Richard Weiss tells Steve Paulson why figures like Horatio Alger, Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie are so compelling for Americans, and why we’re unlikely to give up our national optimism.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Jim Divita tells Jim Fleming about the dystopian society he's created and why he's afraid that something like it could happen to our world.
Muffy Mead-Ferro recalls her one and only experience of scrap-booking. She is the author of “Confessions of a Slacker Mom.”
Harriet Tubman will soon be gracing our twenty dollar bill. Most of us know only one image of her. It's an iconic image taken later in her life in which her hair's covered in a dark cloth and she has a stern expression. But there are other images of Harriet Tubman as well, including a wood cut of her carrying a musket.
Law professor Nicholas Johnson says the image of Harriet Tubman carrying a rifle doesn’t fit with how most Americans view abolitionists and civil rights leaders. After all, weren’t they supposed to be peaceful? But as Johnson tells Steve Paulson, there's a rich tradition of Black Americans owning guns for self-defense.
Anne Strainchamps talks with Robert Pinsky, 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, who reads several of the poems people have been sending him since the attacks.
John Elder Robison, whose younger brother is the writer Augusten Burroughs, did not get his diagnosis of Asperger's until he was in his 40s.
In the mid-80's the metal band Winger topped the charts with hits like "Seventeen." Then Grunge came along and left bands like Winger in the dust. Now, Kip Winger is back on top with a new CD that debuted at #1 on the music charts. Only this time, he's rocking the classical charts. His new album is "Conversations with Nijinsky"-- orchestral compositions performed by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.
Mitchell is a literary virtuoso, best known for his 2004 novel “Cloud Atlas.” He’s famous for the intricate structure of his novels - which weave together multiple narrators, interconnected stories and even different genres - all within the same book. He’s done it again with “The Bone Clocks."
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