32 results for "American History"

The American story: conversations with master historians

Rubenstein, David M.,Hayden, Carla Diane
Co-founder of The Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist David M. Rubenstein takes readers on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with our greatest historians. In these lively dialogues, the biggest names in American history explore the subjects they've come to so intimately know and understand: David McCullough on John Adams, Jon Meacham on Thomas Jefferson, Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton, Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin, Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln, A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh, Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King, Robert Caro on Lyndon B. Johnson, Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon, and many others, including a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts. Through his popular program The David Rubenstein Show, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of our most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in The American Story, David captures the brilliance of our most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The book features introductions by Rubenstein as well a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Richly illustrated with archival images from the Library of Congress, the book is destined to become a classic for serious readers of American history. Through these captivating exchanges, these bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.
Simon & Schuster 2019-10 396 pages

The highest calling: conversations on the American Presidency

Rubenstein, David M.
"Blending history and anecdote, Rubenstein chronicles the journeys of the presidents who have defined America as it exists now, what they envision for its future, and their legacy on the world stage. Drawing from his own experience in the Carter administration, he engages in dialogues with our nation's presidents and the historians who study them. Get exclusive access to fresh perspectives, including: original interviews with most of the living US presidents; interviews with noted presidential historians like Annette Gordon-Reed, Ron Chernow, Candice Millard, and more. Through insightful analysis, Rubenstein captures our country's most prominent leaders, the political genius and frays of the presidential role, and the wisdom that emerges from it"--
Simon & Schuster 2024-09-10 472 pages

Frost/nixon

Morgan, Peter
By 1972 Richard Nixon had ended the Vietnam war, achieved diplomatic breakthroughs with Russia and China, presided over a period of economic stability at home, and was on the verge of a landslide re-election . . . until he decided to cover up a third-rate burglary. Watergate was one of the largest scandals in American history and two years later Nixon would resign the presidency—but with neither an admission of guilt nor any sign of remorse. In a drama "as thought-provoking as it is gripping and entertaining" (Charles Spencer, Th e Daily T e l e graph ), acclaimed screenwriter Peter Morgan examines how a British playboy, talk-show host managed what no other journalist or prosecutor could: to extract a confession from our most notorious statesman.
Faber and Faber 2007 82 pages

Coming of age: growing up in the twentieth century

Terkel, Studs
A New York Times bestseller when it was first published in 1995, Coming of Age presents an astonishing portrait of American life and the experience of aging in the twentieth century, drawn from the stories of seventy-four very different people, the youngest of whom is seventy and the oldest ninety-nine. Inspiring in the honesty of their voices and their lack of nostalgia or illusions, these are people with the widest range of experiences from all around the country; many were at the vanguard of their movements, whether of trade unions, gay liberation, or the arts. They remind us what we once were, what we have lost, and the extraordinary extent to which we've been transformed as a society over the last hundred odd years.
New Press 2007 468 pages

Hope Dies Last Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times

Studs Terkel
America's most inspirational voices, in their own words: "If you're looking for a reason to act and dream again, you'll find it in the pages of this book" ( Chicago Tribune ). Published when Studs Terkel was ninety-one years old, this astonishing oral history tackles one of the famed journalist's most elusive subjects: Hope. Where does it come from? What are its essential qualities? How do we sustain it in the darkest of times? An alternative, more personal chronicle of the "American century," Hope Dies Last is a testament to the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, and an inheritance for those who, by taking a stand, are making concrete the dreams of today. A former death row inmate who served nearly twenty years for a crime he did not commit discusses his never-ending fight for justice. Tom Hayden, author of The Port Huron Statement , contemplates the legacy of 1960s student activism. Liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith reflects on the enduring problem of corporate malfeasance. From a doctor who teaches his young students compassion to the retired brigadier general who flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, these interviews tell us much about the power of the American dream and the force of individuals who advocate for a better world. With grace and warmth, Terkel's subjects express their secret hopes and dreams. Taken together, this collection of interviews tells an inspiring story of optimism and persistence, told in voices that resonate with the eloquence of conviction. "The value of Hope Dies Last lies not in what it teaches readers about its narrow subject, but in the fascinating stories it reveals, and the insight it allows into the vast range of human experience." -- The A.V. Club "Very Terkelesque--by now the man requires an adjective of his own." --Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Review of Books "An American treasure." --Cornel West
The New Press 2004-11 360 pages

Stories my father told me: notes from "The Lyons Den"

