Talk Cocktail

Working Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty

It used to be that we had a somewhat standard expectations as to what it means to be a grown up.  It they weren’t norms really, at least they were a general set of expectations:  College, marriage, a house, a car, kids...all the accouterments of the American dream.  

It’s interesting, that even amid the turmoil and social and cultural transitions of the 60’s and 70’s, these stars remained pretty fixed in our imagination.

Yet the broader economic transitions of globalization, economic disparity and deindustrialization, have had a far greater impact.  One that has tilted these expectation off their axis and may be creating a generation where coming of age, where adulthood, means something entirely different. In fact, it may be the entirety of the reason for the stagnation of the middle-class. 

Jennifer Silva, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, take a look at what's happening in Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty.

My conversation with Jennifer Silva:

Back to School

Few subjects get as much attention as education. Yet in many ways it’s like the weather.  We talk a lot about it, but sometimes it seems we can do very little.  

Perhaps the most important thing we can do is focus on teachers. For they are at the ramparts of the battle. They are not just a piece of the puzzle, arguably they are the largest piece.  Yet how many of us, even the most active parents, really understand what it’s like in the classroom, day after day. What it really means to be a teacher.  

Few are more distinguished or more successful than Rafe Esquith. He has taught at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles for twenty-four years. He is the only teacher to have been awarded the president's National Medal of the Arts and his new book is  Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: "No Retreat, No Surrender!"

My conversation with Rafe Esquith:

The Design of the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge

The Bay Area is, in many ways, defined by its bridges.  Once famous for their architectural beauty and cutting edge design, the new span of the Bay Bridge  may be equally famous for its faulty construction, inflated costs and mismanagement.

While its engineering, politics and construction may have many issues,  few can quarrel with it's design. That design is the work of Donald McDonald, an icon of bridge building throughout the world.  McDonald has over 30 years experience in architectural design, historic rehabilitation, planning, contract administration, and construction management of complex projects. He and his firm are responsible for the design of the just opened Eastern Span of the San FranciscoBay Bridge.

My conversation with Donald McDonald:

The End of Night, or Why We Shouldn't be Afraid of the Dark!

Whenever there are lists of the greatest and most profound inventions of all time, we almost always hear, among other things, about air conditioning, the internal combustion engine and electric light.  This last one, electric light, has seen to it that vast tracts of human population have never had to experience anything like total darkness.  What impact has that had.  

As technology moves so much more rapidly than evolutionary biology, how has that impacted our species.  We’ve all seen the aerial views of the world at at night.  Vast population centers stretching for hundreds of miles, all brightly lit.  At the same time,  our migration to cities continues to create a nighttime culture that is very different than what our ancestors experienced.

That's the world that Paul Bogard takes us to in The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light.

My conversation with Paul Bogard:

The Distraction Addiction

Throughout history we have always looked at technology as a tool to make life easier.  Whether it was a wheel, a shovel, a pencil or today, our smartphones.  Our current technology was in many ways designed and sold to make us more creative.  Instead, in many ways it has made us more fractured and distracted.  But the fault is not in the zeros and ones, but in ourselves.

Dr. Alex Pang, a futurist and thought leader in the field of contemplative computing,  believes we have the power to change our relationship to our technology.  He’s written about it in The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul.

My conversation with Alex Pang:

T.E. Lawrence and the Making of the Modern Middle East

History and great historical sweeps are generally not just a series of unfortunate events. Rather, they are part of long connected progression of events, that circle around and become knotted in each other and that have far reaching consequences that last years, decades and sometimes centuries.  It  often seems that, because we seldom learn from such events, that these historical events don’t have a normal half life.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in today’s Middle East. A place where today's troubles are often the result of yesterday folly.

Might it have been different, if a century ago the British had listened to T.E. Lawrence, the man popularized in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.  

Journalist and author Scott Anderson, lays out the reality of those events that might have changed the world, in his book Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

My conversation with Scott Anderson:

The City that punches above its weight class

Given all the accolades that come to San Francisco, from its role in shaping our culture, and its inspiration for Tony Bennett, it’s often hard to believe that there are conflicting views. Recently, the co-founder of a start-up, credit card processing company, who was forced to move to San Francisco by his financiers, took to Medium with a different view.  

