NOW READ THIS - "Sing, Unburied, Sing"

"Jesmyn Ward answers your questions about ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing’" PBS NewsHour 1/31/2018

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SUMMARY:  Award-winning writer Jesmyn Ward joins Jeffrey Brown to answer readers’ questions about her novel “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” the first selection in the Now Read This book club, plus we announce what we’ll be reading for next month.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - Fall's Must Reads

"Great books to fall for now that summer’s over" PBS NewsHour 9/22/2017

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SUMMARY:  From Toni Morrison to Bruce Handy’s take on children’s literature, we offer eight must-read books to add to your bookshelf this fall.  Louise Penny, author of “Glass Houses,” and Pamela Paul, author of “My Life With Bob,” join Jeffrey Brown to share their recommendations for the season.

LITERARY WORLD - Take Two

"From Neil Gaiman, tales of Thor and Odin for modern ears" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2017

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SUMMARY:  Famed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman read and absorbed the stories of the Norse gods when he was young.  In a new book, "Norse Mythology," he retells them for a new generation.  Gaiman sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss the importance of keeping the stories -- and the gods in them -- alive.

"How powerful stories can change the world for the better" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2017

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SUMMARY:  Stories are weapons, for good or ill, says writer Derek Thompson.  Society is bound by the common stories we tell, whether it's about who we should trust and admire, or who we should fear and look down on.  Thompson, author of the recent book “Hit Makers: How Things Become Popular,” offers his humble opinion on the powerful stories we need to be passing on.

IN MEMORIAM - Author Jim Harrison 1937-2016

"Remembering author Jim Harrison in his own words" PBS NewsHour 3/28/2016

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SUMMARY:  Jim Harrison, a prolific and influential writer of fiction and poetry, was known for his preoccupation with rural American life and his eclectic professional pursuits; he'd been everything from a Hollywood screenwriter to a food writer for Esquire Magazine.  Harrison died over the weekend at age 78.  Jeffrey Brown looks back on his 2009 interview with Harrison at his home in Montana.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Jim Harrison was a prolific writer of fiction and poetry, most often of men and women in the drama of rural America and the natural world.  Among his best known works are “Legends of the Fall,” “Dalva,” and the more recent “Brown Dog.”

A new novel, “The Ancient Minstrel,” came out just this month, and a new volume of poetry, “Dead Man's Float,” earlier this year.  He'd been a Hollywood screenwriter, a food writer for “Esquire” magazine, a man of many pursuits who lived large and died this weekend at age 78.

In 2009, I visited Harrison at his home in Montana.  Here's a look back.

JIM HARRISON, Author:  Other than fishing and a little bird-hunting, all I do is write.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Harrison is a determined outsider, in all senses.

JIM HARRISON:  You really get a hang of the country, rather than be stuck in what I call the geo-piety of the Eastern Seaboard.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Careful, because that's where I am.

JIM HARRISON:  I know it, but you deserve it, too.  But it does happen.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Now 71, Jim Harrison is a Falstaffian figure; blind in his left eye from a childhood accident, chain-smoking his American Spirit cigarettes, part wild man, part cultivated literary lion, who peppers his speech with talk of birds and great poets of the past.

It's poetry, in fact, that has remained Harrison's first love.  His new collection is called “In Search of Small Gods.”

NEWSHOUR BOOK SHELF - "Purity"

Hummm.... Wonder if author watched "The X-Files" (Purity Control)?

"In ‘Purity,’ Jonathan Franzen dismantles the deception of idealism" PBS NewsHour 9/1/2015

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SUMMARY:  Jonathan Franzen's latest novel unfolds between multiple characters across time and geography, connected by a theme named in its title: "Purity."  Jeffrey Brown visits the author on the California coast to discuss the book's inspiration and why he gets into heated public debates.

JONATHAN FRANZEN, Author, “Purity”:  That is the curlew again.  But it’s — this is — in the summer, they just get these amazing rust pink colors.  The rest of the year, they go real kind of gray and camouflage.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The long-billed curlew, the Least sandpiper, the Heermann’s gull.

JONATHAN FRANZEN:  There’s one back — from the back that is still in its breeding plumage

JEFFREY BROWN:  Everywhere you look, there are birds here at the Moss Landing Wildlife Area on the California coast, oddly enough, in the shadow of a power plant.

And Jonathan Franzen, a dedicated, even obsessed bird-watcher knows them all.

JONATHAN FRANZEN:  Actually, I think that’s a jaeger.

JEFFREY BROWN:  It’s a pastime, Franzen says, that repays patience and a keen eye for the unexpected, much like the work he’s best known for, writing novels.