Lyons, Jeffrey
"This amazing collection of choice anecdotes takes us right back to the Golden Age of New York City nightlife, when top restaurants like Toots Shor's, "21," and Sardi's, as well as glittering nightclubs like the Stork Club, The Latin Quarter, and El Morocco, were the nightly gathering spots for great figures of that era: movie and Broadway stars, baseball players, champion boxers, comedians, diplomats, British royalty, prize-winning authors, and famous painters. From Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, from Ethel Barrymore to Sophia Loren, from George Burns to Ernest Hemingway, from Joe DiMaggio to the Duke of Windsor: Leonard Lyons knew them all. For forty glorious years, from 1934 to 1974, he made the daily rounds of Gotham nightspots, collecting the exclusive scoops and revelations that were at the core of his famous newspaper column, "The Lyons Den." In this entertaining volume Jeffrey Lyons has assembled a considerable compilation of anecdotes from his father's best columns, and has also contributed a selection of his own in-depth interviews conducted on his own TV shows with George Clooney, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Dame Judi Dench, George Carlin, Dennis Hopper, Sir Michael Caine, Sir Ben Kingsley and other current stars. Organized chronologically by decade and subdivided by celebrity, "Stories my father told" me offers fascinating and amusing stories illustrated by some sixty archival photographs. He so captured the tenor of those exciting times that the great Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg said: "Imagine how much richer American history would have been had there been a Leonard Lyons in Lincoln's time."--
Abbeville Press 2011-06-07 352 pages

Truth has a power of its own: conversations about a people's history

Zinn, Howard,Suarez, Ray
"Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of never-before-published conversations with Howard Zinn, conducted by the distinguished broadcast journalist Ray Suarez in 2007, that covers the course of American history from Columbus to the War on Terror from the perspective of ordinary people--including slaves, workers, immigrants, women, and Native Americans. Viewed through the lens of Zinn's own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting People's History of the United States as a point of departure, these conversations explore the American Revolution, the Civil War, the labor battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, U.S. imperialism from the Indian Wars to the War on Terrorism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the fight for equality and immigrant rights, all from an unapologetically radical standpoint. Longtime admirers and a new generation of readers alike will be fascinated to learn about Zinn's thought processes, rationale, motivations, and approach to his now-iconic historical work."--Amazon.com.
The New Press 2022 223 pages

P.S.: further thoughts from a lifetime of listening

Terkel, Studs
Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prizewinning oral historian through his landmark books—“The Good War”, Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs’s best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and deeply enjoyable writings for the first time. The pieces in P.S. reflect Studs’s wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Studs’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Studs’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times. A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of Studs’s extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he found to talk to.
New Press 2008-11-11 230 pages

Conversations

Reich, Steve
A surprising, enlightening series of conversations that shed new light on the music and career of "our greatest living composer" (New York Times) Steve Reich is a living legend in the world of contemporary classical music. As a leader of the minimalist movement in the 1960s, his works have become central to the musical landscape worldwide, influencing generations of younger musicians, choreographers and visual artists. He has explored non-Western music and American vernacular music from jazz to rock, as well as groundbreaking music and video pieces. He toured the world with his own ensemble and his compositions are performed internationally by major orchestras and ensembles. Now Reich sits down with past collaborators, fellow composers and musicians as well as visual artists influenced by his work to reflect on his prolific career as a composer as well as the music that inspired him and that has been inspired by him, including: David Lang Brian Eno Richard Serra Michael Gordon Michael Tilson Thomas Russell Hartenberger Robert Hurwitz Stephen Sondheim Jonny Greenwood David Harrington Elizabeth Lim-Dutton David Robertson Micaela Haslam Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker Julia Wolfe Nico Muhly Beryl Korot Colin Currie Brad Lubman
Hanover Square Press 2022 347 pages

San Francisco beat: talking with the poets

Meltzer, David
San Francisco Beat is an essential archive of the Beat Generation, a rich moment in a fortunate place. America-somnolent, conformist, and paranoid in the 1950s-was changed forever by a handful of people who refused an existence of drudgery and enterprise, opting instead for a life of personal, spiritual, and artistic adventure. In these intimate, free-wheeling conversations, a baker's dozen of the poets of San Francisco talk about the scene then and now, the traditions of poetry, and about anarchism, globalism, Zen, the Bomb, the Kabbalah, and the Internet. Thirty years ago, poet David Meltzer interviewed his poet friends for The San Francisco Poets. Now in San Francisco Beat he has combined these classic interviews with recent follow-up. San Francisco Beat features major new interviews with Philip Lamantia, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Jack Hirschman, Diane di Prima, Jack Micheline, Philip Whalen, and David Meltzer himself. David Meltzer is the author of many books of poetry, including Tens, The Name, Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992, and No Eyes: Lester Young. He is the editor of Birth, The Secret Garden, Reading Jazz, and Writing Jazz, among other collections. His agit-smut fictions include The Agency Trilogy. Meltzer read poetry at the Jazz Cellar in the 1950s and in the 1960s fronted the band, Serpent Power. Meltzer teaches poetics at New College of California. Table of Contents/Interviewed Authors Preface Acknowledgments Diane di Prima (1999) William Everson (1971) Remembering Everson (1999) Lawrence Ferlinghetti I (1969) Lawrence Ferlinghetti II (1999) Jack Hirschman (1998) Joanne Kyger (1998) Philip Lamantia (1998) Michael McClure I (1971) Michael McClure II (1999) David Meltzer (1999) Jack Micheline (1994) Kenneth Rexroth (1971) Remembering Rexroth (1971) Gary Snyder (1999) Lew Welch (1971) Philip Whalen (1999) Bibliographies Preface Nothing is hidden; As of old All is clear as daylight -Anonymous haiku, 16th century San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Po
City Lights Books 2001-05 364 pages