He said,  “San Francisco! It's the worst. The weather, the people, the cyclists, the dreary architecture and glum landscape... just ugh--why would any sane person want to live in this urine-scented homeless wasteland? Without the skrillions of available venture funding dollar and generous tech tax breaks, it's obvious San Franawful would drift off into an ocean of irrelevance.”

This is not the view held by Gary Kamiya, a Bay Area native, and a founder of Salon, who has just written Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco.

My conversation with Gary Kamiya:

Religion and mass incarceration

It has been said, although the origin is uncertain, that there are no atheists in foxholes. The same might be said of prisons.  Particularly prisons in America;  a country that has both a high regard for religion and and an even higher regard for mass incarceration.  

Joshua Dubler, in his new book Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison, takes a look at how these ideas might be related and what his microcosm of prison and religion might say, not only about the men he talks to, but about our society at large.

My conversation with Joshua Dubler:

The last 100 days

Because there is no preparation for the burdens and responsibly of the Presidency, it would take JFK,  almost nine-hundred of his thousand days to reach his apogee.  With the death of his infant son Patrick, as a catalyst, the final 100 days of the Kennedy presidency, which began 50 years ago this month, would become the capstone of Camelot and the defining time of a promised unfulfilled.

Kennedy historian Thurston Clark, in JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, takes us deep inside those final 100 days.

My conversation with Thurston Clarke:

Elmore Leonard 1925 - 2013 - Be Cool

From the police logs in local newspapers to the Metro sections of major metropolitan dailies, from the pablum of TV drama, to pulp fiction, crime always sells.  But few dramatized it better than Elmore Leonard.  

He was the author of 45 crime novels including Cat Chaser, Fifty Two Pickup, Be Cool, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, Rum Punch, Cuba Libre, Glitz  and Tishomingo Blues. He was an American original, who was one of the earliest to understand the heroes needn't be perfect.  Long before Breaking Bad, or Tony Soprano, he created a series of stories and characters, that blurred the lines between “good” and “bad.”

I had the privilege of talking to Leonard several times over the years, the last time in 2004. Here is compendium of some of those conversation:

Why Brainstorming Doesn't Work - The case for thinking Inside the Box

Who hasn’t sat in endless brainstorming sessions, trying to be creative.  We’re told to think outside the box, to magically conjure up new and different ways of doing things.  Often without structure.  Yet when we look at the history of innovation, we find that there are clearly patterns and techniques that do make a difference.  We find that product after product, innovation after innovation shows very clear methods as to how they were developed.

Marketing and innovation professor Drew Boyd has broken these down in a way that essentially enables us to think Inside the Box, to develop a Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results.

My conversation with Drew Boyd:

This Cheese Does Not Stand Alone

A magical cave, a piece a cheese, a 260 lb man,  a modern journey into a time past, and a new, old understanding of food and life.  Just a few of the elements of Michael Paterniti's new literary work of nonfiction, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese

Beginning in 1991 in a famed deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it’s a story, that like Robert Louis Stevensons’ s definition of wine as “bottled poetry,” resonates with the history and passion that some foods carries with them.

My conversation with Michael Paterniti:

The Life and Times of Charles Manson

Often times through fictional characters we are able to capture an entire ethos.  Certainly Jay Gatsby defines a certain era, as does Don Draper, as does Woody Allen’s Zelig.  It’s a rare thing when a real life characters does this. But such is the case with Charles Manson.  

The Tate/LaBianca murders took place 44 years ago this week, and still Charles Manson resonates with us.  The media has often defined him as a product of the 60’s, but in many ways he also defines the 40’s and 50’s.  He was, according to award winning investigative journalist Jeff Guinn, the wrong person in the right place at the right time.

With all that has been written about Manson, Guinn’s book, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, is the first full account of who Charles Manson really is.

My conversation with Jeff Guinn:

One continent, indivisible...

We are coming up next year, on the 20th anniversary of NAFTA.  It has created tens of millions jobs, more integrated a continent,  and dramatically increased trade.  Yet, for politically expedient reasons, we constantly seem to be re litigating these issues.

