From this episode
Recommended books
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Vintage International)
Author:
Vladimir Nabokov
From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. • "Scintillating … One finds here amazing glimpses into the life of a world that has vanished forever." — The New York Times Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966.
From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. • "Scintillating … One finds here amazing glimpses into the life of a world that has vanished forever." — The New York Times Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.
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De Gaulle
Author:
Julian Jackson
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize A New Yorker , Financial Times , Spectator , Times , and Telegraph Book of the Year In this definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept the Nazi domination of France, Julian Jackson captures Charles de Gaulle as never before. Drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and papers from the recently opened de Gaulle archive, he shows how this volatile visionary of staunch faith and conservative beliefs infuriated Churchill, challenged American hegemony, recognized the limitations of colonial ambitions in Algeria and Vietnam, and put a broken France back at the center of world affairs.
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize A New Yorker , Financial Times , Spectator , Times , and Telegraph Book of the Year In this definitive biography of the mythic general who refused to accept the Nazi domination of France, Julian Jackson captures Charles de Gaulle as never before. Drawing on unpublished letters, memoirs, and papers from the recently opened de Gaulle archive, he shows how this volatile visionary of staunch faith and conservative beliefs infuriated Churchill, challenged American hegemony, recognized the limitations of colonial ambitions in Algeria and Vietnam, and put a broken France back at the center of world affairs. “With a fluent style and near-total command of existing and newly available sources…Julian Jackson has come closer than anyone before him to demystifying this conservative at war with the status quo, for whom national interests were inseparable from personal honor.” ―Richard Norton Smith, Wall Street Journal “A sweeping-yet-concise introduction to the most brilliant, infuriating, and ineffably French of men.” ―Ross Douthat, New York Times “Classically composed and authoritative…Jackson writes wonderful political history.” ―Adam Gopnik, New Yorker “A remarkable book in which the man widely chosen as the Greatest Frenchman is dissected, intelligently and lucidly, then put together again in an extraordinary fair-minded, highly readable portrait. Throughout, the book tells a thrilling story.” ―Antonia Fraser, New Statesman “Makes awesome reading, and is a tribute to the fascination of its subject, and to Jackson’s mastery of it…A triumph, and hugely readable.” ―Max Hastings, Sunday Times
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Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
Authors:
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Patrick Scott,
Sara Levine
The rousing seafaring classic of adventure, pirates, and buried treasure “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” For sheer storytelling delight and pure adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From young Jim Hawkins’s first encounter with the sinister beggar Pew to the climactic battle with the most memorable villain in literature, Long John Silver, this novel has fired readers’ imaginations for generations.
The rousing seafaring classic of adventure, pirates, and buried treasure “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” For sheer storytelling delight and pure adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From young Jim Hawkins’s first encounter with the sinister beggar Pew to the climactic battle with the most memorable villain in literature, Long John Silver, this novel has fired readers’ imaginations for generations. A stirring tale of treachery, greed, and daring, Treasure Island continues to enthrall readers of all ages. This edition features an introduction by Patrick Scott and an afterword by Sara Levine.
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Episode overview
My colleague Ross Douthat is leaving The Times after 17 years to become a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” Before he goes, I’m asking him a few questions.
Douthat has had a unique vantage point on the news media and politics over the last few decades. He’s typically held the role of explaining the right to more liberal audiences, starting as an undergrad, when he was a conservative columnist for The Harvard Crimson. Douthat has also lived through the seismic changes in the media from the both the inside and the outside: He’s made his career at legacy media institutions, but I first got to know him – and spar with him – as an early-2000s blogger (and I have the 20-year-old Bloggingheads.tv clips to prove it).
So what does Douthat make of the transformations he’s lived through? How did blogging change journalism? How did a Republican Party powered by evangelical Christians become a political party dominated by Catholics and pagans? What has he learned about persuasion from writing for liberal audiences? And with the resources of “60 Minutes” behind him, will he finally crack the U.F.O. story once and for all?