Tag Archives: history

Web Extras

Web Extra: Howard Zinn archive interview

Howard Zinn

The great “people’s historian” Howard Zinn died January 27, 2010 at the age of 87. His book, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, presented an alternative view to the one most are taught in school: instead of focusing on presidents and tycoons, it told the story of people’s movements, including those of workers, civil rights and antiwar activists, women and gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

Zinn spoke to Writers Voice host Francesca Rheannon in 2005 about his companion volume to A PEOPLE’S HISTORY, [amazon-product text=”VOICES OF A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES” type=”text”]1583229167[/amazon-product]. It’s a collection of writings from the great protagonists of social justice: Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Sacco and Vanzetti, and Malcolm X, among many others. Zinn talks about hi perspective on history, war and peace, and the two sides of the American story — idealism and exploitation.

Go to Howard Zinn page on Amazon.com.

In this video Zinn discusses his experiences fighting during World War II and his being asked to bomb a small town in France.

Podcast

What Do We Learn About History From Novels?

Thad Carhart
Thad Carhart

We hear excerpts from a dramatic reading of Ernest J. Gaines’ novel, A LESSON BEFORE DYING by Enchanted Circle Theater actors. It’s about a young black man in Jim Crow Louisiana who is condemned to death. And we interview Thad Carhart about his new historical novel, ACROSS THE ENDLESS RIVER. It’s about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea who was a guide on the Lewis and Clark expedition and who lived both in the United States and Europe. Continue reading

Podcast

Looking at New York City, Before and After 9/11

Max Page
Max Page
Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with architectural historian Max Page about [amazon-product text=”THE CITYS END: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction” type=”text”]030011026X[/amazon-product]. And journalist Patrick Radden Keefe tells us the story of China’s outmigration to New York in the 1980’s and the “snakeheads” who facilitated and exploited it. His book is [amazon-product text=”SNAKEHEAD: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream” type=”text”]0385521308[/amazon-product].
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Podcast

Welsh Poet Gwyneth Lewis and Marshall Jon Fisher’s A TERRIBLE SPLENDOR

Marshall Jon Fisher
Marshall Jon Fisher
Gwyneth Lewis
Gwyneth Lewis

Guest host Christian McEwen talks with Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis and Francesca Rheannon talks with Marshall Jon Fisher about one of the greatest tennis matches ever played: the 1937 Davis Cup final at Wimbledon. His book is A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played. Continue reading

Podcast

David S. Reynolds, WAKING GIANT and Wally Swist, MOUNT TOBY POEMS

David S. Reynolds
David S. Reynolds

We talk with cultural historian David S. Reynolds about his new book, WAKING GIANT: America in the Age of Jackson. And poet Wally Swist reads from his forthcoming collection, MOUNT TOBY POEMS. Continue reading

Podcast

Swerling’s CITY OF GOD and Michelson’s AS GOOD AS ANYBODY

Richard Michelson
Richard Michelson
Beverly Swerling
Beverly Swerling

We talk to novelist Beverly Swerling about the latest in her historical series about Old New York, City of God: A Novel of Passion and Wonder in Old New York. Also, children’s book author Richard Michelson, tells us about his latest, AS GOOD AS ANYBODY: Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom. Continue reading

Podcast

H.G. Adler’s THE JOURNEY, Eating Tips for the Holidays, and a Thanksgiving story

Brian Wansink
Brian Wansink
Peter Filkins
Peter Filkins

Award-winning translator Peter Filkins talks about THE JOURNEY, a lost masterpiece of Holocaust literature by acclaimed author and survivor H. G. Adler which Filkins translated. Food psychologist Brian Wansink gives us tips on how to keep the pounds off during the Holiday season; and Native American storyteller Marge Bruchac tells us what really happened during the first Thanksgiving.
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Podcast

Joan Wickersham, THE SUICIDE INDEX and Jennet Conant, THE IRREGULARS

Jennet Conant
Jennet Conant
Joan Wickersham
Joan Wickersham

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with writer Joan Wickersham about her powerful new memoir, [amazon-product text=”THE SUICIDE INDEX: Putting My Father’s Death in Order” type=”text”]0156033801[/amazon-product]. Also, we talk with Jennet Conant about [amazon-product text=”THE IRREGULARS: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington” type=”text”]0743294599[/amazon-product]. Continue reading

