James McBride won the National Book Award for "The Good Lord Bird," his novel about the abolitionist John Brown. He explains why he doesn't like most fictional portraits of slavery and how he tried to tell a different story.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Can science finally answer the age-old mystery, how something can come out of nothing? Physicist Lawrence Krauss says yes, and in the process he’s set off an intellectual brawl with theologians and philosophers.
Najla Said is many things: actress, playwright, author. She’s also a Palestinian-Lebanese-Christian-Arab-American who grew up on New York’s Jewish Upper West Side. And she’s the daughter of the late Edward Said –the famous Palestinian intellectual and activist.
If you think the American middle class has it bad, consider life in debt-ridden Italy or Greece. Best-selling financial writer Michael Lewis portrays the downfall of several European countries with his usual verve, in Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World.
Punk legend Patti Smith. 40 years ago, she came out with the seminal punk album Horses –with cover photo by her friend and lover Robert Mappelthorpe.
John Wesley Harding was plain Wesley Harding Stace when he first heard Bob Dylan's album, and working toward his Phd at Cambridge.
Matthijs van Boxsel is the author of “The Encyclopedia of Stupidity.” He tells Steve Paulson it started with shame at his own stupidity, but he’s come finally to praise it.
Marilyn Johnson talks about how librarians are emerging as heroes of the digital age because of their love for the written word, free speech and open access.
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