Literature is the respository of human knowledge. These selected conversations feature individuals who have contributed to both the breadth of that knowledge, and our capacity to understand it..

Thomas Bass
Internationally renowned author, journalist, and professor, Thomas Bass's work has been serialized in The New Yorker, as well as being named one of the "Notable Books of The Year" by The New York Times. Dr. Bass is a professor of English and journalism at the State University of New York at Albany.

 

Stephen Bergman
Stephen Bergman is a novelist, playwright, and, for three decades, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. His novels, The House of God, Fine and Mount Misery have sold over 3 million copies.

 

Theodore Bikel
Folk singer; theater, film and television actor; radio host; president of Actors' Equity; political activist; Jewish spokesman, and author are some of the many careers to which Mr. Bikel can lay claim.

 

Anthony Caprio
Anthony S. Caprio is the President of Western New England College, and a noted language scholar who has written numerous books in the areas of language and literature, including Reflets de la Femme (1973), and the widely-used college text French for Communication (1985), now in its third edition.

 

Helen Epstein
Helen Epstein is the author of five books of literary nonfiction including the two memoirs Children of the Holocaust and Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Monther's Hostory and rthe biography Joe Papp: An American Life. All three books were named New Tork Times Notable Books of the Year.

 

Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of the country’s most noted and respected authors. Her award winning writings include some of the most important books on history in our time - on subjects including Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt – to name a few.

 

Ralph J. Hexter
Dr. Ralph J. Hexter is the fifth president of Hampshire College as well as the author of three books on medieval and ancient literature. His publications also include articles on Vergil, Horace, Goethe, Verdi, and a variety of topics in Medieval Latin in such journals as Modern Language Notes, Helios, Classical Philology, Yale Journal of Criticism and Cambridge Opera Journal.

 

Roger Kahn
Listen to Alan's latest interview with Roger Kahn, legendary sportswriter and author of The Boys of Summer.

 

 

Greg Palast
BBC nvestigative journalist Greg Palast is back to talk about the 2004 Presidential election and how he has documents to back up that this election was stolen. He also talks about the war in Iraq.

 

Elizabeth Rosner
Originally from upstate New York, Elizabeth Rosner is an award­winning poet, essayist and novelist now living in Berkeley, California. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Queensland in Australia. She taught literature and creative writing at the college level for 20 years before turning to writing full­time.

 

Stacy Schiff
Alan Chartock talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff, whose latest book, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America, chronicles the years Benjamin Franklin spent in Paris enlisting French aid in our war for independence. Schiff discusses the intricacies of the French court, the rift between Franklin and his son and the not-so-momentous meeting between Franklin and another noted Enlightenment figure, Voltaire.

 

Gerald Sorin
Listen to Alan's interview with Gerald Sorin, Director of the Jewish Studies Program and the State University of New York College at New Paltz and author of several books including Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent (2002).

 

Simon Winchester
Author, journalist, and broadcaster, has worked as a foreign correspondent for most of his career. His work has taken him to Belfast, Washington, DC, New Delhi, New York, London, and Hong Kong, where he covered such stories as the Ulster crisis, the creation of Bangladesh, the fall of President Marcos, the Watergate affair, the Jonestown Massacre, and assassination of Egypt's President Sadat, the death and cremation of Pol Pot and, in 1982, the Falklands War. During this conflict he was arrested and spent three months in prison in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, on spying charges.