Jay Parini is a poet, novelist and teacher. He's also the author of "Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America." He tells Jim Fleming that his is not a list of "great books" but rather books that significantly changed the literary climate of American culture.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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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.
Jessica Lamb-Shapiro attended a conference of self-help authors featuring Mark Victor Hansen of "Chicken Soup for the..." fame.
The renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has just written a book for children: “The Magic of Reality.” In this NEW AND UNCUT interview, Steve Paulson talks with Dawkins about the difference between supernatural magic and poetic magic, and why atheists no longer need to hide in the closet.
How did non-life become life? University of Wisconsin geochemist Nita Sahai talks with Anne Strainchamps about how life might have begun on Earth.
Jonathan Kaplan is a surgeon who specializes in emergency field treatment. “Groups like “Doctors without Borders” send him to war zones all over the world. His memoir is called “The Dressing Station: A Surgeon’s Chronicle of War and Medicine.”
Stand-up comic Marc Maron compiled a one-man show based on his 1998 trip to Israel. The companion book is called "The Jerusalem Syndrome: My Life as a Reluctant Messiah." Maron tells Steve Paulson about the trip and performs excerpts from the show.
Mary Lefkowitz is the author of “Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths.” She says that the Greek gods seem too much like us to impress most modern people.
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