-so. But why should fiction be any different from, say, buying automobiles or have your gall bladder removed at the local hospital instead of at the Mayor Clinic. I read recently several novels of the Indian novelist R.K. Narayan, and was very happy I did. I've read Pamuk and was pleased that a novel I'd have imagined having no natural purchase on would've made me so happy. It's his novel "My Name is Red".

JG: What's next for you?

RF: What's next for me? I'm in the last bits of writing a novel called "Canada" (first-time-through). What's next? Trying to get the end of that and finish strong.

For more on "Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar," visit the Harper Collins website.

Caitlin Kelly, author of "Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail"

/ CBS

"CBS Early Show" News Anchor Jeff Glor interviews Caitlin Kelly about her new book "Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Caitlin Kelly: I was inspired by the fact retail is one of the nation's largest and most powerful industries, with 15 million workers, yet we know next to nothing about the people we buy from every single day -- the salesperson across the counter from us. Every business story I'd read about retail focused only on senior executives and stock prices, but not the people actually selling those products and services every day, without which no retailer could survive or make a profit. Sales associates, who are everywhere around us, remained invisible. I wanted to tell their story.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

CK: Writing memoir, which the book is in its description of my own experience as a sales associate in a suburban New York mall, was really challenging! I've been a journalist for decades and am used to writing about other people and their most private feelings. To reflect on my own experience and try to describe it artfully was emotionally a little scary and professionally a new step.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

CK: Interior design or running my own little shop. It's hard to imagine not being a writer, though.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

CK: I'm re-reading "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman, a fellow Canadian and University of Toronto grad; loving "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell and very slowly reading a great biography of Elizabeth I by Anne Somerset.

JG: What's next for you?

CK: I hope to write my next book about work and how we can thrive in a job even without a big paycheck, which millions of us are now having to do in this recession. I've also been invited to speak at a number of conferences and universities about my book and my insights about retail.

For more on "Malled," visit the Penguin Group website.