GORE VIDAL (1925-2012) was the author of numerous novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and essays. A winner of the National Book Award, he was also a tireless political activist and, running as Democratic candidate for Congress in upstate New York, received more votes for that district than any Democrat in a half-century.
NORMAN MAILER (1923-2007) was the author of more than thirty books, including "The Naked and the Dead"; "The Armies of the Night," for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; "The Executioner's Song," for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; and "The Castle in the Forest."
The host of "The Dick Cavett Show"--which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982--DICK CAVETT is the author, most recently, of "Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets." The co-author of "Cavett" (1974) and "Eye on Cavett" (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in Otherwise Engaged, Into the Woods and as narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including Forrest Gump and The Simpsons. Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.