Original Zinn: conversations on history and politics

Zinn, Howard
"Historian, activist, and bestselling author Howard Zinn has been interviewed by David Barsamian for public radio numerous times over the past decade. Original Zinn is a collection of their conversations, showcasing the acclaimed author at his most engaging and provocative." "Touching on such diverse topics as the American war machine, civil disobedience, the importance of memory and remembering history, and the role of artists - from Langston Hughes to Dalton Trumbo to Bob Dylan - in relation to social change, Original Zinn is Zinn at his irrepressible best, the acute perception of a scholar whose knowledge and intellect make history immediate and relevant for us all."--
HarperPerennial 2006-06-27 167 pages

I sleep in Hitler's room: an American Jew visits Germany

Tenenbom, Tuvia
But this is just part of the story, a little part of it. For I Sleep in Hitler's Room is also a book about modern anti-Semitism, about hate that refuses to disappear, about a disease that won't get cured and a curse that won't let go. All told in the clearest of style and most amazing of humor. But this is not fiction. From beginning to end "I Sleep in Hitler's Room" is a true tale, a tale about a country that created the Holocaust and a story about a continent that moves in the direction of creating another. The target group, as in the last round, is the same: the "Jews." Why is Europe, the cradle of our civilization, so obsessed with Jews? Read "I Sleep in Hitler's Room" to find the answer. "I Sleep in Hitler's Room" will make you think, make you worry, make you cry, and make you laugh out loud. It is a book you will never forget. Ever. Buy it today. And run to tell all your friends. Traveling across Germany and seeking out that elusive quality that is the German character, playwright and journalist Tuvia Tenenbom wonders whether he has identified it in any one of several striking social phenomena--the proclivity of Germans to join clubs and group activities; how their aptitude for visual design shapes their architecture and their daily life; how their daily life is suffused with soccer and beer, the omnipresent beverage for all occasions; how they proudly self-define themselves by their achievements in precision technology; and, what is most disturbing to this son of Holocaust survivors, how their crushing awareness of their dark history coexists with virulent anti-Semitism and a stubborn obsession with Israel. Tenenbom integrates deep seriousness with the most lighthearted comic touch in this critical but affectionate look at both left and right in contemporary German politics and society. Listen in on his meetings with leaders in German industry and media, including former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, as well as with scores of private citizens whose everyday conversation Tenenbom ponders even as he gently teases them.
Gefen 2016 334 pages

The Germans: portrait of a new nation

Jeffrey Gedmin
Today, five years after unification, Germany is emerging as Europe's most influential country. Who are the Germans today? How can we better understand the profound changes taking place in Germany, and how will these changes affect American interests? The Germans: Portrait of a New Nation is the companion book to the one-hour television documentary of the same name. The producers of the film spent hundreds of hours with four German families - two from the former East and two from the former West. The result is an in-depth look at how unification has affected Germany's people. The bilingual book contains interviews with these families and commentary by leading public officials and experts, including Executive Editor Jeffrey Gedmin's exclusive interview with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
American Enterprise Institute and New River Media 1995 123 pages

Negotiations: interventions and interviews, 1971-2001

Derrida, Jacques
This collection of essays and interviews, some previously unpublished and almost all of which appear in English for the first time, encompasses the political and ethical thinking of Jacques Derrida over thirty years. Passionate, rigorous, beautifully argued, wide-ranging, the texts shed an entirely new light on his work and will be welcomed by scholars in many disciplines--politics, philosophy, history, cultural studies, literature, and a range of interdisciplinary programs. Derrida's arguments vary in their responsiveness to given political questions--sometimes they are vivid polemics on behalf of a position or figure, sometimes they are reflective analyses of a philosophical problem. They are united by the recurrent question of political decision or responsibility and the insistence that the apparent simplicity or programmatic character of political decision is in fact a profound avoidance of the political. This volume testifies to the possibility and the necessity of a philosophical politics. Negotiations assembles some of the most telling examples of the intrinsic relationship, so often affirmed by Derrida in more abstract philosophical terms, between deconstructive reading practices and what is called the "political"--more precisely, politics in an almost down-to-earth, pragmatic, and commonsense use of the word. Among the many subjects covered in the book are: the death penalty in the United States, the civil war in Algeria, globalization and cosmopolitanism, the American Declaration of Independence, Jean-Paul Sartre, the value of objectivity, politics and friendship, and the relationship between deconstruction and actuality.
Stanford University Press 2002 404 pages

