LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE HERE SUBSCRIBE TO iTUNES PODCAST HERE Our war on Xmas: listening to BOB DYLAN’s Christmas album! Is this a joke — or a tragedy? SEAN WILENTZ explains — he’s official historian at the official Bob Dylan website (he also teaches history at Princeton.) READ Sean Wilentz on Dylan’s Xmas album [...]
Starting with Bill Clinton’s Back to Work: Clinton’s argument about “why we need smart government for a strong economy” begins at the end of his presidency in 2000, when employment was booming. But to understand what has happened since then, you need to understand what Clinton did. Then comes Chris Matthews’s Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero – [...]
LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SHOW– SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST In the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Republicans like anti-war Ron Paul–and Democrats may vote for “Uncommitted” rather than Obama. JOHN NICHOLS explains – he blogs at TheNation.com. Also: TOM FRANK talks about the “bottomless sense of grievance” on the right today – for example, the “Team Infidel” people [...]
Jon Wiener: You show in your book God Is Not Great how many horrible things men have done because of religion. In Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade and Baghdad, men kill other men, and say God told them to do it. But why blame God for the bad things that men do? Christopher Hitchens: I don’t [...]
A personal list, starting with Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State . . . . . . and then To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918, by Adam Hochschild. . . . . . and Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable. Posted at [...]
Republican states have been changing their laws to make it harder to vote – now activists are challenging those laws, and yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder finally suggested he might enforce the laws the prohibit discrimation in voting, especially when they target minority voters – ARI BERMAN of The Nation will report. Plus: blacks and [...]
LISTEN ONLINE TO THIS SHOW– SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST Manufacturing in America: 54,000 American factories have closed in the past decade. What would it take to bring some of them back from China? HAROLD MEYERSON reports on differing strategies – match Chinese wages; or beat the Chinese with productivity; or provide government support for manufacturing. Harold [...]
David Montgomery, one of the founders of the “New Labor History” in the United States, who inspired a generation of activists and historians, died December 2. He was 84. David lived a remarkable life: blacklisted as a union organizer in the 1950s, twenty years later he was named Farnam Professor of History at Yale. Even [...]