Little, Brown & Company

Jeff Glor talks to Don Van Natta about "Wonder Girl."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Don Van Natta: I wrote "Wonder Girl" to deliver Babe Didrikson's inspirational life story to at least one generation of sports fans who may not know her story or her name. One hundred years after she was born -- and 45 after her death -- Babe has become America's forgotten superstar athlete. She was the only woman listed in Sports Illustrated's Top Ten of the Best Athletes of the 20th Century, a list that includes Thorpe, Ruth, Ali, Nicklaus and Jordan. I was moved by her grit as she overcame every obstacle put in her way as she relentlessly pursued her monumental, all-sport career. Her biggest hurdle was getting cancer at the age of 42. After her colostomy, doctors told her she'd never play professional golf again. Fourteen months later, she won the U.S. Women's Open, for a third time, by a dozen strokes. Babe was also brash and funny, a genuine show-woman at a time when most Americans expected their female athletes to look good and keep quiet.

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

DVN: Babe was the most versatile of any athlete -- male or female. She excelled at every sport and game she tried -- basketball, baseball, track and field, swimming, bowling, tennis and golf. But I was stunned to discover that nothing ever came easily for Babe. She worked harder and longer at every sport than her contemporaries. No athlete wanted it more than Babe. She often said, "I don't see any point in playing the game if you don't win. Do you?"

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

DVN: I don't know. All I have ever wanted to do was tell stories.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

DVN: I am nearly finished reading Katherine Rosman's dazzling memoir, "If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, a Daughter, A Reporter's Notebook." It's funny, sad, beautiful.

JG: What's next for you?

DVN: I am writing another sports biography for Little, Brown. This one is about Sid Gillman, the legendary San Diego Chargers head coach and the brilliant pioneer of the West Coast offense. Twenty of Coach Gillman's disciples have won the Super Bowl. American football is my favorite sport, and working on this book, tentatively entitled "The Mastermind," has been a big treat.

For more on "Wonder Girl," visit the Random Housewebsite.

Beowulf Sheehan,Random House Publishing

Jeff Glor talks to T?a Obreht about  "Tiger's Wife."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

T?a Obreht: A few elements of my life combined, actually. I moved to Ithaca, where I (inexplicably) began to write stories about people who are snowbound, and was then further prodded in this direction by a National Geographic episode about Siberian tigers. My grandfather's recent death, with which I was struggling to cope, provided a very strong emotional trigger, and transformed a shaky story about a young boy who observes the interactions of a deaf-mute circus performer and her escaped tiger into a much broader project. Above all, I think, I was asking a lot of questions about death, about loss, and the way we inherit stories.

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

TO: I was stunned by the lack of control I had over certain aspects of plot and character. I had always admired writers who claimed to be able to develop a character and then follow him or her down a naturally-unfolding narrative path--I myself have always been a "make an outline and stick to it" kind of person, and assumed I would continue to be one as I wrote the novel. But a lot of elements--plot points, characters' lives and preoccupations--got away from me pretty quickly. Ultimately, the book I wrote was entirely different from the one I set out to write.

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

TO: Writing was always the only thing I ever wanted to do, but I did indulge a brief flirtation with the idea of being a zoologist or wildlife photographer on the side. When I realized this would entail getting all sorts of immunizations and eating lots of tinned processed stuff and living in a sleeping bag, I gave it up. Studying at Cornell exposed me to teaching, however, which I truly love, and to which I hope to return someday.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

TO: I just finished "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," by David Mitchell, which was as wonderful as everyone I know told me it would be--I didn't want it to end. I'll be in Europe for the beginning of June, and am almost inevitably rereading Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" to get in the mood for Paris. Then I'll be coming home to finish Chad Harbach's amazing debut, "The Art of Fielding."

JG: What's next for you?

TO: A summer full of writing, I hope. It's been strange to step away from my work for the very concrete reason of my book tour rather than just pure, unabashed procrastination and being unable to find time to write has made me miss the everyday rhythms of it in a new way. I can't wait to get back to the desk.

For more on "Tiger's Wife," visit the Random House website.

Random House Publishing, Sharon Steinmann

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

David Eagleman: I was amazed at how little access we have to the massive work the brain does behind the scenes. Almost everything we think, do and believe is generated by parts of our brains to which we have no access and little acquaintance. The longer I've been going into the laboratory everyday, the more I've been surprised to discover how deep the caverns of the brain go -- and how little this issue is part of public dialog.

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

DE: What surprised me the most was how many things there were to say on the topic. I realized I couldn't read a newspaper or go to a dinner party without scribbling down notes about some story or another that perfectly illustrated an important point in the book. So much of what surrounds us illustrates how blind we are to the vast operations of the wet electrochemical computer between our ears.

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

DE: Well, during the day I'm a neuroscientist, and I'd of course continue along that path. But if I couldn't be either, I'd study the influence of viruses and bacteria on the course of human history.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

DE: "The Most Human Human" by Brian Christian and "The Measure of Love" by Chris Wilkins.