Arguably we should be looking at the success of NAFTA as a jumping off point for greater geopolitical and economic integration of the North American continent. 

The World is changing. With technology growing and business becoming ever more global, the future economic and national security of the US will be dependent on cooperation with our neighbors to the North and South. 

National security and Latin American expert, Dr. Robert Pastor makes the case for this future in his new book, The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future.  The world is changing he argues and we can't go forward and make progress as human beings, while being held back by arbitrary political borders and nostalgia for archaic ideas such as isolationism and opposition to globalization.

My conversation with Dr. Robert Pastor:

Queens of Noise

It’s hard to believe today, but there once was a glass ceiling in Rock 'n Roll.  That is, before the teenage members of the Runaways in the mid 70’s released four albums for a major label, toured the world and broke down barriers that would open the way for girl bands and female rockers to follow.

Their rise and fall is documented by Evelyn McDonnell in her new book Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways.

My conversation with Evelyn McDonnell: 

Jack Germond R.I.P.

He was almost like a character out of The Front Page.  He loved newspapers, he loved reporting and most of the time, he loved politics.  In 2000 though he stopped writing his nationally syndicated column because he was fed up with what our political system had become. He wrote a book about it, Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad.

In July of 2004, Jack Germond and I talked, as we had many times before, about the state of politics and how it was so disappointing to him.  He pulled no punches as he talked about things that would only get worse during his final eight years.  They don't make reporters like Jack Germond anymore.  

Here is part of our conversation from July of 2004:  

The Future of Elections in America

Reporting on presidential campaigns has become a kind of quadrennial ritual in which, after the election is long over, we get to go behind the scenes to understand what made the campaigns tick; what mistakes were made by the looser and what was done right by the winning team.

The really good ones though, take us behind the scenes of the electorate itself.  They examine not just how power passes, but how the nature of the country changes every four years.  For Presidential votes are different than other kinds of elections. They are a kind of national gut check of the mood, temper, culture and divisions of the time.  They tell us about the candidates, but more importantly, the really good reporting also give us a snapshot of ourselves.

That's what Washington Post Chief Correspondent Dan Balz has done in Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America

My conversation with Dan Balz: 

A Bipolar Life

Kay Redfield Jamison, in her class book about depression, The Unquiet Mind, says that "manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering."  

But imagine if no one knows what your illness is, or if it is mistreated by the medical community.  How much worse is it, when treatment is possible, but it is prevented or delayed  by ignorance.

That's the story that Melody Moezzi tells in Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life

My conversation with Melody Moezzi:

Be all that you can be

Look at most people that have achieved great success and you’ll probably find a great coach or a great mentor.  As a culture steeped in the ethos of success, its surprising really that we don't’ put more emphasis on and greater value for coaching and mentoring.  Think about some examples:  Dr. Martin Luther King, mentored by Benjamin E. Mays. Warren Buffett mentored by Benjamin Graham. Bill Gates who would later be mentored by Warren Buffett.  We marvel at the success of Steve Jobs, who had several mentors, including Robert Friedland and Andy Grove.  Jobs himself would become a mentor to Mark Benioff.

These relationships were not about just teaching. They were about inspiring.  As the great poet Robert Frost said of his work, “I am not a teacher, I'm an awakener.”  Mentors are about awakening us to be, as the slogan goes, all that we can be.  Few do this job better than renowned mentor David C.M. Carter, who now shares some of his secrets in Breakthrough.

My conversation with David Carter. 

John Palmer 1935 - 2013

In this age in which news is often conflated with entertainment and job hopping is de rigueur,  John Palmer was the anomaly.  He reported for NBC for over 40 years.  He covered the White House, the Middle East and reported on some of the most important stories of our time.  

Back in March of 1997, John visited the Napa Valley and we had the chance to chat a bit about Washington in the Clinton years.  John was appalled by the way money had taken over politics, as well as the insular nature of Washington.  

He was a great reporter, who always defined the best of broadcast journalism.  

Here is seven minutes of that conversation from 16 years ago.

Technology is in your Brain.

