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Former fire commissioner of New York City, Thomas Von Essen. He led the department through the Sept. 11 attacks and during rescue and early recovery efforts. During the attacks, the department lost 343 men, many of them Von Essen's friends and colleagues. Von Essen stepped down as fire commissioner on December 31, 2001. He's written a new memoir with Matt Murray, Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York.

Bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley. He came to fame late in life when his music was featured on the triple-platinum soundtrack of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Stanley sings and plays banjo. He won two Grammys this year for his performance of "O Death" on the O Brother record. At age 75, Stanley has just released a self-titled CD and continues to tour. He's recorded over 170 albums in total, and has been performing continuously since 1946.

He starred on Broadway in M Butterfly, and in the TV series Law & Order: SVU and HBO's Oz. He's the author of the new book Following Foo (the electronic adventures of the Chestnut Man). It's about the premature birth of his twin sons in August 2000. The twins suffered a rare medical disorder. One of them died shortly after birth, and the other twin, Jackson Foo, was in neonatal intensive care for three months. At the time Wong began an e-mail correspondence with family and friends on Jackson Foo's progress.

The latest chapter in the singer's story is a solo album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which serves as one of those rare pleasurable paradoxes: offbeat but faithful to the classics, artsy but accessible, emotional while remaining intriguingly playful.

The 78-year-old singer is currently performing at Birdland in New York City. Previously, Carroll spent 25 years playing at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. This year, she received three lifetime achievement awards; one of them was the Kennedy Center's Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award. Carroll has a number of albums to her credit; her latest is the new solo album Morning in May.

Her new book, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's, is about her two-year affair with the writer Patricia Highsmith. They met at a Greenwich Village bar and were both writing lesbian pulp novels under pseudonyms. Meaker wrote Spring Fire (1952) under the pen name Vin Packer. It sold 1.5 million copies. She also wrote under the name Ann Aldrich. Meaker writes young adult novels under the name M.E. Kerr. Highsmith is known for her classic novels Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Malajube's quirky power-pop sound should seem familiar to fans of The Flaming Lips or the Super Furry Animals, with a touch of The Beatles at times. On "Montreal -40C," Malajube constructs a warm mixture of "ba ba ba"s, lighthearted synths and infectious melodies.

Each of the four members of The Raconteurs have already had successful musical enterprises outside of The Raconteurs, but one is undeniably more prominent than the others: Jack White hit stardom with The White Stripes.

The singer's latest album finds her reaching for a wider country-pop audience. The intensely personal collection, in which she collaborates with husband Steve Earle, is the first in which the Alabama native wrote every song herself.

Alt-Country singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash's latest album, Black Cadillac is surely some of her finest — and darkest — work to date. Over a span of two years, Rosanne Cash suffered devastating losses: her mother, step-mother, June Carter Cash, and father, the great Johnny Cash.