JONATHAN FRANZEN:  A great birder will spend some time looking at what everyone else is looking at, but then you will see him or her start to look around where everyone is not looking.  And that, I definitely recognize from my own practice of fiction.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Franzen lives in the seaside town of Santa Cruz, but was raised in a rather different setting, in the suburbs of Saint Louis.

He gained critical attention from his first two novels, but not many readers.  That changed with the 2001 publication of “The Corrections,” a sprawling novel about a dysfunctional Midwestern family which won the National Book Award and established him as one of the nation’s best-known writers.  When his next novel, “Freedom,” arrived in 2010, “TIME” magazine greeted it with a cover story proclaiming Franzen the great American novelist.

Now comes “Purity,” a book, he says, about youthful idealism.

LIGATURE - Picture Books for Adults Only

"Profane picture books make fun out of a parent’s pains" PBS NewsHour 12/10/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Finally tonight, a hit bedtime book series not meant for children.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

And a note in advance:   It contains profane language we have bleeped out.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It begins so tender and sweet.

BRYAN CRANSTON, Actor:  The bunnies are munching on carrots.  The lambs nibble grasses and bleat.  I know you’re too hungry to reason with, but you have to (EXPLETIVE) eat.

JEFFREY BROWN:  But it ends with a word we can’t use on the air.

BRYAN CRANSTON:  Oh, now you’re hungry.

JEFFREY BROWN:  It’s the voice of actor Bryan Cranston, he of “Breaking Bad” fame, reading the words of frustrated father Adam Mansbach.

ADAM MANSBACH, Author:  The sunrise is golden and lovely.  The birds chirp and twitter and tweet.  You woke me and asked for some breakfast.  So why the (EXPLETIVE) won’t you eat?

JEFFREY BROWN:  Mansbach was known as the author of several critically acclaimed novels, until a little ditty he published in 2012 titled “Go the ‘Blank’ to Sleep” became a surprise huge bestseller.

LITERATURE - 'Leaves of Grass' as Work of Art

"Letter by letter, turning Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ into a work of art" PBS NewsHour 7/25/2014

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JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  “I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” the famous first lines of a landmark of American literature, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

Whitman was 36 years old when he self-published the first edition in 1855.  A trained printer, he personally hand-set some of the lines of type in the book.  Now Whitman’s work is being printed again, just as he did it in the 1800s, on movable type printing presses, the setting this time, in an old industrial building in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park, where the Arion Press is one of the country’s last fine book printers, and limited edition, handmade works are crafted from start to finish under one roof.

ANDREW HOYEM, Publisher, Arion Press:  The making of a book is a very, very complicated process.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The man who’s kept it all going for four decades is founder, publisher, and a poet himself, Andrew Hoyem.

ANDREW HOYEM:  We do what we do not to be quaint, but to use these techniques of letterpress printing, printing from metal types, because when the type is pressed into good quality paper, it creates an aesthetic effect you cannot achieve any other way.

GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE - Before eMail or Edward Snowden

"How an unlikely group changed the face of the FBI, retold in ‘The Burglary’" PBS NewsHour 7/15/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Next, a look back at a different era of government surveillance, well before e-mail or Edward Snowden.

Jeffrey Brown has our book conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  On March 8, 1971, a group of burglars entered a small FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania.  In the files they took away, they found evidence of wide-scale surveillance of U.S. citizens, particularly of anti-war and black civil rights activists.

It opened a window on the FBI that eventually led to the downfall of its leader, J. Edgar Hoover, and to major reforms of the bureau.  The perpetrators were never caught, but their identities and story are now told in the new book “The Burglary.”

Author Betty Medsger was one of the original journalists to receive and publish the information that came from the stolen files and she joins us now.

And welcome to you.

BOOKS - Rethinking the Book Biz

"At Book Expo, publishers and authors confront changing industry" PBS NewsHour 6/6/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And we turn to one particular business that’s experienced change from technology, consolidation and other factors: the world of books.

Jeffrey Brown was there for the publishing industry’s annual trade show that wrapped up this past weekend.

Here’s his report.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Publishers large and small, booksellers from far and wide, agents, editors, publicists and, yes, authors.  The annual Book Expo America at the Javits Center in New York is the industry’s largest trade fair, a place to sell your wares, make new connections and bask in the glory of the written word.

JAMES PATTERSON, Best-selling Author:  For a bookstore junkie, this is heaven.

(LAUGHTER)

JEFFREY BROWN:  James Patterson is a rock star at BEA, a publishing titan with dozens of bestsellers.  For him, all would seem well, but he sees a continuing crisis in the world of books today, and he’s donating a million dollars to independent booksellers around the country to help them raise awareness of their plight.

