B13 Peer Review

For more than 50 years, actress and singer Diahann Carroll has been breaking barriers. She was the first black woman to win a Tony for best actress, and the first black woman to star in her own TV show — while not playing a maid. As the title character in that sitcom, Julia , Carroll became the model for one of the first black Barbie dolls. These days, Carroll is still elegant, still headstrong and still able to turn heads with those illustrious legs, though the title of her new memoir might suggest otherwise: The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way . "I'm going to admit I'm very proud of them," Carroll says, laughing, in a conversation with NPR's Michele Norris. "They are holding up amazingly well." The book's cover features Carroll in a director's chair, her legs crossed and outstretched. She looks relaxed, but the preparations for the photo shoot were anything but. No...