Conversations with Gordon Lish

Lish, Gordon
"Known as "Captain Fiction," Gordon Lish (b. 1934) is among the most influential, and controversial, figures in modern American letters. As an editor at Esquire (1969-1977), Alfred A. Knopf (1977-1995) and The Quarterly (1987-1995), and as a teacher both in and outside the university system, he has worked closely with many of the most pioneering writers of recent times, including Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Sam Lipsyte, and Ben Marcus. A prolific author of stories and novels, Lish has also won a cult following for his own fiction, earning comparisons with Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett. Conversations with Gordon Lish collects all of Lish's major interviews, covering the entire span of his extraordinary career. Ranging from 1965 to 2015, these interviews document his pivotal role in the period's defining developments: the impact of the Californian counterculture, the rise and decline of so-called literary "minimalism," dramatic transformations in book and magazine publishing, and the ongoing growth of creative writing instruction. Over time, Lish--a self-described "dynamic conversationalist"--forges an evolving conversation not only with his interviewers, but with the central trends of twentieth-century literary history. This book will be essential reading not only for students and fans of contemporary fiction, but for writers too: included are several interviews in which Lish discusses his secretive private writing classes. Indeed, these pieces themselves amount to a masterclass in Lishian literary language--each is a work of art in its own right." -- provided by publisher.
University Press of Mississippi 2018 174 pages

Paul Krassner's Impolite interviews

Krassner, Paul
Krassner's Impolite Interviews delivers 21 of the most compelling encounters you will ever witness, from a 1959 interview with author Alan Watts to Timothy Leary in 1995 just weeks before he died, from Norman Mailer talking about sex to Jerry Garcia recounting what it was like to play the Pyramids. Each interview gives a unique take on major issues: Communism, segregation, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the drug culture, by major personalities. Impolite Interviews presents perspectives as diverse as George Lincoln Rockwell (then head of the American Nazi Party) and spiritual master Ram Dass. Krassner offers readers an illuminating look at some of the most important figures of the second half of this century through the eyes of one of this era's most innovative journalists.
Seven Stories Press 1999-09-07 340 pages

Conversations with Chaim Potok

Potok, Chaim
One of America's most popular Jewish writers, Chaim Potok (b. 1929) is the author of such novels as The Chosen (1967), The Promise (1969), The Book of Lights (1981), and Davita's Harp (1985). Each of his novels explores the tension between tradition and modernity, and the clash between Jewish culture and contemporary Western civilization, which he calls "core-to-core culture confrontation." Although primarily known as a novelist, Potok is an ordained Conservative rabbi and a world-class Judaic scholar who has also published children's books, theological discourses, biographies, and histories. Conversations with Chaim Potok presents interviews ranging from 1976 to 1999. Potok discusses the broad range of his writing and the deep influence of non-Jewish novels-in particular, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -on his work. Interviews bear witness to Potok's many other influences-Orthodox Jewish doctrine, Freudian psychoanalytical theory, Picasso's Guernica, and Jewish kabbalah mysticism. Though labeled an American Jewish writer, Potok argues that Flannery O'Connor should then be called an American Catholic writer and John Updike an American Protestant writer. "In his mind," editor Daniel Walden writes, "just as Faulkner was a writer focused on a particular place, Oxford, Mississippi, . . . so Potok's territory was a small section of New York City." Potok often explores conflict in his writings and in his interviews. Strict Jewish teachings deem fiction an artifice and therefore unnecessary, yet since the age of sixteen Potok has been driven to write novels. At the root of all of these conversations is Potok's intense interest in the turmoil between Jewish culture, religion, and tradition and what he calls "Western secular humanism." As he discusses his work, he continually includes broader issues, such as the state of Jewish literature and art, pointing out with pride and enthusiasm his belief that Jewish culture, in the twentieth century, has finally begun to have a significant role in producing and shaping the world's art and literature. Whether discussing the finer details of Talmudic textual analysis or his period of chaplaincy during the Korean War, Potok is articulate and philosophical, bringing deep consideration into what may seem small subjects. Although his novels and histories take place primarily in the recent past, the Chaim Potok that emerges from this collection is a writer deeply rooted in the tensions of the present. Daniel Walden is Professor Emeritus of American Studies, English and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. He has written or edited several books, including On Being Jewish (1974), Twentieth Century American Jewish Writers (1984), The World of Chaim Potok (1985), and American Jewish Poets: The Roots and the Stems (1990).
University Press of Mississippi 2001 181 pages