History/Bio

LAPL ID: 
6

Thinking the Twentieth Century

In conversation with Jonathan Kirsch
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
01:17:49
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
What is the power of historical perspective? How can we learn from the past to reform our society of the future? The late historian Tony Judt reframed the history of the European continent after WWII in his book Postwar. A luminous thinker, he clarified the power of historical perspective for living even ordinary lives. In this final book, written with Timothy Snyder, he traverses the complexities of the twentieth century and guides us through the great debates that made our world.
Participant(s) Bio
Tony Judt is the author or editor of fifteen books, including The Memory Chalet and Postwar, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He was University Professor and New York University and the founder of the Remarque Institute. He died in August 2010 at the age of sixty-two.

Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book, Bloodlands, was selected as a best book of the year by The Economist, The New Republic, and The Guardian. Four of his previous books have received awards, including the George Louis Beer Prize for The Reconstruction of Nations and the Pro Historia Polonorum for Sketches from a Secret War.

Jonathan Kirsch is the author of 13 books, including The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God; God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism; and The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible. His next book, The Exterminating Angel, a biography of a crucial but often overlooked figure in the Jewish resistance to Nazi Germany, will be published in 2012. Kirsch is the book editor of The Jewish Journal, an adjunct professor on the faculty of the Professional Publishing Institute at New York University, and a three-time president of PEN U.S.A.

From the Outside Looking In: Writers Finding Their Place in Los Angeles

Moderated by David L. Ulin
Thursday, March 15, 2012
01:30:45
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Literary Los Angeles has always existed apart from our country's publishing capital--3,000 miles apart, to be exact. What does this distance offer writers and book artists? What are the freedoms and the challenges of being outside the traditions and trends of literature? A panel of L.A. writers-authors of fiction, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and poetry-delve into these questions, considering their impact on both the individual and the community.

Part of Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles Art 1945-1980
Participant(s) Bio
Bernard Cooper is the author of Maps To Anywhere; A Year of Rhymes; Truth Serum; a collection of short stories, Guess Again, and his most recent book is The Bill From My Father. Cooper's many awards include the PEN/USA Ernest Hemingway Award, O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim grant, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in literature. His work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Best American Essays and as well, in magazines and literary reviews including, Harper's, The Paris Review, Story, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Cooper teaches Creative Non-Fiction at Bennington College.

Joyce Farmer is best known for co-creating the Tits 'n Clits comics anthology in the 1970s, a feminist response to the rampant misogyny in underground comix. Her graphic memoir Special Exits is a Fall 2010 release from Fantagraphics Books.

Lynell George is an L.A.-based journalist and essayist. A longtime staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly, she covers books, music, visual art and social issues and identity politics. Her work has also appeared in Vibe, Essence, The Smithsonian, Black Clock and Boom: A Journal of California. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where she teaches journalism.

Marisela Norte is the recipient of the Ben Reitman award from San Diego State University for Peeping Tom Tom Girl, a collection of poetry and prose. Her poems featured on MTA buses in the OUT YOUR WINDOW project were recently selected among the the ten best transit poems in the world by the Atlantic. Norte continues to document life in Los Angeles in words and through photography via public transportation.

Michael Tolkin is the author of four novels: The Player, Among the Dead, Under Radar, and The Return of the Player. He won the Writers Guild of America award for his screenplay for The Player, and also directed the movies The Rapture and The New Age.

David L. Ulin is book critic for the Los Angeles Times. From 2005-2010, he was the paper's book editor. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His essays and criticism have appeared in many publications.

Photo: LAPL Photo collection

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

In conversation with Nicholas Goldberg
Thursday, April 5, 2012
01:15:19
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Lelyveld, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, offers an intricate portrait of Gandhi's conflicted mission. After shaping his philosophy of nonviolent resistance during his time in South Africa, Gandhi promoted these social values back in his native India. Although India quickly revered the \"Great Soul,\" Gandhi's following only contributed a small part to the social transformation he imagined. In this new biography, Lelyveld brings us closer to one of history's most remarkable self-creations and one of the twentieth century's most inspiring figures.
Participant(s) Bio
Joseph Lelyveld's interest in Gandhi dates back to tours in India and South Africa as a correspondent for The New York Times, where he worked for nearly four decades, ending up as executive editor from 1994 to 2001. His book on apartheid, Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. He is also the author of Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop.

Nicholas Goldberg joined the Los Angeles Times in 2002 as editor of the editorial pages and the Sunday Opinion section. He became deputy editor of the editorial pages in 2008 and a year later was named editor of the editorial pages, a position that gives him overall responsibility for The Times' opinion coverage. As a former reporter and editor at Newsday, he worked as Middle East bureau chief from 1995 to 1998. His writing has been widely published.

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx

In conversation with Matias Viegener
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
00:53:33
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Using film clips and text in a detailed play-by-play of Harpo Marx's physical movements, Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body-- its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, \"cute\" pathos, and more. Holding up a mirror to Marx's 13 films, Koestenbaum takes a sharp look at American culture and mythology and the intimacies of how we communicate without words.
Participant(s) Bio
Wayne Koestenbaum has published six books of poetry, including: Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, and Rhapsodies of a Repeat Offender. He has also published a novel, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes, and eight books of nonfiction: The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Andy Warhol, Cleavage, Jackie Under My Skin, The Queen's Throat (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist), and Double Talk. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and also a Visiting Professor in the painting department of the Yale School of Art.

Matias Viegener is an artist, author and critic who teaches at CalArts. He is one of the members of the art collective Fallen Fruit, which has exhibited internationally in Mexico, Colombia, Denmark, Austria (Ars Electronica), LACMA, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and ARCO 2010 in Madrid. He writes regularly on art for X-tra and ArtUS, has recently published in Cabinet, Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Radical History Review, and Black Clock, and is the co-editor of Séance in Experimental Writing and The Noulipian Analects. His book 2500 Random Things About Me, Too is just out from Les Figues Press.

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

Moderated by David L. Ulin
Monday, November 14, 2011
01:15:07
ALOUD
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Episode Summary

Philip K. Dick dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and divine. Dick's two daughters and novelist Jonathan Lethem- Exegesis co-editor-serve as guides to exploring the magnificent final work of the author.

Participant(s) Bio

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories over a three decade writing career, in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably, Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly.

Jonathan Lethem is the critically acclaimed author of eight novels, including Motherless Brooklyn and his latest, Chronic City. He has published and spoken widely on Dick and is the editor of the Library of America editions of Dick's novels. His new book of essays, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. is due out this fall.

David L. Ulin is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times. From 2005-2010 he served as the Times' book editor. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His essays and criticism are widely published.

Pamela Jackson is an independent scholar, editor, and archivist who holds degrees in Rhetoric and Library and Information Studies from the University of California Berkeley and Los Angeles, respectively. Her 1999 dissertation, The World Philip K. Dick Made, initiated a decade's study of Dick's Exegesis. She is also a graduate of Berkeley High School, Philip K. Dick's only alma mater.

Laura Leslie is the oldest of Philip K. Dick's three children and grew up in the small town of Pt. Reyes Station, California in the house that informed much of Dick's writing from 1960 - 1964 such as The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time Slip, and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. She has been responsible for his estate since his death in 1982. She works closely with her sister, Isa Dick Hackett, to steward the legacy of their late father. She recently organized the manuscript material left by their late father and has created an extensive catalog. Ms. Leslie has worked in the information technology services industry for over two decades.

Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of Philip K. Dick, is co-founder along with her sister Laura Leslie and CEO of Electric Shepherd Productions, LLC, the company dedicated to the stewardship and adaptation of the Philip K. Dick library. Ms. Hackett served as an Executive Producer on Adjustment Bureau, based on Philip K. Dick's short story The Adjustment Team. She is also credited for her work on Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly and for her guidance on and participation in the DVD special features for Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly.

Queen of America: A Novel

In conversation with Carolyn Kellogg
Thursday, December 1, 2011
01:10:01
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Award-winning novelist Luis Alberto Urrea explores the intrepid life of his great-aunt, a healer and \"Saint of Cabora\" who flees to Arizona when she is claimed as the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution. This spellbinding sequel to The Hummingbird's Daughter is a turn-of-the-century journey across America. Presented in association with the exhibition, A Nation Emerges: The Mexican Revolution Revealed
Participant(s) Bio
Luis Alberto Urrea has written 11 books, including the national bestsellers The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Devil's Highway, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer. Urrea has also won the Kiriyama Prize for fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, an American Book Award, and Christopher Award, among others. Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. He is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Carolyn Kellogg is an award-winning staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where she writes book reviews and covers the publishing world. Her writing has appeared in Black Clock, the anthology The Devil's Punchbowl and Skateboarding Magazine. She recently wrote the Poets & Writers guide to literary Los Angeles and is the former editor of LAist.com. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and is a board member of the National Book Critics Circle.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

In conversation with Richard Rodriguez
Monday, September 26, 2011
01:14:44
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Episode Summary
From the best-selling author of 1491-a study of the pre-Columbian Americas- comes a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.
Participant(s) Bio

Charles C Mann's most recent book, 1491, won the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Keck award for the best book of the year. A correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired, he has covered the intersection of science, technology, and commerce for many newspapers and magazines here and abroad. In addition to 1491, he has co-written four other books: The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics,The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition, Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species, and @ Large: The Strange Case of the Internet's Biggest Invasion. He has also written for HBO and the television show Law and Order.

Richard Rodriguez, a journalist and writer, is the author of an autobiographical trilogy that examines, respectively, class, ethnicity, and race in America. He is finishing a book on the "ecology of monotheism"--the influence of the desert for the experience of God for the Jew, the Christian, and the Muslim.

Leo Braudy: The Hollywood Sign

In conversation with Kevin Roderick
Thursday, July 21, 2011
01:16:53
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Episode Summary
It took fifty years and more before a former real-estate billboard atop Mt. Lee became the world-wide symbol of Hollywood. How did it happen? A master interpreter of popular culture examines why the Hollywood sign is unique in the way cities show themselves to the world.
Participant(s) Bio
Leo Braudy is among America's leading cultural historians and film critics. His most recent book, From Chivalry to Terrorism, was named Best of the Best by the Los Angeles Times and a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Among his previous books, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Jean Renoir: The World of His Films was a finalist for the National Book Award. Braudy's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, American Film, and Partisan Review. He currently is University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Southern California.

Kevin Roderick is a journalist, editor, blogger and author living in Los Angeles. He is the creator and publisher of LA Observed, a widely cited news website that Forbes rated as Best of the Web. He is a Contributing Writer on politics and media at Los Angeles magazine, an award-winning radio commentator, and is often asked by the media to talk about Southern California issues. Currently, he is director of the UCLA Newsroom at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Fire Monks: Wildfires in California

Moderated by William Deverell
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
01:13:51
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
When a massive wildfire blazed across California in June 2008, five monks risked their lives to save Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Pyne-- wildfire expert and the country's pre-eminent fire historian-- and Busch-- author and longtime Zen student-- discuss the ways of wildfires in the West and what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind. Program one of four, co-presented with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
Participant(s) Bio
Colleen Morton Busch's nonfiction, poetry, and fiction have appeared in a wide range of publications, from literary magazines to the San Francisco Chronicle and Yoga Journal, where she was a senior editor. Busch has been a Zen student since 2000.

Stephen Pyne is a professor at Arizona State University and the author of over 20 books mostly dealing with the history, ecology, and management of fire and include big-screen histories for America, Australia, Canada, Europe, and Earth overall. Others deal with the history of exploration, notably How the Canyon Became Grand, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica, and most recently Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery. Both interests, fire and exploration, grew out of 15 seasons he worked the North Rim Longshots, a fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park. He is currently researching a fire history of the U.S. over the past 50 years. He teaches a graduate course on nonfiction writing, which became the basis for his book Voice and Vision.

William Deverell is a professor of history at USC, where he specializes in the history of California and the American West and directs a scholarly institute that collaborates with the Huntington Library in San Marino. He is the author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past and Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850-1910. With Greg Hise, he is co-author of Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region. He is past chair of the California Council for the Humanities and a recent Fellow of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation of Los Angeles. He is also a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC.

Huxley on Huxley: Panel Discussion and Film Excerpts

Tuesday, June 21, 2011
01:08:29
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
The Hollywood home of Laura and Aldous Huxley, psychedelic pioneer and author of Brave New World, was a hotspot for the West Coast artistic avant-garde like Igor Stravinsky and Christopher Isherwood. Join us for a discussion of the Huxleys' influence on American culture, plus excerpts from Mary Ann Braubach's 2009 documentary, Huxley on Huxley.
Participant(s) Bio
Los Angeles born artist Don Bachardy has had a long career of artistic success. His first one-man exhibition was held in 1961 at the Redfern Gallery in London and he has since had many one-man exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston and New York. His work resides in many permanent collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the M.H. de Young Museum of Art, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, the California State Capitol Building (official portrait of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.), the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Portrait Gallery in London, among others. Numerous books of his work have been published. In 2008 the documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story, a film about Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy directed by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, was released in movie theatres in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain.

Ann Louise Bardach is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. She is also the editor of The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro as well as Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion. She is a reporter for The Daily Beast/Newsweek and was a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair for ten years. Bardach won the PEN USA Award for Journalism in 1995 for her reporting in Vanity Fair on Mexican politics, and was a finalist in 1994 for her coverage of women in Islamic countries. Her book Cuba Confidential was named one of Ten Best Books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times. Bardach started the International Journalism class at University of California at Santa Barbara and is also a Resident Scholar with the Orfalea Center at UCSB

Director and Producer Mary Ann Braubach met Laura Huxley through her activist work and forged a friendship that evolved into the 2009 documentary, Huxley on Huxley. She is currently working on a variety of feature and documentary projects, including The Book of Jamaica, based on the Russell Banks novel and a film on the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop with Bruno Barreto, with whom she co-produced the Brazilian film, Four Days In September. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Braubach was a film and television executive for production companies at Warner Bros., Disney and Universal. She was the Head of Production for Tom Selleck's company, TWS, during which time she produced the Elmore Leonard western, Last Stand at Saber River. Before joining TWS, Ms. Braubach was Vice-President of Production at Spring Creek Productions and also served as the Director of Development for George Lucas' Lucasfilm. She was responsible for bringing together the talents for Mr. Lucas' upcoming production Red Tails.

John Densmore is an original and founding member of the musical group The Doors. John co-wrote and produced numerous gold and platinum albums and toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. His autobiography, Riders on the Storm, was on the New York Times bestseller list in 1991. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. His recent journalistic piece on corporations co-opting music to sell products, was published by The Nation Magazine, and subsequently syndicated in the Guardian and Rolling Stone. In film, he co-produced Road To Return, narrated by Tim Robbins. It won several prestigious national awards, and was screened for Congress, resulting in the writing of a bill. He also executive-produced Juvies, (narrated by Mark Walberg) which aired on HBO. He co-wrote and is producer of the screenplay Unknown Soldier with Eva Gardos,based on his novel, With God On Our Side.

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