“The Dark Side” – that’s where Dick Cheney said we would have to go to “achieve our objectives” in the White House’s war on terror. JANE MAYER has been investigating what “the dark side” really means. I spoke with her before a live audience at the LA Public Library ALOUD series recently; we have the tape. Her book is out now in paperback. (Thanks to Louise Steinman and the ALOUD staff for making this audio available for broadcast.)
Also: Los Angeles in 1950 was a city known for freeway sprawl and unplanned growth. But Los Angeles was NOT “unplanned” – there had been a battle between different utopian visions of what the city could be, starting in the 1920s. That story is told by Jeremiah Axelrod in his new book Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles.
Plus: KATHA POLLITT is best known for her political columns in The Nation and her personal essays in The New Yorker, but she’s also an award-winning poet – her first book of poetry, Antarctic Traveler, won the National Book Critics Circle award, and her poems are published in The New Yorker, Paris Review, The Atlantic, and many other places. Now she has a second book of poetry out – The Mind-Body Problem. We’ll talk about poetry and politics, and she will read some of my favorites.
