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Journalist Richard Preston is the author of the best seller The Hot Zone, about the ebola virus. His new book, The Demon in the Freezer, is about the smallpox virus and the scientists at the CDC who are working with live smallpox in order to develop a drug that could fight it -- should the virus be used in biological warfare. The smallpox virus was eradicated from humans in 1979. Now it can be found -- officially -- in two high-security freezers: one at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and at Vector Institute in Siberia.

Her new film is Whale Rider, a re-telling of Maori legend in which a young girl challenges 1,000 years of tradition to fulfill her destiny -- and win her grandfather's respect. The Maoris are the native people of New Zealand. Whale Rider won the Audience awards at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam Film Festivals. Caro's previous film was Memory and Desire.

The Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial continues with testimony from the families of World Trade Center attack victims. The prosecutors also presented evidence of suffering from the Pentagon attack. The government is trying to convince the jury to vote for the death penalty for Moussaoui.

The Denver band The Fray has made a major national splash with its 2005 debut album, How to Save a Life. The group, formed by a couple of former schoolmates, has been ubiquitous throughout the year.

At the StoryCorps booth in Bismarck, N.D., 81–year-old Virginia Fairbrother tells her daughter, Laurel Kaae, a family story about kindness to a stranger during the Great Depression.

Mary Gordon's book Pearl is about a mother struggling to understand her daughter's public act of martyrdom. It's now out in paperback. Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments and The Company of Women and four nonfiction works (including The Shadow Man. (This interview was originally broadcast Jan. 31, 2005.)

Author Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is an investigation into the guarded world of anti-terrorism policy. He also reveals that al-Qaida was planning an attack on the New York City subway system.

Musa Mayer is a breast cancer survivor and is the author of several books about breast cancer, including Advanced Breast Cancer: A Guide to Living with Metastatic Disease and After Breast Cancer: Answers to the Questions You're Afraid to Ask. She has also written Examining Myself: One Woman's Story of Breast Cancer Treatment and Recovery.

Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote died Monday night at age 88. He is best known for his three-volume, 3,000-page history entitled The Civil War: A Narrative, and for narrating Ken Burns' 11-hour PBS series The Civil War. We rebroadcast an interview with Foote from July 27, 1994.

This year's SATs will require students to use a skill they can often ignore: penmanship. The test now includes an essay section, with no computers allowed. NPR's Robert Siegel visits a Maryland school where pupils are learning the art of cursive writing.