Places & Travel

Choying Drolma is a Tibetan Buddhist nun who practices a contemplative system of Buddhism called Cho. As part of that system, she also sings religious songs and chants. Their music was recorded by guitarist Steve Tibbetts who then created guitar arrangements around it. The result was the CD "Cho" (newly released on Hannibal Records). Drolma is currently on tour with Tibbetts and her fellow nuns.

Writer Philippe Wamba ("Phil-EEP WAM-bah"). He is the son of an African father and a African-American mother. His new book looks at the affinity between African-Americans and Africans, the things that divide them, and they myths they each hold about the other. It's called "Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America" (Dutton). Wamba has lived in both countries. His father, Prof. Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, is currently leader of the rebel faction in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Writer and flight attendant Elliott Neal Hester. He writes the bimonthly column "Out of the Blue" for the online magazine, Salon. He's also working on an upcoming book about flying the "not so friendly skies."

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson. He's a former Florida congressman and a former P.O.W. during the Vietnam war. He spent almost seven years as a prisoner of war. Now everyday, living in Vietnam, he passes by the Hanoi Hilton, the building that held him. Peterson is the subject of a new PBS documentary, "Assignment Hanoi." (It airs on many PBS stations September 7th).

Adventure writer Randy Wayne White. He wrote the "Out There" column for "Outside" magazine for many years. He's now a monthly columnist for "Men's Health" and is the author of the new book, "The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua: True tales of adventure, travel, and fishing." (The Lyons Press).

Steve Erlanger is the Central Europe and Balkans Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He reports from Prague, Czech Republic on the aftermath of the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia. During the war, he filed reports from Belgrade.

Music critic Milo Miles comments on a recent concert he went to featuring Brazilian pop singer Caetano Veloso. He's currently touring in the United States promoting his new album "Livro" on the Nonesuch label.

Craig Stanford studies chimpanzees and gorillas in Uganda. In early March, Hutu rebels kidnapped 14 westerners including his field assistant. 8 of the hostages were killed. Stanford had left the region before the attack. Stanford talks about the political situation and its impact on the wildlife there. He is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "The Hunting Apes," and "Chimpanzee and Red Colobus."

Serbian filmmaker Goran Paskaljevic (GOR-en) (pas KAL yeh vich) His new black-comedy "Cabaret Balkan," a fictional account of life in Belgrade on the eve of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the civil war in Bosnia. Shot entirely at night over a two-month period in 1998. It has received a European Critics Award for "best film" last year. Paskaljevic attended the famed Prague film school and has gone on to make such films as: "Someone Else's America," "Tango Argentino," and "Time of Miracles."

American guitarist and composer Ry Cooder. Cooder produced a new CD by Ibrahim Ferrer (ph), one of the singers with the band. A new documentary film called "Buena Vista Social Club," produced by Cooder, tells the story of these musicians.

Dan Fesperman is the former Berlin Bureau correspondent for the Baltimore Sun 1993-1996. From there he extensively covered Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. He has drawn for his experience there for the setting of his new crime novel "Lie in the Dark." (Soho) It is about a Sarajevo homicide detective who must do his job while corpses pile up from the on-going civil war.

Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, Frederick Kempe. As a journalist, he's covered Germany for over twenty years, and is also the son of German immigrants. His new book "Father/land: A Personal Search for the New Germany" (Putnam) is his exploration into his family's past in Germany, and an analysis of Germany today.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler and Lie in the Dark by Dan Fesperman.

World Music critic Milo Miles reviews a new 5-CD box set of modern Brazilian pop music, "Tropicalia 30 Anos" (Brazilian Polygram).

Former chief United Nation's hostage negotiator Giandomenico Picco. He has written about his experiences in the new book "Man without a Gun: One diplomat's secret struggle to free the hostages, fight terrorism, and end a war." (Times Books) Picco helped negotiate the release of more than a dozen western hostages being held by Islamic militants in Lebanon. He currently serves as president of GDP Associates, an international consulting firm in New York city, and is founder of the Non-Governmental Peace Strategy Project based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Journalist and author Martin Dillon is considered an expert on the conflict in Northern Ireland. His three books: "God and the Gun," "The Shankill Butchers," and "The Dirty War." all bestsellers in his native Ireland have just been published for the first time in the U.S. Martin Dillon has worked for the BBC in Northern Ireland for 18 years. He has also produced news segments for CNN, ABC, CBC, and NPR. He currently lives in New York City.

Former U.S. Senator from Maine, George Mitchell. After leaving the Senate he chaired the Northern Ireland peace talks. His new book is about that, "Making Peace: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Negotiations that Culminated in the Signing of the Northern Ireland Peace Accord, told by the American Senator who Served as Independent Chairman of the Talks" (Knopf).

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Dreamland" (HarperCollins) the new novel by Kevin Baker about New York City in the early 1900s.

Journalist Serge Schmemann is foreign editor and former Moscow Bureau Chief for The New York Times,and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He'll discuss the situation in Kosovo, and Russia's response. And he'll talk about his own family's exodus from Russia, pushed out by the Russian Revolution. His new book "Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village." Schmemann is the descendant of several families of the higher Russian nobility. He was born in Paris.

Historian John Dower is the author of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" (W.W. Norton) about the aftermath of the war on Japan, and the American military occupation. Dower says he wanted to capture a sense of what it meant to start over in a "ruined world" for people at all levels of society and how that time became a "touchstone for affirming a commitment to 'peace and democracy.'" Dower is the Elting E. Morrison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.