A bright treat for browsers.
A collection of bracing interviews with American writers and thinkers.
Veteran journalist and nine-time Peabody Award winner Moyers (Moyers on Democracy, 2008, etc.) gathers a glittering array of discussions with authors, activists, historians, social scientists and others that were broadcast on his public-affairs program Bill Moyers Journal in 2007–10. Focusing on topics both timely and timeless—torture, health-care reform, the U.S. economy, aging, compassion, God, among many others—the insatiably curious Moyers prods disparate intellectuals into candid talk about their sphere of interest. Often progressive, always articulate, the interviewees include historians Thomas Cahill, Nell Painter and Howard Zinn; poets Robert Bly, Nikki Giovanni and W.S. Merwin; journalists Douglas Blackmon, Barbara Ehrenreich, William Greider, Robert Kaiser and Robert Wright; and activists Grace Lee Boggs (grassroots democracy), Jim Hightower (corporate power), Michael Pollan (food), Jane Goodall (animals) and Holly Sklar (workers). Each interview illuminates some main current in American life. Jon Stewart argues for the importance of joking about absurd world events; novelist Louise Erdrich reflects on the fractured inner life of a mother and writer of mixed ancestry; journalist Sam Tanenhaus distinguishes between the conservatism of Glenn Beck and William F. Buckley Jr.; and Republican insider Victor Gold tells why he awaits “a rebirth of Goldwater.” Judge Richard Goldstone discusses his controversial report on human-rights violations in the Gaza War, and streetwise reporter David Simon, best known for his HBO series The Wire, makes a strong case for crime as the best keyhole into how our society really works. When biologist E.O. Wilson reminds us that human activity is wiping out much of the rest of life on the planet, Moyers suspects that such life would probably survive without us. “Oh, it would do wonderfully well without us,” says the scientist.
A bright treat for browsers.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59558-624-7
Page Count: 592
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Puccini wins the prize for most-maligned great composer. In a fit of depressive self-deprecation, Puccini himself called his own music ``sugary,'' and the persistent popularity of his mature operas at box-offices around the world for nearly a century has too often provoked critical condescension, as if art so well-loved could not possibly be worth much. But that situation, thankfully, is changing, and this much-needed essay collection on Puccini by leading scholars of 19th- and 20th-century Italian opera is worth a good deal more than several new biographies. The volume ranges from a lengthy piece on Puccini's family by his granddaughter (one of the editors) to chapters devoted to Puccini's ``musical world'' and each of his operas by luminaries such as William Weaver, Harvey Sachs, Fedele D'Amico, Verdi heavyweights Mary Jane Phillips-Matz and Julian Budden, and William Ashbrook. A favorite: David Hamilton's expert investigation of the early Tosca recordings, especially the legendary ``Mapelson cylinders'' of live Metropolitan Opera performances from 1902-03, to see what light they shed on Puccini's original interpreters. The editors, perhaps hoping to attract non-musicologist admirers of the Luccan master, issue the disclaimer that ``this is not a work of scholarship'' (even though two of the chapters make a start on an accessible Puccini bibliography). They needn't have worried. Lovers of Puccini and Italian opera at every level of interest and knowledge will want this book. (Photographs—not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-02930-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