JAMES PATTERSON:  This is a period of evolution, revolution, whatever you want to call it, big shift into e-books, and I just think we just have to slow down and make sure it’s an orderly transition.  People need to understand that what is at risk here is American literature.

BOOK - Apple After Steve Jobs

"In ‘Haunted Empire,’ a look at life at Apple after Steve Jobs" PBS NewsHour 5/20/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Next, Hari Sreenivasan has our book conversation.  He talked with an author who has written about the impact one man has had on the success or failure of a company.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  When the one man is Steve Jobs, it’s a question well worth asking.  It’s been a little more than two years since the founder and creative force behind Apple died at age 56.

Since then, former Wall Street Journal technology reporter Yukari Kane interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the company.  The upshot is her book, “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs.”

INEQUALITY - Economics Book "Capital" Making a Big Splash

"Why do the rich get richer?  French economist Piketty takes on inequality in ‘Capital’" (Part-1) PBS NewsHour 5/12/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Questions about the scope and causes of income inequality have resonated loudly in the U.S. in recent years.  Now a new economics book about these issues is making a big, and surprising, splash of its own among experts and the public.

We’re going to spend the next couple of nights looking at it, and the debate around it.

Tonight, our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has a look at what’s in the book that’s capturing so much attention.  It’s part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  Perhaps the most unlikely bestseller in America; the English translation of French economist Thomas Piketty’s 577-page tome, “Capital.”

His recent U.S. press tour was likened to Beatlemania, with standing-room-only events.  Nobel laureates on stage with him piled on the praise…

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, Columbia University:  This is — it’s a fantastic book.

PAUL SOLMAN:  … especially ones tilting left who share concern for the global trend the 42-year-old Parisian has definitively documented: growing economic inequality.

"Debating Piketty’s theory on how wealth begets wealth, widens the economic gap" (Part-2) PBS NewsHour 5/13/2014

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SUMMARY:  In "Capital," French economist Thomas Piketty explores how wealth and the income derived from it magnifies the problems of inequality.  Gwen Ifill gets debate on his data and conclusions from Heather Boushey of Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Kevin Hassett of American Enterprise Institute.

BOOK - Portrait of the Supreme Court and Same-Sex Marriage

"Telling the stories behind the Supreme Court ‘gamble’ on same-sex marriage" PBS NewsHour 4/30/2014

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JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage, the latest turn in a long-running battle over the issue largely waged state by state.

It led to a high-profile five-year pursuit of a federal lawsuit to overthrow Prop 8 that ended in a major decision by the Supreme Court.

The story is told in the new book “Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality” by author Jo Becker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and, I have to add, long ago a young staff person here at the NewsHour.
---
JO BECKER, The New York Times:  But ultimately what I really wanted to tell is what it’s like to feel like you want something, as Kris Perry testified, you want something that everybody else has and you — and be told, no, you can’t have it.  That’s a story actually that was so moving, that the guy who fought them all the way to the Supreme Court, the lawyer on the other side, Charles Cooper, said after watching them over these four-and-half years, when he finally saw them get married on television, he told me that he couldn’t help but rejoice from their happiness.

WALL STREET - Book 'Flash Boys' and High-Frequency Trading

"High-frequency trading" = high-frequency gambling.  It is also predatory activity that hurts our economy.

"‘Flash Boys’ investigates how high-frequency traders anticipate Wall Street’s next move faster" PBS NewsHour 4/4/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Often, when we discuss the financial markets, we show these pictures, shots of traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but the trading world changed several years ago.

Much of it now is done with computer servers, hundreds of millions of orders done through what is known as high-frequency trading.  This week, there is a lot of buzz about a provocative new book focusing on how it has changed and how one-thousandth-of-a-second can make a big difference.

The book is titled “Flash Boys.”  The author the Michael Lewis, who also wrote “Moneyball,” “Liar’s Poker,” and “The Big Short.”

And Michael Lewis joins us now.  Welcome back to the NewsHour.

MICHAEL LEWIS, Author, “Flash Boys”:  Thanks for having me, yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, you focus much of the story on this New York financial trader who starts out thinking the markets are all about one thing, discovers that there’s something wrong, and basically goes about trying to change everything.

MICHAEL LEWIS:  Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Why did you focus on him?

MICHAEL LEWIS:  Because I was working on something else and I needed to learn what high-frequency trading was.  This is a term of art that really didn’t even exist until three or four years ago.

BOOKS - 'Wrong Enemy' About U.S. Policy in Afghanistan

"In ‘Wrong Enemy,’ author explains why war in Afghanistan may have been misguided" PBS NewsHour 4/3/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for 13 years, but have we been going after the right enemy?  The author of a new book says no.

