Episodes
Friday May 10, 2019
Robert Caro: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday May 10, 2019
Friday May 10, 2019
Robert Caro’s collection of personal essays is both a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of his award-winning books and an engaging self-portrait of sorts by one of our most accomplished biographers. Writing with his signature grace, humor, and vigor, Caro recalls what it was like to interview a man as powerful as Robert Moses and how it felt to confront the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. He details how he plans and composes his books and recounts how he decided to write not just about pivotal individuals, but to focus also on the people and politics those dominant figures shaped. And for the many readers who have always wanted to know why Caro’s books take so long, he has both a short answer—intensive research—and a longer one based on advice from an editor early in his career as a journalist. Mr. Caro is in conversation with Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press and the Political Director for NBC News. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525656340 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday May 03, 2019
Anuradha Bhagwati: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday May 03, 2019
Friday May 03, 2019
It wasn’t until she was in graduate school that Bhagwati, now a writer and activist, rebelled against the expectations her family had imposed on her and left the Ivy League to join the Marines. She deliberately chose the toughest branch of the military, determined to prove herself in new ways. The experience turned out to be harder than she’d expected, and her memoir recounts her battles against racism, misogyny, and abuse of power. When she left the service she vowed to change the system, and by founding the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), she did. Working to call attention to sexual violence in the military, SWAN has helped initiate substantial policy reforms with the Departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs, including overturning the ban on women in combat. Bhagwati is in conversation with Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781501162541 Anuradha Bhagwati is a writer, activist, yoga and meditation teacher, and Marine Corps veteran. She founded the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), which brought national attention to sexual violence in the military and helped overturn the ban on women in combat. Anuradha is a regular media commentator on issues related to national security, women’s rights, civil rights, and mental health, and is the recipient of numerous awards. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic. She lives in New York City with her service dog, Duke Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Apr 26, 2019
Preet Bharara: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Apr 26, 2019
Friday Apr 26, 2019
In Doing Justice, one-time federal prosecutor Preet Bharara uses case histories, personal experiences, and his own inviting writing and teaching style to show the thought process we need to best achieve truth and justice in our daily lives and within our society. Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it; he believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature. Ultimately, Doing Justice is an inspiring, thought-provoking, and entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system–and in our society. Bharara is in conversation with Bianna Golodryga, journalist and CNN contributor. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525521129 PREET BHARARA served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. Bharara oversaw the investigation and litigation of all criminal and civil cases and supervised an office of more than two hundred Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who handled cases involving terrorism, narcotics and arms trafficking, financial and healthcare fraud, cybercrime, public corruption, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations. In 2017, Bharara joined the NYU School of Law faculty as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence. He is the Executive Vice President of Some Spider Studios and the host of CAFE's Stay Tuned with Preet, a podcast focused on issues of justice and fairness. Bharara graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and from Columbia Law School, where he was a member of the law review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Apr 19, 2019
Stacey Abrams: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Apr 19, 2019
Friday Apr 19, 2019
Leadership is hard. Convincing others—and yourself—that you're capable of taking charge and achieving more requires insight and courage. Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by political leader, entrepreneur, and nonprofit CEO Stacey Abrams is the handbook for outsiders, written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, the working class, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and millennials ready to make change. Abrams uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Abrams has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business, and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change. Stacey Abrams is an author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Minority Leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. She has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels; and she is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Abrams is the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award and the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250214805 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Apr 12, 2019
Valerie Jarrett: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Apr 12, 2019
Friday Apr 12, 2019
