Monthly Archives: October 2008

Podcast

Terry Tempest Williams, MOSAIC

Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams

In Part One of this week’s show, we talk with writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams about her new book, [amazon-product text=”Finding Beauty in a Broken World” type=”text”]0375420789[/amazon-product]. (Part Two, David Danelo talking about THE BORDER: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide, will appear as a separate podcast.) Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Williams reads from Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams

Writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams reads from her new book, [amazon-product text=”Finding Beauty in a Broken World” type=”text”]0375420789[/amazon-product].

You can listen to the full interview with Williams here.

Podcast

Comix as Art and Politics: Art Spiegelman and Greg Palast

Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with comix master Art Spiegelman. When Spiegelman’s [amazon-product text=”Maus I: A Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History” type=”text”]0394747232[/amazon-product] was published in 1986, (followed by [amazon-product text=”Maus II: A Survivors Tale: And Here My Troubles Began” type=”text”]0679729771[/amazon-product] in 1991), it exploded notions about the limited role of comix as art and literature.

[amazon-product align=”right”]0375423958[/amazon-product]

Winning a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992–the only comic book ever to do so–Maus is a memoir in graphic form of Spiegelman’s father’s experiences in Auschwitz and the impact that had on the artist’s own childhood growing up in New York City. His mother was also a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. In 1968, she committed suicide, soon after Spiegelman himself was released from a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown.

Maus was prefigured in an earlier work, Prisoner on the Hell Planet and in 1978 Spiegelman included that and other works in a collection of his underground comix called [amazon-product text=”Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!” type=”text”]0375423958[/amazon-product]. Innovative and drawn in a variety of styles in large format–the book sank like a stone. But now Spiegelman has “re-birthed it”, as he told me, with a new 20 page introduction and an afterword. We talk to him about BREAKDOWNS and breaking conventions in the comix.

[amazon-product align=”left”]061525781X[/amazon-product]

Also, investigative journalist Greg Palast talks about the new comic book he produced with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., [amazon-product text=”STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE!” type=”text”]061525781X[/amazon-product]. With illustrations by Ted Rall and other artists, the book is about the threat of massive voter suppression in the upcoming election and how to counter it. [Note: the audio to this segment has been removed.]

Podcast

DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT

We talk with Fred Clarkson, co-founder of Talk2Action, about the book he just edited: Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. We also talk with Chip Berlet about the essay he contributed to the book. And contributor and organizer Leo Maley tells us about how the religious Left organized successfully in Massachusetts to support marriage equality for same-sex couples. Continue reading

Podcast

Ron Suskind, THE WAY OF THE WORLD and ELIZABETH WINTHROP, COUNTING ON GRACE

Elizabeth Winthrop
Elizabeth Winthrop
Ron Suskind
Ron Suskind

Francesca talks with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind about [amazon-product text=”The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” type=”text”]0061430633[/amazon-product]. Also, Elizabeth Winthrop on [amazon-product text=”COUNTING ON GRACE” type=”text”]0553487833[/amazon-product], the story of an 11-year old girl working in the textile mills of Vermont at the turn of the twentieth century. Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Elizabeth Winthrop’s Discovery of Addie Card

[amazon-product align=”right”]0553487833[/amazon-product]

Elizabeth Winthrop
Elizabeth Winthrop

Elizabeth Winthrop paints a vivid portrait of the plight of child laborers in the New England textile mills in the early 1900’s. She bases her main character, Grace, on the photograph by Lewis Hine of a young girl posed in front of her machine. While writing the book, Winthrop went in search of the real person behind the photo and found out the remarkable story of Addie Card.

To listen to the whole interview, click here.