Hari Sreenivasan has more.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  This coming Saturday, Afghans will go to the polls to elect a new president.  It will be the third popular election since 2001, when the United States invaded the country following attacks on September 11.

One reporter who has covered the war in that country from the beginning is New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall.  She’s also the author of the new book “The Wrong Enemy:  America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014.”

She joins me now.

BIOGRAPHY - 'Stokely: A Life'

"Beyond ‘Black Power,’ recounting the under-told story of Stokely Carmichael" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Stokely Carmichael marched with Martin Luther King Jr.  He campaigned for voting rights and against the Vietnam War and ultimately devoted himself to a Pan-Africanist movement that linked him to controversial leaders across that continent.

But, in most history books, he will be forever remembered as the activists who coined the term black power during years of racial turmoil in the United States.

A new biography, “Stokely: A Life,” tells a more complete story of a man who shaped the contemporary and sometimes conflicted civil rights movement.  Its author is Peniel Joseph, professor of history at Tufts University.

MEDIA - A Book On a Traitor, ‘The Snowden Files’

"In ‘The Snowden Files,’ revealing the man who revealed NSA secrets" PBS NewsHour 3/14/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Finally tonight: He’s a wanted man in the U.S., but this week, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden spoke, via video from Russia, to the annual gathering called South By Southwest.  He argued to the crowd gathered in Austin, Texas, that the tech industry needs to do more to protect the privacy of Americans in the digital age.

A new book examines what Snowden revealed and pulls together the threads of one of the biggest security breaches in American history.

Jeffrey Brown has our conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It began with an e-mail, “I am a senior member of the intelligence community,” the beginning of revelations leaked by Edward Snowden of the vast surveillance and collection of data by the National Security Agency and the beginning of a new book titled “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man.”

Author Luke Harding is a correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardia, which broke the initial Snowden story.

GREECE - The Story of Athens' Parthenon

"Seeing the Parthenon through ancient eyes" PBS Newshour 2/6/2014

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SUMMARY:  An icon of ancient democracy, the story and significance of Athens’ Parthenon has been reinterpreted by numerous cultures.  Joan Breton Connelly, author of “The Parthenon Enigma,” joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the landmark’s meaning and whether the Parthenon sculptures (also known as the Elgin Marbles) should be returned to Greece.

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  Taking a fresh look at a timeless treasure.

Jeffrey Brown has our book conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  It’s perhaps the most famous building in the world, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.  Built in the fifth century B.C., it’s become a symbol of the very idea of democracy in Western civilization, as well as an architectural model for other important structures, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

A new book, “The Parthenon Enigma,” tells the story of the people who built it and how it’s been understood, rightly and wrongly, to our own day.

Author Joan Breton Connelly is a classical archaeologist and professor at New York University.

INTERVIEW - Robert Gates, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War"

"In 'Duty,' Gates reflects on debates waged behind the scenes of war" PBS Newshour 1/14/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  One of the most talked-about and controversial books of the new year went on sale today.  Its author, Robert Gates, has served eight presidents, held key posts at the White House, was head of the CIA and secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama.

The book, "Duty:  Memoirs of a Secretary of War," sparked a frenzy of headlines ahead of its official release for his public criticism of the administration he recently left.

I spoke to him earlier today.  He was wearing a neck brace after falling at his home last week.

Secretary Robert Gates, welcome to the NewsHour.

BOOK - Dissident Gardens

"Novelist Jonathan Lethem offers look at the personal side of American radicalism" PBS Newshour 10/22/2013

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SUMMARY:  Set in the mid-20th century, Jonathan Lethem's novel "Dissident Gardens" explores the private lives of American communists and the "radical tradition" that has become part of the fabric of our nation.  Jeffrey Brown talks to the author about his inspiration and the intersection of political ideology and personal experience.

BOOKS - New Autobiography of Mark Twain

"Mark Twain is back!  Volume II of his autobiography just out" PBS Newshour 10/20/2013

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HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  And now to an important literary development ...  The publication of Volume 2 of The Autobiography of Mark Twain.  The 700-page book is filled with the author's pictures and letters and thoughts he dictated to a stenographer.  Among the highlights:  Twain's recollections of a dinner with Helen Keller, whom he described as the "8th Wonder of the World."  Joining me now is Ben Griffin, the book's associate editor.

So the first volume of the autobiography of Mark Twain, it was in 2010.  It was a bestseller, and one reviewer wrote how strange, alluring, but less sure-footed Twain seemed.  What does the second volume reveal about Mark Twain?