Ever since the civil rights movement, voices on the liberal left have advocated a retreat  color-conscious public policies such as affirmative action, and even from open discussion of racism as a key factor in the perpetuation of racial inequity in the United States. They have argued that the barriers faced by black and brown Americans are largely divorced from racism, and that these stem, instead, from economic factors such as deindustrialization, capital flight from the cities, spiraling healthcare costs and inadequate funding for education, jobs programs, and other programs of social uplift. From this starting point, they contend that “universal” programs intended to help the poor and working class are the best means for narrowing the racial inequalities with which the nation is still plagued.

In the first book to discuss the pitfalls of “colorblindness” in the Obama era, Tim Wise argues against colorblindness and for deeper color-consciousness in both public and private practice. We can only begin to move toward authentic social and economic equity through what he calls illuminated individualism—acknowledging the diverse identities that have shaped our perceptions and the role that race continues to play in the maintenance of disparities between whites and people of color in the United States today.

No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.

Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.

Elif Batuman was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford University.

Jeffrey Haas discusses The Assassination Of Fred Hampton from Lawrence Hill Books

The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Jeffrey Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Fred Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Fred Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.

praise for the book:

“A riveting account of the assassination, the plot behind it, the attempted cover-up, the denouement and the lessons that we should draw from this shocking tale of government iniquity.”  —Noam Chomsky, author and political activist

“A remarkable work.”  —Studs Terkel

“A true crime story and legal thriller, this powerful account puts together all the pieces, step by step, giving us the anatomy of a despicable episode in recent American history. The writing is clear and straightforward; the overall impact devastating.” —Phillip Lopate, author of Getting Personal

“This is an extremely important book–and a tale well told–for America to read if it wants to become what it says it has always been—the land of the free and the home of the brave.”  —Ramsey Clark, lawyer and former United States Attorney General

Jeffrey Haas is an attorney and cofounder of the People’s Law Office, whose clients included the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, community activists, and a large number of those opposed to the Vietnam War. He has handled cases involving prisoners’ rights, Puerto Rican nationalists, protestors opposed to human rights violations in Central America, police torture, and the wrongfully accused.

Joel Schalit discusses Israel vs. Utopia a collection of essays from Akashic Books.

Isreal is a synonym for many things, the ancestral home of the Jewish people, the hell of the Palestinians; the realization of a centuries-old dream of freedom, and the heart of the War on Terror. No country inspires as much debate about its rights and wrongs, its legitimacy and illegitimacies, than Israel. Historically associated with Europe, such debate finally became common in the U.S. during the Bush era, as America deepened its involvement in the region, and Israel fought three wars.

In his new book, Isreal Vs. Utopia, Israeli American journalist Joel Schalit distinguishes between the Israel he knows, and the image of it that exists in the imagination of Americans. Israel is a state of mind, Schalit argues, as much as it is its own sovereign state. Exploring this tension, in America, in Israel, employing a combination of personal observation, political, and cultural commentary, Schalit defines the instability of Israel, as a metaphor, and America’s troubled love for it, as only an Israeli American would know.

Joel Schalit is a writer and editor based in Milan, Italy. The author of the critically-acclaimed Jerusalem Calling, and the editor of several collections including The Anti-Capitalism Reader, Schalit has edited some of America’s most influential independent magazines, including Punk Planet, Tikkun, and the legendary ’90s e-zine, Bad Subjects. His work has also appeared in AlterNet, the Forward, the Guardian and XLR8R. Schalit currently comments on Mideast politics for French global news broadcaster France 24, and is the culture editor of the New York Jewish periodical, Zeek. A member of the post-rock duo Elders of Zion, he is presently working on the band’s third album, Donkeys of the Earth.

This collection of mordant, poignant and playful essays shows Rebecca Brown at the height of her imaginative and intuitive powers. A wry and incisive social and literary critique is couched in a gonzo mix of pop culture, autobiography, fiction, literary history, misremembered movie plots and fantasy that plays with the notion of what it is to be “American.”

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Rebecca Brown, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, and Robert Gluck celebrate the release of Life As We Show It: Writing On Film, edited by Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn and published by City Lights.

Life As We Show It is a dynamic cross-genre collection that uses short stories, essays, and poetry to explore the cinematic experience. In these innovative writings, the movie-viewer relationship is positioned as protagonist, theme and plot, and most importantly, as a new genre in its own right.

The Tyranny of Email draws on extensively on the research of linguistics, behavioral sciences, cultural critics, and philosophers to take a fascinating look at the unrelenting nature of correspondence through the ages, and explores how that nature has manifested itself in email.  As the toll of email mounts, reducing our time for leisure and contemplation, and separating us from each other in an unending and lonely battle with the overfull inbox. Freeman enters a plea for communication that is more selective and nuanced, and, above all, more sociable.

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who’s written for a variety of publications including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, People, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson page-turner award, and was recently named American editor of Granta. He lives in New York City.

Recorded Wednesday, October 28, 2009.