Podcast

Alan Kronzek, SORCERER’S COMPANION and Studs Terkel Remembered

Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel

It’s Halloween, time to take a break, if you can, from obsessively checking the latest presidential poll results, and have some fun. Today, we train our literary focus on hocus-pocus by exploring the magic of the Harry Potter series with magician Allan Kronzek.  He wrote [amazon-product text=”The Sorcerer’s Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter” type=”text”]0767919440[/amazon-product]. The most popular lexicon of the lore that underlies the Harry Potter series, THE SORCERER’S COMPANION will tell you where to find a basilisk today, how to get rid of a goblin, or who wore the first invisibility cloak, among much other useful and arcane information.

[amazon-product align=”left”]0767919440[/amazon-product]

A best-seller, it came out first in 2001 and was updated and re-issued in 2004.  Alan Kronzek co-authored the book with his daughter, historian Elizabeth Kronzek.

Kronzek is also the author of [amazon-product text=”FIFTY TWO WAYS TO CHEAT AT POKER: How to Spot Them, Foil Them, and Defend Yourself Against Them” type=”text”]0452289114[/amazon-product] . Stay tuned to this site to hear Kronzek talk about poker with Francesca.

Also, we remember the great Studs Terkel, who died October 31, 2008 at the age of 96. We air an excerpt from an interview we did with him in 2006 about his last book, [amazon-product text=”AND THEY ALL SANG: Adventures of an Eclectic DIsc Jockey” type=”text”]1595581189[/amazon-product].

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

Podcast

New Fiction from Paul Auster and Jennifer Haigh; Michael Klare on Russia-Georgia War

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with acclaimed novelist Paul Auster about his new work of fiction, MAN IN THE DARK.
Also, Jennifer Haigh tells us about her new novel, THE CONDITION.
And we’ll also air an excerpt from an interview we did last year with Michael Klare about his book, RISING POWERS, SHRINKING PLANET, THE NEW GEOPOLITICS OF ENERGY. He predicted at that time that the next resource war could be between Georgia as a US client state and Russia.

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Podcast

Climate Change, Past, Present and Future

The current climate crisis isn’t the first time human beings have faced global climate change. Extreme weather, ice sheets melting into the Arctic ocean, and mega-droughts lasting a century or more: it all happened before, between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. The global warming of the Middle Ages changed civilization, bringing both great disorder and great opportunity.

The audio for this episode is available upon request for a donation of $4.99 to Writers Voice. Contact writersvoice [at] wmua.org.

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Podcast

Philip Fradkin and Rutherford Platt

We talk with biographer Philip Fradkin about the life of Wallace Stegner, writer and environmentalist extraordinaire. His book is WALLACE STEGNER AND THE AMERICAN WEST.
You can read a New York Times review of Fradkin’s book (which says a lot more about Stegner than about the biography) here. And for the first chapter, go here.

Also, urban geographer Rutherford Platt tells us about how to make cities that are sustainable and a pleasure to live in. Editor of the THE HUMANE METROPOLIS, he’s the founder of the Ecological Cities
Project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Podcast

Eric Weitz’s WEIMAR GERMANY

Donald Kroodsma
Donald Kroodsma
Eric Weitz
Eric Weitz

We talk with historian Eric Weitz about [amazon-product text=”WEIMAR GERMANY: Promise and Tragedy” type=”text”]0691140960[/amazon-product]. On the one side, there was Bauhaus, Expressionism, Magnus Hirschfeld and new freedom for gays and women, a vital and experimental theater–in short, an explosion of intellectual and artistic creativity. On the other: hyperinflation, economic depression, and bullies of the left and right rampaging in the streets, setting the stage for the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

We explore both sides of Weimar Germany and what lessons it may hold for us today.

Also, a preview of Spring…we listen to robins and other birds with renowned bird biologist Donald Kroodsma, author of [amazon-product text=”The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong” type=”text”]0618840761[/amazon-product].