Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, in front of the Library of Congress. All of Mr. Sheehan's letters and research on the Vietnam War and those of John Paul Vann are housed in the Library of Congress. Brian Lamb recorded five interviews with Mr. Sheehan regarding the book in the fall of 1988; those interviews and a succeeding call-in gave Brian Lamb the idea for the Booknotes series.
Truman biographer David McCullough in front of the vice president's office at the U.S. Senate. Mr. McCullough retraced Harry Truman's steps when, as vice president, he was alerted that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died and ran from a meeting on the House side of the Capitol to this office. That night Truman was sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States.
David Halberstam at Eli Zabar's coffee shop on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The author said on "Booknotes" that he liked to have "a very lazy cappuccino" before he started writing for the day.
Eighty-year-old Shelby Foote at work in his Memphis home. In the upper right corner of first two photos is a portrait of Marcel Proust. "While I was taking this photo," wrote Brian Lamb, "Mr. Foote told me he has read all of Proust's works nine times."
Foote wrote 1.5 million words on the Civil War with this dip pen. He described on C-SPAN how he had trouble finding steel-tip replacments for the pen and often had to bargain with the few stationery stores that still sold them.
Shelby Foote holds one of the many handwritten bound manuscripts for his three-volume series on the Civil War. Mr. Foote started working on the trilogy in 1954 and continued to research and write the volumes for the next twenty years. He then returned to writing novels.
Albert Murray in his Harlem apartment with his yellow legal pads and the music cassettes he listened to as he wrote. It was here that Mr. Murray wrote nine books starting in 1962.
Speechwriter and author Peggy Noonan is pointing at a Mass card that once belonged to playwright Tennessee Williams. For inspiration, she keeps it taped to the side of her computer monitor in her brownstone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Stanley Crouch writes in his apartment on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village. An avid jazz lover, Mr. Crouch surrounds himself when he works with the music and photos of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong.
Writer Christopher Hitchens working in his preferred location at Timberlakes bar near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. When the jukebox was playing, Mr. Hitchens said, his concentration improved.
Author and former school principal Madeline Cartwright takes a break from her computer to play with her grandson Jared, age 7, and a family friend, Destini, 18 months. On "Booknotes", Ms. Cartwright described how she wrote her book on this bed in her home in Philadelphia.
Journalist Johanna Neuman with her cat, Smokey, in her lap, working in her Bethesda, Maryland home. Her husband, the former press secretary to President Gerald Ford, is in the photograph behind her, holding a press conference in 1975.
Lynn Sherr, ABC 20/20 correspondent and Susan B. Anthony biographer, in New York City, reviewing microfilm of the Anthony papers that she purchased for her book research.
Former CBS reporter Charles Kuralt in his writing office located on West 57th Street in New York. Mr. Kuralt said he wanted to re-create "the feel of a seedy, failing, small gentleman's club."
