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David Treuer | The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present Mar 08, 2019

Show notes

An Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and an unromantic chronicler of Native American culture and literature, David Treuer is the author of the novels Prudence, Little, The Hiawatha, and The Translation of Dr. Appeles. He is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer offers an epic counter-narrative to the conventional histories of Native American life from the 1890 massacre to the present. (recorded 3/7/2019)

Brittney Cooper | Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower with Rebecca Traister | Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger Mar 06, 2019

Show notes

In converation with Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger Examining the intersections of race, gender, and politics in a popular monthly Cosmo column, Brittney Cooper is also a professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University. Praised by Michael Eric Dyson as ''the boldest young feminist writing today,'' Cooper is the author of Beyond Respectability, a map of the development of female African American intellectuals. Her new book celebrates the power of anger, dispels stereotypes, and reminds women of the power they possess. Rebecca Traister is the author of All the Single Ladies, The New York Times bestselling book about the intersection of sex, economics, and emotions related to the growing number of single women in 21st-century America; and Big Girls Don't Cry, an investigation of the 2008 American presidential election's effects on women and cultural feminism. A writer-at-large for New York magazine, Traister has contributed to many other periodicals, including The Nation, Vogue and The Washington Post. (recorded 3/5/2019)

Don Winslow | The Border Mar 01, 2019

Show notes

The author of numerous international bestselling crime novels, Don Winslow is the recipient of dozens of awards and spots on myriad best-books-of-the-year lists. These books include The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Force, and Savages, for which he wrote the screenplay for the Oliver Stone-directed film adaptation of the same name. The conclusion to the Cartel trilogy that began with The Power of the Dog and The Cartel, ''an epic, gritty south-of-the-border Godfather for our time'' (Esquire), Winslow's latest book brings the blood-soaked War on Drugs onto American soil and into our highest corridors of power. (recorded 2/28/2019)

Sigrid Nunez | The Friend: A Novel with Keith Gessen | A Terrible Country: A Novel Feb 27, 2019

Show notes

Sigrid Nunez won the 2018 National Book Award for The Friend, ''a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory'' (NPR) in which a woman is forced to adopt her deceased best friend's Great Dane. The recipient of a Berlin Prize, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Whiting Award, Nunez is also the author of Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, A Feather on the Breath of God, and Sempre Susan, a memoir about her friend and mentor Susan Sontag. A founding editor of the popular online magazine n+1, Russian-born polymath Keith Gessen is the author of the novel All the Sad Young Literary Men and the editor of three nonfiction books. A journalism professor at Columbia University, he has written for a wide variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, and The Atlantic. Gessen's new novel tells the story of a New York émigré's return to Putin's Moscow to take care of his sick grandmother. ''[T]his earnest and wistful but serious book gets good, and then it gets very good... [and] is a gift for those who wish to receive it'' (The New York Times). (recorded 2/26/2019)

Steve Luxenberg | Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation Feb 22, 2019

Show notes

A 30-year writer and senior editor at The Washington Post, Steve Luxenberg has overseen reportage that has won a host of awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for explanatory journalism. He is the author of Annie's Ghosts: A Journey in a Family Secret, the tale of his eponymous aunt who was locked away in a mental institution and seemingly erased from his mother's memory. In Separate, Luxenberg unearths the Philadelphia-born court case that established the idea of "separate but equal" in the courtroom, thus creating legal precedent for the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case. (recorded 2/21/2019)

Pete Buttigieg | Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future Feb 20, 2019

Show notes

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition The multifaceted, 36-year-old progressive mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg is a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard graduate. Nearly a decade ago he left a successful career in business to return to his ''dying'' hometown with a dream of reinvention. During his two terms in office, he has transformed South Bend into a model of urban renewal, served a military tour in Afghanistan, and after coming out as a gay man, has found acceptance, love, and marriage. Once described by The Washington Post as ''the most interesting mayor you've never heard of,'' Buttigieg changes all that with this frank, inspiring memoir. Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 2/19/2019)

Bernard-Henri Lévy | The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World Feb 15, 2019

Show notes

In conversation with Carlin Romano, Critic-at-Large, The Chronicle of Higher Education, former literary critic The Philadelphia Inquirer and author of America the Philosophical. ''Perhaps the most prominent intellectual in France today'' (The Boston Globe), Bernard-Henri Lévy led the vanguard of the radical 1970s ''New Philosophy'' movement, a rejection of Marxism and the Left still debated today. This moralistic view culminated in 1979's controversial Barbarism with a Human Face and continued in Testament of God, in which he advocated an ''atheistic spirituality.'' He is also the author the internationally bestselling Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, and The Genius of Judaism. Lévy's latest book offers an urgent look at the vacuum created by the United States' withdrawal from world leadership and the ambitious former empires seeking to fill it. Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture (recorded 2/14/2019)

Howard Schultz | From the Ground Up: My Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America Feb 15, 2019

Show notes

In conversation with William Kristol, founder and former editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard. The former chairman and CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz led the java giant from eleven cafes in the Seattle area to more than 28,000 locations worldwide and ranked fifth on Fortune's 2018 list of ''World's Most Admired Companies.'' He is the author of several books, including Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time; the former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics; and, with his wife Sheri, the founder of the Schultz Family Foundation, which supports national initiatives focused on employment and the needs of veterans. Part memoir and part manifesto of corporate social responsibility, From the Ground Up interweaves Schultz's inspiring trajectory from a Brooklyn housing project to leading one of the world's most iconic companies. (recorded 2/13/2019)

Victor LaValle with Justina Ireland, Sam J. Miller, and Alice Sola Kim | A People's Future of the United States: Twenty-five Visionary Stories Feb 14, 2019

Show notes

Amidst a climate of division, tumult, and fear, what will the United States look like tomorrow? In A People's Future of the United States, 25 diverse writers synthesize hopeful, cynical, prescient visions of a country shaped by struggle and strife. Coeditor Victor LaValle's work-including four novels, two novellas, and a short story collection-has been named to a slew of best-of-the-year lists by The New York Times, The Nation, and The Washington Post, among others. Featured in this anthology are Justina Ireland, author of The New York Times bestselling Dread Nation; Sam J. Miller, whose The Art of Starving was one of NPR's Best Books of 2017; and 2016 Whiting Award winner Alice Sola Kim. (recorded 2/12/2019)

Chris Wilson | The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose Feb 08, 2019

Show notes

In conversation with State Representative Jordan A. Harris Convicted of murder at 18 and sentenced to life in prison with no hope of release, Chris Wilson began to improve himself through study, physical fitness, and even started a business. For the next several years he followed the tenets of his ''master plan,'' and in his mid-thirties he convinced a judge of his reformation and earned an early release. Since then he has become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, and mentor. Praised as ''an incredibly moving book that will change the way you look at the criminal justice system'' by Senator Bernie Sanders, The Master Plan tells the story of Wilson's metamorphosis and extols the power of second chances. (recorded 2/7/2019)

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