JG: What's next for you?

DE: I'm currently finishing my next two neuroscience books: one on brain plasticity (for a general audience) and one a Cognitive Neuroscience textbook for undergraduates. Then I'm back to my fiction writing. My next book of fiction picks up for me where "Sum" left off.

For more on "Incognito," visit the Random House website.

Robin Moleux,Random House

Jeff Glor talks to Leigh Montville about his new book, "Evel Knievel."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Leigh Montville: I was casting about for a new project, for some iconic figure to write about, when Evel Knievel died in TK. As a child-prodigy sportswriter for the Boston Globe back in 1974, I covered the fabled Snake River Canyon Jump/Fiasco. That was a fascinating experience because I was young guy and because it was far different from the 10 billion more normal sports events I have covered since. Bing! I suggested a bio of Mr. Knievel. Bing! The publishers said 'yes' immediately, which is a rarity. It all seemed natural, easy, obvious. Fun.

JG: What surprised you most during the writing process?

LM: Evel Knievel was not a great motorcycle rider! He was fearless, for sure, but he wasn't a great rider. Other riders told me this again and again, psssst, off to the side. He was too big at 6-feet-1, maybe 185 pounds to be great at motocross and, while he rode a lot when he was young, as soon as he went into the daredevil business he started getting hurt and pretty much saved his motorcycle riding for shows. He also never worked out the geometry, the physics of what he did. He simply jumped onto the bike, rode by feel, trying to gauge the proper speed to clear the designated path of cars, trucks or fountains at Caesars Palace. A bunch of times, he gauged wrong.

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

LM: It probably wouldn't be pretty, whatever it might be. I've been typing words for a living for my entire adult life. I truly had no back-up plan when I went through college. I'd been a writer in my head, true fact, since fifth grade. I majored in English and treated a liberal arts education the same way the business majors treated economics. I was getting ready for my chosen field.

JG: What's next for you?

LM: I'm 67 years old and have been promising all my life that I would take a good whack at fiction. Might be time to do it, huh? Then again, some biography project, some interesting non-fiction possibility might come along and off I go again. It's not a bad option at all. I like doing what I do. Keeps me off the streets.

For more on "Evel Knievel," visit the Random House website.

Liz Stubbs, Brown & Company,Little

Jeff Glor talks to Rob Weintraub about his new book, "The House That Ruth Built."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Robert Weintraub: One day, baseball nerd that I am, I was perusing my copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia, looking at the history of the World Series. I noticed that the New York Yankees and New York Giants had played three consecutive times in the early-1920s, and that the games represented a collision in styles between the dead ball "Scientific" style of John McGraw's Giants and the power game personified by Babe Ruth. That intrigued me, and I as I researched further, I realized that the Giants won the first two, and the Yankees flipped the script by capturing the 1923 Series, which was a) the very first title of 27 in Yankees history, and b) the first year of Yankee Stadium, which was built because the Giants kicked the Yanks out of the Polo Grounds, which the teams shared. That's an amazing story, and I felt compelled to write about it.

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

RW: Foremost would be the fact that Babe Ruth's career as a Yankee slugger was marked by an incredible failure in the 1922 World Series against the Yankees' bitter rivals, the New York Giants. We take for granted today that Ruth had nothing but unchecked glory in the field, but actually the Babe was humiliated on the biggest stage (making him something of an A-Rod of the Prohibition Era), and the press lambasted him for the failure, to the point where a good many speculated that he was finished as a great player. It sounds absurd in retrospect, but that was the feeling at the time. Ruth then embarked on a campaign of redemption that included a vigorous offseason regimen at his secluded farm in Massachusetts, and wreaked vengeance during the 1923 season, winning his only MVP Award and dominating the World Series, paying back the Giants and their manager John McGraw with a then-record three homers in the Fall Classic, as the Yanks captured their first championship in franchise history.

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

RW: Probably producing your show! I have been a television producer for many years, and only recently switched my main gig to writing. I concentrate on sports, however, and I'm not great first thing in the morning, so perhaps I'd be better off leaving the Early Show in the capable hands of your current producers.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RW: I somehow managed to read the latter two volumes of Edmund Morris' biography of Teddy Roosevelt without reading the Pulitzer-winning first part, "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt." I am erasing that mistake now, and I can already say it is the best of the three. I'm also in the middle of "Nixonland," by Rick Perlstein, "The Angels' Game," by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and "The Bedwetter," by the beautiful and talented Sarah Silverman.

JG: What's next for you?

RW: I am in the midst of a couple of potential projects I cannot really divulge as yet. Meanwhile, I am working on the upcoming Football Outsiders Almanac 2011, a pigskin annual to which I contribute (fingers crossed for an end to the lockout), writing and producing Run It Back Sunday, an NBA show airing on Turner and Cartoon Network, and helping to care for my three-year old daughter and 20-month old son, Phoebe and Marty. That makes writing a book seem like, um, child's play.

For more on "The House That Ruth Built," visit the Hachette Book Group website.

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.