Now I've Heard Everything

For 21 years, from the mid-1950s to the mid '70s, mayor Richard j. Daly ran the city of Chicago. And I mean he ran the city.

One member of Daley’s cabinet was a woman named Jane Byrne, who was Chicago’s Commissioner of Consumer Sales.

Not long after Mayor Daley’s death in 1976 Byrne left her city job, and ran for mayor herself in 1979. And against the odds, Byrne won.   She became not only Chicago's first female mayor, but the first woman to be elected mayor of any major U.S. city.

But 4 years later, when she ran for reelection, the tide that had swept her into office swept her back out again.

Back around 1988 or '89, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing a little book written by a former Unitarian minister called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Readers all over the world were struck by the simplicity and elegance and wisdom of that little book.

That man was Robert Fulghum, and his book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.

Here's how he summed up the book when he and I first talked about it in 1988:

A year later, we met again, to talk about his sequel, a book called It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.

Where has everybody's manners gone? Doesn't anybody have good manners anymore ?

For over 40 years, syndicated columnist Judith Martin -- better known as Miss Manners -- has been helping people navigate the often confusing Waters of good manners .

In her polite but firm way, Martin answers readers questions about what constitutes good manners and good etiquette in today's world.

In 1990, Martin wrote a book called Miss Manners Guide For The Turn of Tthe Millennium. And that was when I had one of many conversations that I've had with her over the years.

Today is March 30th, and it was 41 years ago today that a young man tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.

And one of the most controversial things that happened that day happened to a man with a long and distinguished military and public service career, general. Alexander Haig.

Haig was a graduate of West point m. He served in Korea, served in Vietnam, earned the silver Star and the purple heart. And by 1973 was the youngest four-star general ever in the US army.

In 1973, Haig became President Richard Nixon's, Chief of staff just as the Watergate scandal was turning up to full boil.

In fact, many say that Haig was instrumental in persuading Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.

I'm not sure Frank Warren understood what he was unleashing in January, 2005, when he initiated his PostSecret project .

What started as something of a social experiment, encouraging people to send him their innermost secrets on a postcard, turned into something way beyond that.

It wasn't long before Frank, a mild-mannered man from suburban Washington, DC started receiving thousands of postcards, from all over the world .

In 2005 he published the first book. A collection of those postcards, called simply PostSecret. That's when I first met him.

Human sexuality has been widely studied, researched, and written about over the years, most notably, perhaps, by Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson .

In the 1970s and '80s, there was a trilogy of books about sexuality by another researcher that drew widespread praise and criticism.  It was called The Hite Report, by researcher Shere Hite.

Much of the controversy centered on the fact that Hite was a feminist who drew upon political and philosophical viewpoints into her work.

In 1988 she completed her trilogy with a volume called Women And Love. And that's when I first met her, during a whirlwind book tour that included some controversial stops, including TV's Phil Donahue show.

It was around this time in 1961 that a group of five young men formed a singing group called The Elgins. They were good, so good that Berry Gordy signed them to a contract at Motown. Trouble was, there was already a group called The Elgins, so Gordy asked them to find a new name.

That's when they became The Temptations. Their leader and founder was baritone Otis Williams.

And over the next five decades, the temptations establish themselves as one of the most popular and most enduring soul music acts.

In 1988, Williams wrote a book that was part memoir, part story of The Temptations. And that's when I had the chance to meet him .

Barry Levinson is an Oscar-winning film director and screenwriter. But it also turns out he's a pretty good novelist.

The man famous for such films as Diner, Rain Man, and Good Morning, Vietnam wrote a novel in 2003 called Sixty-Six.

Like his Baltimore-based movies, Sixty-Six was the storyof young men dealing with momentous changes in their lives and in the society around them.

Some think this is the beginning of another Cold war. Or worse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has changed the course of world events.

Not since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 have Americans paid such close attention to Russia .

I was thinking recently that this called to mind and interview I did in 1995, with a Russian woman named Luba Brezhneva.

If her last name sounds familiar, it should. Heruncle, Leonid Brezhnev, was Soviet premiere for 18 years after the ouster of his predecessor. Nikita Khrushchev.

Luba was just barely out of her teens when her uncle took over the USSR, and in many ways her story is simply that of a young woman finding her way in the world. Luba Brezhneva was in a unique position. And it wasn't always a pleasant position.

Many authors, maybe even most authors, labor in obscurity for months or years before finally hitting it big with a bestseller .

But Patricia Cornwell hit it big with her very first book, Post Mortem in 1990.  And in the three decades since then, she has sold over 100 million books.

Her wildly popular mysteries feature a medical examiner named Dr. Kay Scarpetta.  Cornwell based the character loosely on a real life medical examiner for whom she worked briefly in the 1980s.

I first interviewed Patricia Cornwell when Post Mortem was published.  The interview you're about to hear is our second interview, a year later, when her second book, Body of Evidence was published.