We are all connected.  In a macro sense the Internet and technology connects us all.  But think about all of our individual networks.  Our social networks, on and off line, our business networks, our networks as customers, as consumers and as family members.  And like a complex venn diagram, these networks get stronger and denser and smarter as they all interconnect with each other.  

But is there a point where it’s too much.  Where the density or even the brittleness of these networks, affect our thoughts, our emotions and potentially, like an autoimmune disease, collapse in on themselves  by reaching a kind of break point?

That's the jumping off point for brain scientist and entrepreneur Jeff Stibel's book Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain.

My conversation with Jeff Stibel:

Is youthful pain the key to success?

We know that real success demands strange sacrifices of those who worship at its alter.  But do those willing to make those sacrifices possess of a unique kind of obsessiveness, the proverbial fire in the belly, that is often only fueled by youthful pain and determination?

In short, is greatness a kind of OCD run amuck, a kind of mental illness, that in the right mind achieves magnificent feats?  That's the idea behind Joshua Kendall's America's Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation.

My conversation with Joshua Kendall: 

You can't understand China today, without understanding this.

We know that for individuals, youthful pain, psychological trauma, and shame can have profound effects.  It can be a driver to depression, or an engine of great achievement.  Just as the high school nerd or scapegoat may spend his whole life trying to gain respect, achieve success or get the girl, the same can be true for nations and cultures.

For China, humiliated by the British in the mid 19th century and then by the Japanese, its modern history has been an effort to find a way to gain respect, to fill the psychological void left by its previous shame and humiliation.  In the case of China, it’s been particularly  difficult  because of its size.  To be weak is shameful, to be big and weak, hurts even more.

This idea provides the framework for China scholars Orville Schell and John Delury’s look as China's modern efforts to achieve Wealth and Power and China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century.

My conversation with Orville Schell and John Delury:

The historical Jesus vs. The religious Jesus

It is the job of historians and scholars to take new and contemporary information and give  context and connection to events far beyond the time in which they happened. This is as true for wars, as it is for the story of Jesus.  Thus it is no accident that for over 2000 years, every word every written about Jesus was written by people that did not know him when he was alive.  It’s significant to note that this was as true in the twenty years after his death, as it is today.  Only today we have a broader compendium of knowledge from which to draw on and a keener understanding of the historical context.

With respect to the Jesus story, this makes it easier in some ways to separate out the religious Jesus from the historical Jesus and in so doing, better understand the origins of Christianity, in its  birth time, and as it has evolved for over 2000  years.

Few do this better than writer and scholar Reza Aslan.  The internationally acclaimed author of No God But God, has now written Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

My conversation with Reza Aslan:

Why we won and why it still matters

As we watch events unfold in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, one thing should become very clear.  Revolutions are very difficult.  To change the direction and fate of nations does not come without much pain and sacrifice and in fact it usually does not work out.  That’s why when we look at own American Revolution,  we should realize what an usually success it was and that it was not inevitable, even with the very special men we had in its cause.  

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis, in Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, takes us deep inside the politics and strategy of that summer of 1776.  

We won that war so that we should never have to care about a Royal baby.....

My conversation with Joseph Ellis

How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour

The economy and Wall Street are once again front and center.  President Obama is engaged in a series of major policy addresses about the economy.  Elizabeth Warren and CNBC are engaged in a kabuki dance about the future of Wall Street.  Larry Summers, part of the team that created our modern economy, may become the next Fed Chairman, and SAC, one of the most powerful hedge funds of the era, is engaged in an effort to keep its leader Steve Cohen and its employees, out of federal prison. 

All of this brings us to Les Leopold’s    How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth.  A behind the scenes look at the world of hedge funds and what it means for ensuring domestic prosperity.

My conversation with Les Leopold:

Washington - Two Parties and a Funeral in America's Gilded Capital

When we try and conjure up a place that is all about power, ego, success, money, hard work, personal baggage and branding, most of us would think first of Hollywood.  As Orson Wells said of Hollywood,  "Hollywood is Hollywood. There’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter — you’re the one who sat down, and joined the game." 

Much the same might be said of Washington D.C.  The difference is that we mistakenly think Washington should be a place of sober reflection on policy and ideas.  But was it ever?  Is the Washington of today any different than it has ever been; from the preening and egos of our Founding Fathers to the cronyism of FDR’s advisers, to the highfalutin schmoozing of Camelot?

