Jay Parini is a poet, novelist and teacher. He's also the author of "Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America." He tells Jim Fleming that his is not a list of "great books" but rather books that significantly changed the literary climate of American culture.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Writer and teacher Parker Palmer talks with Anne Strainchamps about his experience with clinical depression and attending to people on their deathbeds.
If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.
Jessica Lamb-Shapiro attended a conference of self-help authors featuring Mark Victor Hansen of "Chicken Soup for the..." fame.
Paul Miller is the unofficial spokesman for remix culture in his persona as DJ Spooky.
For centuries, the oddities of nature - like two-headed cats and conjoined twins - fascinated people. Science historian Lorraine Daston says a history of wonders is to some degree a history of pre-modern science.
Mitchell is a literary virtuoso, best known for his 2004 novel “Cloud Atlas.” He’s famous for the intricate structure of his novels - which weave together multiple narrators, interconnected stories and even different genres - all within the same book. He’s done it again with “The Bone Clocks."
Why are most Danes and Swedes happy to get along without religion?
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