Month: October 2005

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Arnold’s Initiatives: How did we get here?
AMY WILENTZ will explain the background next week’s special election — she’s a contributing editor to The Nation and also writes for the New York Times and the L.A. Times — her new book is Armed Response: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger— it’s a political memoir that will be out next fall.
Web Extra: LA Times poll shows 3 of 4 Schwarzenegger initiatives way behind with voters.

ALSO: The Rise of American Democracy, from Jefferson to Lincoln:
Princeton historian SEAN WILENTZ “takes his place among the finest writers of history America has produced,” says Philip Roth. “He redeems the time he writes about without sentimentality or cynicism and with a deep understanding of every last detail of the American political tradition.”

PLUS:
Fascism in America: FRANK RICH talks about a novel in which a fascist is elected president of the U.S. in a time of fear – not 2004, but rather 1940.
The novel is Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America — it’s out now in paperback. Frank Rich writes those great op-ed columns in the Sunday New York Times.
(Archive edition, originally broadcast Sept. 29, 2004.)

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The Plamegate Indictments: We’ll have analysis from JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent for The Nation. He says the issue is not simply outing a CIA agent, or lying to the special prosecutor — the issue is lying to the American people about the reasons for going to war. John writes “The Online Beat” at www.TheNation.com — and his new book is The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History — it’s out now in paperback from the New Press.

ALSO: ROSA PARKS died Monday at 92 — her refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and propelled Martin Luther King to leadership of the Civil Rights movement. HERBERT KOHL says the history books are wrong in describing her as a modest seamstress too tired to move that day; instead she was an experienced activist, a local NAACP official, and a community leader. Kohl’s new book is She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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PLUS BOB DYLAN’s book Chronicles Volume 1:
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It’s a surprising and wonderful memoir – from the eager unknown, trying to make it in the Village, to the beleaguered superstar of the late 1960s.

We’ll have comment from Princeton historian SEAN WILENTZ – and we’ll listen to SEAN PENN reading from the book — it’s out now in paperback. (Archives edition, originally broadcast March 23, 2005)

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GEORGE BUSH AND THE SUPREMES– Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has left commentators on the right angry and bitter. HAROLD MEYERSON reports – he writes for the LA Weekly, The American Prospect, and the Washington Post op-ed page, where he has a terrific new piece on “The Right’s Dissed Intellectuals.”

THE SHAME OF THE NATION: Over the past several years, JONATHAN KOZOL has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the last 15 years. A state of nearly absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of our schools; a protomilitary form of discipline has now emerged, methods of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons but targeted exclusively at black and Hispanic children; and high-stakes testing has taken on pathological and punitive dimensions. Kozol’s first book, Death at an Early Age, won the National Book Award and sold more than two million copies.

A DEVIL’S DICTIONARY OF BUSINESS : from “dead cat bounce” to “Hello Kitty merchandising,” NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN charts the diabolical terrain of the business world from alpha to omega. Nick von Hoffman wrote a syndicated column for the Washington Post for four years. He is the best-selling author of Citizen Cohn, a book about Roy Cohen, and he’s a columnist for the New York Observer.

Web extra: Marc Cooper writes, “at the offshore betting site bodog.com you can wager real cash money on whether or not Tom DeLay gets convicted. Is this a great world or not? You can make money and watch the Ham Sandwich get sliced!” P.S.: The odds now are 13-10 for conviction.

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THE GODLESS CONSTITUTION: Did the Founding Fathers want America to be “a Christian nation”? ISAAC KRAMNICK says the Founding Fathers had no problem with a Christian people — but they were firm in their insistence on a secular government. His new book is The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State.

Also: ADAM SHATZ on The Jewish Question in France: how France’s most eminent journalist, Jean Daniel, has for half a century been both a friend to Israel and a defender of Palestinian rights: “a trapeze act that he has managed with extraordinary grace.” Adam is literary editor of The Nation; he wrote about “The Jewish Question” for The New York Review of Books.

Plus: It’s the 100th anniversary of the Wobblies!
PAUL BUHLE has written a fabulous graphic history of the IWW: Mike Davis says “tell the bosses to go to hell and buy an extra copy of this wonderful history.”

And REBECCA SOLNIT talks about her wonderful new book A Field Guide to Getting Lost — it’s a book about uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. She’s an activist and award-winning writer; her last book was the indispensible Hope in the Dark.