Paul Hoffman is the author of “Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight.” Hoffman tells Jim Fleming that Santos-Dumont’s craft (which he tethered to a light-post outside Maxim’s while he had dinner) was a motorized hot air balloon.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Michael Cunningham won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Hours,” which re-imagined the life and death of Virginia Woolf. His new novel is called “Specimen Days” and involves Walt Whitman.
Historian Jill Lepore talks with Jim Fleming about Noah Webster and his dictionary. She says Webster thought Americans should have their own language and he celebrated American words.
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood talks with Steve Paulson about her dystopian science fiction book, “Oryx and Crake.”
Best-selling novelist Jane Hamilton shares some of her favorite endings from modern literature with Steve Paulson.
Journalist John Carlin talks with Steve Paulson about the 1995 rugby tournament that changed South Africa's history.
Kathleen Morris talks about her experience with the mental habit monastics used to describe a kind of frantic escapism and aversion to other people. It's similar, but not identical, to the modern disease of depression.
Michael Wood's latest documentary film for PBS is called "Shangri-La." Wood tells Jim Fleming about his journey through the Himalayas.
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