Live at Politics and Prose

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Sarah Kendzior: Live at Politics and Prose May 25, 2018

Show notes

A scholar and journalist based in St. Louis, Kendzior was alert to the struggles of America’s disaffected heartland well before the 2016 election. Writing on income disparity, labor exploitation, racism, xenophobia, and other conditions of the post-employment economy, Kendzior so acutely identified the conditions that led to Trump’s victory that she’s been credited with being the first to predict it. Originally published in 2015 as an ebook, this collection of essays written for Al Jazeera English between 2012 and 2014 has been updated to reflect the transformation of the U.S. under the Trump administration, including considerations of authoritarian tactics, the media, voting rights, technology, and Russian interference. Throughout her penetrating critique, Kendzior reminds us that to solve our problems we must first discuss them openly and with compassion. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250189998 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesmyn Ward: Live at Politics and Prose May 18, 2018

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In 2011, Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for Salvage the Bones, and last year, she became the first woman to ever win twice. This time it was for Sing, Unburied, Sing, an American epic that earned her comparisons to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. As Leonie, a mother struggling with drug abuse, drives with her children to bring her husband home from Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s state penitentiary, she and her thirteen-year-old son Jojo are visited by two ghosts. While Leonie waits for visits from her dead brother, Jojo hears from a boy his own age, the ghost of a dead Parchman inmate who carries all the ugly history of the South with him in death. Ward is in conversation with Aminatta Forna, Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and author of five books, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning The Memory of Love and, most recently, Happiness. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781501126062 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Scalzi: Live at Politics and Prose May 11, 2018

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Scalzi’s Lock In introduced the brutal, riveting game of Hilketa, in which players wield swords and hammers to try to decapitate each other. The violence is real, but the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people immobilized with Haden’s Syndrome, so no one actually gets hurt. At least, that’s the idea. The sequel opens with the shocking death of a star player, and as a pair of investigators piece together what happened, they reveal the dark side of the near future’s most popular game, a side where the rules are still being decided. One of the major names in science fiction, Scalzi, award-winning author of Old Man’s War and Redshirts, deftly combines a high-tech speculative landscape with the snappy dialogue and fast pace of a police procedural. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780765388919 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alan Stern and David Grinspoon: Live at Politics and Prose May 04, 2018

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NASA launched the New Horizons craft on January 19, 2006. By July 24, 2015 it had covered 4.67 billion miles and transmitted a stream of amazing photos as it flew by Pluto at 32,000 miles per hour. The images made headlines in all seven continents, uniting the planet as few events do. Telling the story of the most distant planetary exploration ever undertaken, Stern, principal investigator of the mission, and Grinspoon, author of Earth in Human Hands and inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, give a detailed insiders’ account of this extraordinary project. They illuminate the science and the technical challenges, profile the key individuals, outline the political debates involved, and suggest what to expect when the New Horizons craft passes through the Kuiper Belt in January 2019. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250098962 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Samantha Irby: Live at Politics and Prose Apr 27, 2018

Show notes

Irby’s sharp and earthy debut collection of essays, now reissued, marked the arrival of a seriously talented and transgressive feminist humorist, one who’s risen into the stratosphere in the wake of last year’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Five years later, these pieces still pack a punch and draw as many laughs as they did the first time around. From failed relationships to tacos to Crohn’s disease, Irby treats everything with the candor and irreverence that keeps people so addicted to her “Bitches Gotta Eat” blog. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525436164 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthony Ray Hinton: Live at Politics and Prose Apr 20, 2018

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Hinton was twenty-nine when he was arrested on two counts of capital murder in Alabama in 1985. He was innocent, but he was also poor and black with an incompetent defense attorney. Hinton was convicted, sentenced to death by electrocution, and spent the first three years on death row in silent, bitter despair. Then he became determined to survive, and even to thrive. He kept his own spirits up by bolstering his fellow inmates, and found new representation with Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy. Released and exonerated in 2015, Hinton is now an advocate for prison reform and a compelling speaker on the power of hope. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250124715 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cecile Richards: Live at Politics and Prose Apr 13, 2018

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For the first time, Cecile Richards—president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for more than a decade, daughter of the late Governor Ann Richards, and heroine of the resistance—tells the story of her lifetime fighting for women's rights and making change. Richards had an extraordinary childhood in ultra-conservative Texas, watching her mother, Ann, transform from a housewife to the straight-talking, truth-telling governor of Texas. But that meant that starting as a young girl, Richards witnessed the pitfalls of public life that are unique to women. Her experiences paint a powerful portrait of the misogyny, sexism, and violence confronting those who challenge authority. Now, she shines a light on the people and lessons that have gotten her through good times and bad, and encourages readers to take risks, make mistakes, and make trouble along the way. Richards is in conversation with Karen Tumulty, a columnist and former national political correspondent for the Washington Post. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781501187599 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Scovell: Live at Politics and Prose Apr 06, 2018

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With more than thirty years of experience as a writer, producer, and director, Scovell knows how the entertainment industry works. She came to Hollywood as a bookish New Englander and worked her way up from a low-level writer for Newhart to a major contributor to shows including The Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman, Murphy Brown, and NCIS and on to creator of the series Sabrina the Teenage Witch. While her roles have mainly been behind the scenes, Scovell has had several moments in the limelight. In 2009 she spoke out about gender bias on late-night TV writing staffs, and later she collaborated with Sheryl Sandberg on Lean In. In both cases Scovell helped spark a debate about diversity in a male-dominated work environment that her candid, wise, and very funny memoir continues. Scovell is in conversation with Alexandra Petri, Washington Post columnist. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062473486 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah McBride: Live at Politics and Prose Mar 30, 2018

Show notes

As McBride recounts in this stirring memoir, she identified as female from the start, but came out as a transgender woman only at the end of her term as American University’s student body president in 2011. When the news went viral and she was featured on NPR and other media outlets, McBride decided to focus her political activism on LGBTQ rights. Her resumé alone is inspiring: an internship at the White House in 2012 made her the first openly transgender woman to work there, and her appearance at the 2016 Democratic convention made her the first openly transgender speaker at a major political convention. She is now National Press Secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization. McBride is in conversation with Joe Kennedy, Congressional representative in his third term serving the Fourth District of Massachusetts. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781524761479 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary Frances Berry : Live at Politics and Prose Mar 23, 2018

Show notes

Berry’s bracing call-to-action combines progressive idealism with the pragmatism of a seasoned activist to argue that resistance effects important changes in all political climates. Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a wide range of historical examples of what resistance has accomplished. She also draws on her own experiences as a key figure in the Free South Africa movement and as the chair of the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004. Her inspiring stories include accounts of going to Vietnam, being fired by Reagan, and defying George W. Bush over an appointment to the commission. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780807005460 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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