We Are What We Read

Lately, in the world of journalism, we are seeing that we truly are the news that we consume. It probably defines our politics, our social strata and our economic place in the world.

But the same is true, in a much more profound way, with respect to the books we read. Many of us love books for just being books. But they also have the power to change us. On one level what we read reflects who we are. As we read more, it also constantly redefines or refines us, and maybe even shapes the future choice of books we seek out.

So imagine if you kept a record of everything you’ve read. If you could chart your life by seeing the books you’ve enjoyed.

This is what the editor of The New York Times Book Review, Pamela Paul has done with My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues.

My conversation with Pamela Paul:

Frank Deford was an American treasrue R.I.P.

As a writer, journalist and commentator Frank Deford was a national treasure. He helped us understand so much of what really makes America great.

I had a chance to speak with Deford back in 2002, upon the publication of his novel An American Summer. We talked America in the 50’s, polio, American optimism and the state of baseball at that time. In listening back on the conversation, it seems only baseball has improved.

Here is my conversation with Frank Deford from August of 2002.

"Happy Birthday, Mr. President"

Today we mark the 100th birthday of John F. Kennedy. When we do that, our first instinct is to look for the single achievement that defines the man

In the case of Kennedy, there are many to choose from. But arguably one of the most profound and lasting impacts of JFK is the way in which he changed the culture, structure, technology, and perception of our politics.

In our modern era, there are very few times in which both the candidate, the times and the campaign would come together in ways that resulted in a tectonic shift in the way we do politics.

The 2008 Obama campaign might be such a time. Certainly the 1964 GOP primary campaign, that give us Barry Goldwater, is one.  But first among the modern list is the 1960 campaign
of JFK.

Started as modern campaigns now do, almost five years before the election, is was the prime example and perhaps the pinnacle of what the “best and the brightest” could accomplish. In a way, it may have been that campaign that made us think that anything was possible, in Camelot.

Now Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Washington columnist for The Boston Globe, Thomas Oliphant takes us back there in The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK's Five-Year Campaign.

My conversation with Thomas Oliphant:

Janesville: A Very Human Story

We are nine years out from the great recession and still the consequences are impacting cities and towns across America. In spite of all the talk about manufacturing jobs coming back, the industrial/rust belt of America is still hollowed out.

The recession may have begun the process, but the forces shaping these changes are powerful, global, technological and are now deeply integrated into the future economy of the country.

Most of these manufacturing jobs are permanently gone. So what happens on the human side of this equation? What happens to the millions, who are displaced in heartland America?

We see that one of the things that happens is susceptibility to political charlatans. But when that salve wears off, what next? What's happening today, almost twenty years into the 21st century, as places like Janesville Wisconsin try to come the grips with this new reality.

Amy Goldstein a Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime reporter for the The Washington Post gets us inside this reality in Janesville: An American Story.

My conversation with Amy Goldstein:

Why Is American Health Care So Sick?

We’ve all heard the old adage that what can be done, can be undone. Well maybe we need to try that with our healthcare system.

In just fifty years we’ve gone from an affordable and human based system, to one that people hate at every level. They may like their individual doctors, but they generally hate the system.

Of course there has been change and disruptions everywhere in our society. But most of it has been to make our lives easier, better, more efficient and in many cases, to lower costs.

In healthcare, it’s become less efficient, costlier, less human centric, and the net result has not been to dramatically increase care or life expectancy. Instead it's enriched those at the top of the system while at the same time, being out of step with every system, in every other western nation. This is American exceptionalism of the very worst kind.

So how did we get here and is that knowledge useful in trying to fix it. Those are the issues that Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal takes up in An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal:

A Previous Golden Age of Journalsm

It’s hard to believe today, but there was time when magazines were an important source of news and images and information. LIFE and Time sat at the top of that pantheon of those once great publications.

Arguably, everything that has come after, from television to Instagram, is but a modern reflection of the predicate that Time and LIFE laid down.

Gerald Moore was a part of LIFE at a time when it helped shape the American experience. It was not only a reflection of it, but the decisions of reporters, photographers and editors at LIFE could shape the nation in new and dramatic ways.

Now Gerald Moore shares his experiences in his book, just out in paperback, LIFE Story: The Education of an American Journalist.


My conversation with Gerald Moore:

"There Are No Nations, Only Corporations"

Back in 2010, with the Citizens United decision, we thought we were witnessing a new dominance of corporations and corporate power. But in fact even before Citizens United, there were powerful corporate currents in the body politics.

Forty years ago you might remember Ned Beatty’s brilliant speech to Peter Finch/Howard Beale, about corporate power, in Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant NETWORK.