It was the wise and sagacious Marilyn Monroe who said, “I don't know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can't stand to be invited someplace that isn't full of other important people.”

That's the beginning and the backdrop for NY Times magazine's chief national correspondent, Mark Leibovich's  new book This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital. In it,  he fully pulls back the  curtain on the great and powerful Oz,  that is our nations capital.

My conversation with Mark Leibovich: 

Difficult Men and Television's Third Golden Age

Today, we are in what some consider the third golden age of television. Many programs are the talk of National Public Radio and of the most elite dinner parties. They have become a significant part of our cultural conversation.   So what changed?  

Was it the long tail of cable television, the need for men to find a place reassert themselves into the national conversation, or simply a natural home for adult storytelling at a time when the movies have ceded this territory.

GQ correspondent Brett Martin takes a deep look in Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

My conversation with Brett Martin:

How

Old songs like old photographs are the purveyors of a kind of double imagery.  They  are  short circuits in time that make yesterdays events, today’s reality.  One such song, is "DANCING IN THE STREET" by Martha and the Vandellas.  Almost a work of art, it conveys and captures an entire ethos in its 2 minutes and 36 seconds.  

It was recorded in the summer of l964.  The beginning of the Vietnam War, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.  It was the Mississippi Freedom Summer;  we’d see the passage of the Civil Rights Bill and it was a time when serious and ironic was becoming the meme of the day. Yet this pop song would become the anthem for changing America.

It’s the subject of best selling author Mark Kurlansky’s Ready For a Brand New Beat: How "Dancing in the Street" Became the Anthem for a Changing America.

My conversation with Mark Kurlansky:

The moral twilight of war

After 9/11 and the onset of the war on terror, it became clear that we might  be in a permanent state of war.  What we forgot, was that war does not exist in a vacuum.  It brings out the best and worst within us.  It forces us to face a moral paradox that we might not have to face, in times of peace.  

This was certainly true in WWII.  These are some of the elements that provide the backdrop for Chris Bohjalian’s new novel The Light in the Ruins

It is a love story and thriller set in Florence and Tuscany in the waning days of World War II, as well as in the 1950s.   But in many ways, it’s also a cautionary tale about the compromises we make during war.

My recent conversation with Chris Bohjalian:

Animals and Humanity

One of the great values of art is that it gives us a unique window on the world.  It forces us to be present and in the moment and allows us to channel our own feelings and thoughts into the work of another.  

In many ways animals, particularly our companion animals. do the same thing.  Perhaps it's why so many of us have them, why we spend so much on them. It’s  also why we often introduce young children to animals at the zoo.  For those young minds, it’s often their first connection to and understanding of a world beyond themselves.

Veterinarian Dr. Vint Virga has set as his mission to give all of us greater awareness and sensitivity towards our companion animals and use them to better understand ourselves and to enrich our appreciation of life. He explains it The Soul of All Living Creatures: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human.

My conversation with Dr. Vint Virga: 

How a Plastic Brick, Conquered the Global Toy Industry

If I asked you to look at a viciously competitive company, in a market where the tastes change rapidly, where you have to redesign your product every year or two and where you were dominating the market because of your ability to innovate; where there was  a cult like devotion to your product, yet it once faced bankruptcy until one of the most successful transitions in business history... most of you would immediately think of Apple.

Well that’s true.  But it’s also true of LEGO.  Yes that humble plastic brick has within it a story that is both a metaphor for and cautionary tale about innovation in the world of business and technology.

David Robertson, a former McKinsey consultant and now Professor at the Wharton School, provides a detailed case study of LEGO in Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry.

My conversation with David Robertson:

Six College Kids and a Billion-Dollar Empire that Came Crashing Down

Some college kids start whole business out of their dorm rooms. Think Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Dell.  Some other students, at the University of Montana, started a business that would be raided by the US Department of Justice and would lead one of its founders to be a fugitive in Antigua, with millions of dollars

It’s only fitting that Ben Mezrich, the man who told Mark Zuckerberg’s story, in The Accidental Billionaires, would now tell this story in Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire--and How It All Came Crashing Down . . .