In Finding My Voice, Valerie Jarrett recounts her work ensuring equality for women and girls, advancing civil rights, reforming our criminal justice system, and improving the lives of working families. From a single mother stagnating in corporate law, to finding her voice in Harold Washington's historic administration, to ultimately becoming one of the most visible and influential African-American women of the twenty-first century, Jarrett shares her forthright, optimistic perspective on the importance of leadership and the responsibilities of citizenship in the twenty-first century, inspiring readers to lift their own voices. Jarrett is in conversation with Anita Dunn, White House communications director and senior adviser to President Obama’s presidential campaigns Valerie Jarrett was the longest serving senior adviser to President Barack Obama. She oversaw the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. Before joining the White House, she served as the chief executive officer of The Habitat Company in Chicago, chairman of the Chicago Transit Board, commissioner of Planning and Development, and deputy chief of staff for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. Jarrett has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including Time's "100 Most Influential People." She received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1978 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. She is currently a senior adviser to the Obama Foundation and Attn and a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525558132 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Apr 05, 2019
Albert Woodfox: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Apr 05, 2019
Friday Apr 05, 2019
Convicted of armed robbery in his twenties, Woodfox was sentenced to fifty years in Angola prison. There he learned about the Black Panther’s code of living and commitment to social justice and joined the party. Then in April 1972 he was accused of killing a white guard and, without evidence, put into solitary confinement. For more than forty years, until he was freed in February 2016, he spent 23 hours a day in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell. In this extraordinary memoir, Woodfox, who began his activismfor prisoners’ rights while still in solitary, recounts his harrowing experience as one of the Angola Three. His book is both a searing indictment of the criminal justice system and a tribute to the Black Panther Party, whose principles helped keep him hopeful and compassionate during his long ordeal. Woodfox is in conversation with Katherine M. Kimpel, current Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and formerly one of Woodfox's legal representatives. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780802129086 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Mar 29, 2019
Amy Webb: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Mar 29, 2019
Friday Mar 29, 2019
One of our most respected and experienced futurists, Webb argues in her new book that the main danger posed by artificial intelligence is the power it gives the big corporations that control it. Each time we speak to Alexa or click on a link, the data is collected and used by one or more of the big nine: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. The ordinary people who supply the data have no say over how it’s used and little information about the system if fuels. And that system is largely unregulated. Webb, professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business, and the founder of the Future Today Institute, gives an eye-opening look at how AI is being misused for the sake of short-term financial gain, and proposes a strategy to change that. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781541773752 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Mar 22, 2019
Elaine Shannon: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Mar 22, 2019
Friday Mar 22, 2019
A veteran investigative reporter and author of Desperados, the basis for Michael Mann's NBC miniseries Drug Wars, Shannon has written a riveting account of the career and eventual downfall of Paul Calder LeRoux. A new kind of outlaw, LeRoux used encrypted mobile devices, cloud sharing, and other digital tools to build a global criminal network. This Cartel 4.0 raked in hundreds of millions of dollars by selling arms, drugs, chemicals, and more. But LeRoux met his match with a team of DEA operatives as willing as he to use unorthodox methods. With the suspense of a thriller, Shannon chronicles the five years it took the 960 Group to bring down their quarry. Shannon is in conversation with Karen Tumulty, columnist for The Washington Post. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062859136 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Mar 15, 2019
Doug Jones: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Mar 15, 2019
Friday Mar 15, 2019
Taking his title from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," Jones chronicles the arduous struggle to punish those responsible for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four girls. Though the FBI strongly suspected four especially radical KKK members, investigators were thwarted by reluctant witnesses, lack of physical evidence, and racial bias and the case was closed. When it was re-opened years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley convicted one of the bombers in 1977. Jones, the first Alabama Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1992, followed Baxley as Attorney General from 1997 to 2001, convicting two others in 2001 and 2002 (the fourth died in 1994). https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250201447 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Mar 08, 2019
Don Winslow: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Mar 08, 2019
Friday Mar 08, 2019
Winslow’s crime thrillers have won audiences world-wide, and many—Savages, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, The Force—have been turned into acclaimed films. His latest book joins The Power of the Dog and The Cartel to conclude his award-winning trilogy on the drug trade. Again featuring Art Keller, now in the top ranks of the DEA after a forty-year career, the novel follows the agent from his successful efforts to defeat the Mexican drug kingpin Adán Barrera into an even more dangerous fight against the heroin epidemic. Moving at a fast pace from south of the border and the slums of Guatemala to Wall Street and Washington, D.C., the story pits Keller against not only a new generation of narcos, corrupt cops, and street traffickers but an incoming administration that’s as much his enemy as the old drug cartels were. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062664488 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices