[via the current issue of Vanity Fair] In 1968, with the country divided over the war in Vietnam, the Democratic Party struggled to rally behind a candidate. Amid this political turbulence, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, guided by a set of principles and his burning opposition to the war, entered the race. The party establishment reacted with dismay, but his candidacy, coming just five years after the assassination of his brother John F. Kennedy, filled the electorate with hope — a hope that met a violent end just a few months later. By Thurston Clark Two months after John F. Kennedy’s […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR W/ Guest Host DAVE DAVIES The United States is home to less than five percent of the world’s population — and almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Adam Liptak, national legal correspondent for The New York Times, says that’s one of the ways America’s legal system differs from those of other countries. Liptak’s recent series for The Times, “American Exception,” looks at the ways the American justice system is unique — including high incarceration rates, the awarding of punitive damages, felony murder liability for accomplices and commercial bail bondsmen. “Americans are locked up for crimes — from […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, has since been speaking out about the conduct of the Iraq war — especially about what he calls the Bush administration’s “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan.” His views take book form in Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, which also details his rise from an impoverished Texas childhood to become the Army’s highest-ranking Hispanic officer. When Sanchez relinquished command of group troops in Iraq to Gen. George Casey in 2004, investigations into torture at Abu Ghraib prison were being conducted. […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Al Gore, who galvanized public opinion with his advocacy on global warming, sees danger in another poisoned environment, this one metaphorical: In his book The Assault on Reason [CLICK TO READ EXCERPT], just published in paperback, he argues that what used to be called civil discourse is threatened by a combination of public apathy and political cynicism. In our infotainment-mad culture, Gore writes, the public attention span is short, the media are easily distracted, and a politics driven by fear and uninterested in facts has undermined the essential functions of democracy. “When evidence that any reasonable person can […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Edgar Award-winning author Charles Ardai is founder of Hard Case Crime, a pulp-fiction publishing group that reprints classic crime stories as well as publishing new pulp. All Hard Case novels are published in mass-market paperback editions, much like the classic crime novels from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, with cover art inspired by images from the genre’s heyday. Under the pseudonym Richard Aleas — an anagram of his own name — Ardai writes crime fiction, too: His novels Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence detail the exploits of private investigator John Blake. Blake is no hard-boiled, flint-eyed […]
WORTH REPEATING: As It Was Written…
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved by Hunter S. Thompson The following essay was originally published in Scanlan’s Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970. The text of this essay was taken from the book The Great Shark Hunt, Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1, Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979). I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands…big grins […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Author Junot Diaz won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Set in both the United States and the Dominican Republic, the novel explores the complexities of living in two cultures at once, with prose that frequently mixes Spanish and English. Diaz previously published Drown, a collection of short stories about a growing up in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey. He struggled with writer’s block following that debut; writing and publishing Oscar Wao took 11 years. Diaz is a professor of creative writing at MIT. ALSO, rock historian […]
NPR FOR DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES Hour 1 It is being called the “silent tsunami” — rising food prices that are forcing more people around the world to go hungry. The skyrocketing prices on stables like rice, wheat, and corn have ignited riots around the globe. Experts says that this crisis could push 100 million people into poverty. Cornell University economist CHRIS BARRETT and OxFam America policy director GAWAIN KRIPKE discuss what is causing this food crisis and what can be done to stop it. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3 Hour 2 In her new book Relentless Pursuit: A Year […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] FRESH AIR Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave — Murder Ballads and Abbatoir Blues are just two of his album titles — so he was perhaps a natural to compose the soundtrack for last year’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
RADIO TIMES w/ MARTY MOSS-COANE Hour One (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) CHRIS HEDGES joins Marty to talk about his new book I Don’t Believe in Atheists. Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. Listen to this show via Real Audio WIKIPEDIA: Christopher L. Hedges (born 18 September 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont) is a journalist and author, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the […]
All Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent
BY JEFF DEENEY Author Richard Price, in town to read from and discuss his new book, Lush Life, drew a full house at the Free Library last night. The evening kicked off with a laudatory intro from former City Paper editor-slash-Hollywood heavyweight Duane Swierczynski. Duane’s lead was shaped around the idea of “stealing life” — his description of the kind of fiction that reads so real you’d swear it was — that Price is known for. It’s unfortunate, Duane said, that a lot of young writers don’t understand that it’s OK, even beneficial, to just make shit up, so long […]
PAPERBOY: Hollywood Options Ex-CP Editor’s Novel
BY AMY Z. QUINN Straight from the City Paper to Phillywood, Duane Swierczyinski tells me his novel The Blonde may be headed for the big screen. Actress Michelle Monaghan has optioned the rights to film the 2006 sci-fi thrilla, and we could easily see her playing the titular badass babe with a killer kiss. Though who plays Jack Eisley, the bitterly almost-divorced journalist? And will we find out through on-location shooting where that effed-up masturbation club really is? Here’s the official announcement: Film rights to Duane Swierczynski’s THE BLONDE, about a soon-to-be-divorced young father who is poisoned by a beautiful […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
Ex-Simpson Agent To Write How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder Tell-All Mike Gilbert, who served as O.J. Simpson’s sports agent for a reported 18 years, is writing a book for Regnery Publishing called How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder. According to a brief announcement published this afternoon on industry Web site Publisher’s Lunch, the book will “detail O.J.’s late-night confession” and offer new evidence showing that Simpson did kill his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. The book also promises “information on Gilbert’s crucial role in obtaining the not guilty verdict and why he […]