My conversation with Ben Mezrich:

A father, two sons and one of them murdered by Charles Harrelson

As with the family of Trayvon Martin, sometimes a verdict is even more devastating than the crime.  This is what happened to the family of noted trial lawyer David Berg, after his brother was killed in cold blood, in a hit set up by actor Woody Harrelson’s father.

Like two diverging paths in the woods, the lives of family members often go off in very different directions. For some the road taken leads to success and the good life, for others that road leads to a very different kind of life. This is the recurring irony of all sides of this story

This is the story of David and Alan Berg, as told by David in his memoir Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of a Murder in My Family. 

One brother would become one of our nation's most respected trial lawyers, the other murdered at a young age, by a notorious hit man, hired by Charles Harrelson. 

My conversation with David Berg:

Finding Happiness Singing with Others

Most of us remember the joyful song about teaching the world to sing, in perfect harmony. It was later used as an incredibly popular Coke commercial.  Some of you may have seen the contestant on American idol with a serious stutter, that disappeared when he sang.

Both are testaments to the power of song, and of singing with others. In fact, over 40 million Americans participate in some kind of group singing. But why? What's the appeal and what’s the impact?

Bestselling author ;and commentator Stacy Horn takes a look at his in Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others

My conversation with Stacy Horn: 

Out of many....One

Day after day we see further evidence of what appears to be America's economic decline.  European economies seem mired in a kind of economic quicksand.  But suppose instead of seeking individual isolationist solutions, that the U.S. and Europe could create a kind of transatlantic economic union?

Clausewitz said that diplomacy was simply war by other means.  Today it might be fair to say the same of international trade.  As both America and Europe asses their roles in the 21st century, it's important that we access every aspect of of power, including as both a marketplace for and a purveyor of goods. 

Imagine if at America s birth, the 13 colonies had decided to go it alone.  For all the criticism of the EU and NAFTA today, arguably the world is a better place because of them.

These are a few of the ideas that spring from Richard Rosecrance in The Resurgence of the West: How a Transatlantic Union Can Prevent War and Restore the United States and Europe.

Richard Rosecrance is senior fellow, adjunct professor, and director of the U.S.-China Relations Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA, where he was the former director of the Burkle Center for International Relations.

My conversation with Richard Rosecrance:

Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Who Took America to War

As we once again debate America's role in the world, this time in the Middle East, it’s worth noting that there is most assuredly a deep strain of isolationism that courses throughout American history.  Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in the run up to the Second World War.  

Even as Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, only one in forty Americans thought America should get involved.  This was the world that FDR faced as he tried to reshape America's vision and it’s place in the world.  He reminded the country that it had a “rendezvous with destiny.”

He would succeed in persuading America.  How he did it, is the the subject of Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World by Michael Fullilove.

My conversation with Michael Fullilove:

Revolutionary Conservatives

Imagine a nation at war, a financial crisis, congress divided, bitter partisanship, battles over taxation and the role of banks and corporations.  Members of government who believed in trickle down economics and who thought that business interests should be preeminent and that we had to show America’s strength.   You’d think we were talking about America today.  In fact it was also the America of its birth.  A time when the quest for independence ran headlong into political reality.

This is the reality that David Lefer takes us into in  The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution.

My conversation with David Lefer:

Jeannette Walls

Seven years ago Jeannette Walls reminded us of the resiliency and precociousness of youth,  as she took us through her own troubled upbringing in THE GLASS CASTLE.  Now she turns to fiction and is able to share with us and show us once again how young people can make their way in the world; but more importantly, the raw innocence with which they view their surroundings.  In The Silver Star we get to see how these raw edges get knocked off and how, for better or worse,  fully formed adults emerge.

My conversation with Jeannette Walls:

There really was a golden age of hijacking...

It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a golden age of hijacking.  Over a five-year period, starting in 1968, commercial jets we hijacked nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to Cuba, or Saigon.  Many,  imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their exploits mesmerized the country.

But perhaps the the story that captures the nation's attention on many levels was the the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner’s  story of this period told in his his book The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.

My conversation with Brendan Koerner: