Book Talk Radio  

Even as America celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, race remains a dominant factor in our society. In her book, The New Jim Crow, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that our current reliance on mass incarceration amounts to a devastating system of racial control in America. Join Michelle Alexander and host Joe Conason for a frank discussion on race in America.

Michelle Alexander is a longtime civil rights advocate and litigator. She holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Columbus, Ohio.

Book Talk Radio is a project of the Progressive Book Club, and is hosted by Joe Conason. Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His latest book, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, was released in February 2007.

Join Book Talk Radio and host Joe Conason for a discussion with Moshe Adler about how contemporary economic thinking has rigged the system in favor of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Professor Moshe Adler of Columbia University has written a masterful and wonderfully accessible book that does for economics what Howard Zinn did for American history—Freakonomics crossed with The Tipping Point.

Moshe Adler author of Economics for the Rest of Us, teaches economics at Columbia University and at the Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College. His articles and editorials have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Counterpunch, and in many academic journals. He lives in New York City.

Book Talk Radio is hosted by Joe Conason. Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His latest book, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, was released in February 2007.

Join us on December 1st as David Owen, author of Green Metropolis, and Majora Carter, Green Jobs advocate, environmentalist, and MacArthur "Genius," discuss sustainable, economically thriving urban communities. Moderating the discussion will be Ilyse Hogue, campaign director for MoveOn.org, and former Program Director of the Rainforest Action Network.

About David Owen:
David Owen is the author of Green Metropolis and many other books, including The First National Bank of Dad, The Chosen One, The Making of the Masters, and My Usual Game. He is a staff writer for the New Yorker.

About Majora Carter:
From 2001 to 2008 she was Executive Director of the non-profit she founded: Sustainable South Bronx – where she pioneered green-collar job training and placement systems in one of the most environmentally and economically challenged parts of the US. This MacArthur “genius” is now president of her own economic consulting firm, a co-host on Sundance Channel’s The Green, and host of a new special public radio series called, The Promised Land (thepromisedland.org).

About Ilyse Hogue:
Ilyse Hogue is the Campaign Director for MoveOn.org. Before joining MoveOn, she spent seven years as a Program Director for the Rainforest Action Network (www.ran.org), working to pressure Wall Street to institute environmental and social screens on lending and investment. A long time social change activist, she is also the co-founder of smartMeme (www.smartMeme.com), a national strategy project that links story telling and social change.

Join us for a conversation about faith, politics, and the progressive movement.

Harvard Theologian Harvey Cox’s new book, The Future of Faith, posits that Christianity is undergoing a period of transformation marked by a disregard of dogma in favor of a more open “spirituality,” and a collapse of barriers between different religions. One of the casualties of this transformation is an historically influential actor in American politics: religious fundamentalism.

In this edition of Book Talk Radio, professor Cox talks with Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne about the evolving role of faith in our lives and in American politics.

This is a prerecorded episode of Book Talk Radio, created in partnership with the Center for American Progress. The conversation is moderated by Todd Gitlin.

Harvey Cox is Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he began teaching in 1965, both at HDS and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College; an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin; and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. His research and teaching interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. His most recent book is The Future of Faith.

E. J. Dionne is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and a professor at Georgetown University. His books include the best-selling Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster), which won the Los Angeles Times book prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. His latest book is Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right.

Join Salon.com columnist Joe Conason and author/activist Max Blumenthal as they discuss Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party.

Republican Gomorrah—Blumenthal’s remarkable, muckraking debut—is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal, and crime from the heart of the movement that runs the Republican Party. He describes the people and the beliefs that establishment Republicans—like John McCain—need to kowtow to if they have any hope of running for president, and how moderates have been systematically purged from party ranks.

Get Republican Gomorrah for $1 when you join PBC today.

Max Blumenthal is regularly featured on The Rachel Maddow Show, Democracy Now!, and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The Nation, the Huffington Post, Salon.com, and many other publications. He is a correspondent for the Daily Beast, a research fellow for Media Matters for America, and a Puffin Writing Fellow for the Nation Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His latest book, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, was released in February 2007.

In our inaugural episode, Mike Lux, veteran of the 1994 Clinton health care war room, interviews activist and author Mike Huttner about his new book, 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America.

Join us for a unique conversation about the current policy battles and what YOU can do to influence the outcome.

Our Guests:

Mike Huttner is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ProgressNow a cutting-edge web-based advocacy organization with affiliates in California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Huttner started ProgressNow with his list of 700 email addresses in 2003 and now the ProgressNow partner states combined membership exceeds 2.2 million individuals.

He is the author of the recently published book 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America.

Mike Lux is the President and CEO of Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a political consulting firm he co-founded in 1999, focused on strategic political consulting for non-profits, labor unions, PACs and progressive donors. He served at the White House from January 1993 to mid-1995 as a Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. He blogs at Open Left and is the author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be.