Today, add to this, the way that this unlimited corporate money is being used in statehouses, globalization, technology, AI, and the power of lobbying, and it’s a pretty powerful stew.

Gordon Lafer takes us inside this world in The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Gordon Lafer:

How N.Y.'s Fiscal Crises of the '70s Has Shaped So Much Of Our Politics Today

Many of you may remember that back in the mid 70’s, the City of New York had fallen into a kind dystopian horror...crime and graffiti were rampant, social services and infrastructure were decayed and expectations of public services had come to be taken for granted.  It was more reminiscent of Batman’s Gotham than the shining city it is today.

Even as Gerald Ford told New York to “drop dead,” in October of 1975, the seeds were being planted for New York's gentrification. As Disney rose like the phoenix from Times Square, it was the early symbol that would ultimately and symbolically show the triumph of private enterprise shaping public good and public spaces.

In so doing, it set the stage for what would become the next forty years of American urban policy. The economic policies of the Reagan administration would come just a few years after New York's nadir, and would personify this new approach.  One that is still driving public policy today, and which in many ways has shaped some of the fundamental divides of class, wealth and power in this country.

Going back to ground zero in this battle is Kim Phillips Fein in her new book Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics.

My conversation with Kim Phillips-Fein:

Criminal Justice Reform and Crime in Black Communities

In spite of everything that Jeff Sessions is doing to stand in the way, reform of our criminal justice system is perhaps one of the most important issues of our time. It’s even one that sometimes gets bipartisan support. But reform is of very little value without a real understanding of how we got here and how the current system has ruined so many lives.

How did our policies, with respect to policing in black neighborhoods, evolve since the high crimes periods of the mid 70’s and 80’s? What role did public policy play, and what role did community demands and expectations play? How has the war on drugs played a part in this, and what is the real nexus with the civil rights movement of the 60’s?

Unless we understand this history we are not only condemned to repeat it, but we can never begin to address it.

Yale Law Professor James Forman, Jr. gives us one of the sharpest, most cleared and honest analysis of these issues in his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

My conversation with James Forman, Jr.

The Gatekeepers: Why the White House Chief of Staff Matters

I think that we can stipulate that experience and competence matters in most things. And while you may not like all of their decisions or products, we wouldn’t want a neophyte to run Goldman Sachs, or General Motors, or Boeing or Apple,

Yet in many cases that's exactly what we’ve done with the entirety of the executive branch of the US government. And no, I don't mean the men who have been elected President. But rather the White House Chiefs of Staff.  Traditionally their
job has been to focus the President, to execute policy, to engage in Washington diplomacy and to deal with both the minutia of who uses the White House tennis courts, and at the same time have a 30,000 foot view of how America is governed.

In the modern era there have been 17 White House Chiefs of Staff, and all of them participated in a new book The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by esteemed journalist and documentary filmmaker Chris Whipple.

My conversation with Chris Whipple:

The Rise of A Woman In Hollywood

There was a time, not that long ago, in a galaxy not that far away, when Hollywood made movies that were both entertaining and substantive. You know, the kind we see now on Netflix, or Amazon, or HBO or Showtime.

They were movies like Fatal Attraction, Forrest Gump and Braveheart,

It was a time even when a woman would rise to the top of the Hollywood hierarchy even at 20th Century Fox…. in the pre Murdoch era.

So much of this history is embodied in the story that Stephen Galloway tells in his new biography of Hollywood executive and producer Sherry Lansing.

Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker is first a story about Hollywood. But it’s also a human story, about the confluence of who we really are, and what we choose to do with our lives.

Political Malfeasance Is Not Yet A Crime

We are reminded every day of that old political adage that elections have consequences. What we forget sometimes is the predicate of that statement. That campaigns have consequences.

In part it’s why we are alway so fascinated by campaigns, and why some of our seminal political texts have been written about campaigns and campaigning. These books are the ultimate political version of “How Things Work.”

In this unrivaled political campaign season, first out of the gate is Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes.

My conversation with Jonathan Allen & Amy Parnes:

What Divides Americans from the World and From Each Other

There is an accepted rule of journalism that says that when trying to understand a story, “go there.” In fact with respect to some things, the opposite may be true. To understand America in the 21st Century, it might be best to look at it from afar. To have a cultural understanding that is anything but American.

To fully see America in the context of it’s place in the world, changes our perspective in ways that make America not exceptional but an exception to what’s become the accepted norms of Western Civilizations.

How did that happen? How did a nation that sees itself as exceptional became so out of step with the rest of the West. . According to Stanford Law Professor Mugambi Jouet, it is that very idea of exceptionalism that makes us the exception.

All of this is part of the very important Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other.

My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Mugambi Jouet: