That Said With Michael Zeldin

Join Michael in his conversation with Ian Buruma discussing his new book Stay Alive, Berlin 1939-1945 which is an astonishing account of life under the Nazi regime. Most importantly, the book asks the question how do ordinary people behave morally when their survival requires accommodation to an immoral system?Ian Buruma was born in the Netherlands. He studied Chinese at Leiden University and cinema at Nihon University, Tokyo. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and New York. He is a regular contributor to several publications including The New Yorker and writes monthly columns for Project Syndicate as well as hosting the podcast Into Asia. He is a professor at Bard College and lives in New York City. ‘Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945' is his latest book.Stay Alive Berlin 1939-1945In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse.Buruma gives tender attention to the Jewish experience in Berlin during the war, weaving its thread into the broader fabric of this marvelously rich and vivid mosaic of urban life. The distillation of a broad-gauged reckoning with a vast trove of primary sources, including a surprising number of interviews with living survivors, the book is a study in extremes—depravity and resilience, moral blindness and moral courage, pious bigotry and unchecked hedonism.By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not “Auf wiedersehen” or “Heil Hitler” but “Bleiben Sie übrig”—“Stay alive.” And by war’s end Berlin’s population had fallen by almost half.Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s own father, a Dutch student conscripted into forced labor in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. It’s a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.More about Ian Burumahttps://www.bard.edu/faculty/ian-burumahttps://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_BurumaAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Dana Bash about her important new book The Elections That Changed the World, Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live which is a riveting exploration of what they consider to be among the most crucial elections in history from Julius Caesar to Nelson Mandela.Dana Bash is CNN's chief political correspondent, anchor of Inside Politics with Dana Bash weekdays at 12pmET, and co-anchor of State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the network's Sunday morning newsmaker show. Bash is based in Washington, D.C., where she covers both campaigns and Congress and regularly serves as a moderator for CNN's political town hall specials.Elections can usher in economic prosperity, fresh solutions for calcified problems, and new policies that improve the lives of citizens everywhere. They can lead to war, a scarcity of resources and a loss of deeply-held values. In other words, elections matter, sometimes in ways we can’t even anticipate.CNN correspondent Dana Bash and co-author David Fisher take readers on a journey through some of the most pivotal moments in history including:Julius Caesar’s election as praetor amid the unique voting practices of ancient RomeThe 1620 creation of the Mayflower Compact in a ship anchored off Cape CodThe informal, hands-up election at a church gathering that made Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the Montgomery Improvement AssociationCatholic Cardinals’ consequential selection of Pope John XXIIIUS Presidential elections of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano RooseveltWorld leaders Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Clement Attlee, and Adolf HitlerThe ascendance of the first democratically elected female world leadersThis compelling book is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered Does my vote matter? and those who are curious about how our election systems came to be.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Richard North Patterson about his new book Tripwires, 15 Twenty-First-Century Events That Undermined American Democracy—And How to Reclaim It which identifies a series of self-inflicted wounds and destabilizing societal trends that have led America to the precipice of Autocracy and lays out a program for reversing the harm.Richard North Patterson is the author of twenty-three novels, sixteen of which have been New York Times bestsellers, as well as a nonfiction narrative of the 2016 presidential campaign. A former trial attorney, he is a political commentator whose regular columns and articles have been published in The New York Times, The London Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Bulwark, and elsewhere. He lives between Jacksonville, Florida, and Martha’s Vineyard.https://richardnorthpatterson.substack.com/About the bookIn a trenchant work of nonfiction, the New York Times bestselling author identifies a series of self-inflicted wounds and destabilizing societal trends that have led America to the precipice of autocracy and lays out a program or reversing the harm. From politicized Supreme Court decisions to wrong-headed policy initiatives and toxic political maneuvers, Richard North Patterson—whose novel on presidential politics, Protect and Defend, was a #1 New York Times bestseller—combines fifteen fateful moments in the past quarter-century with an immersive narrative of the underlying economic, cultural, and political developments that made these tripwires so profoundly consequential.Starting with the Supreme Court intervention that awarded George W. Bush the presidency, Patterson examines the often under-appreciated turning points that helped undermine our polity, from the accidental accession of John Roberts as Chief Justice and the ruin wreaked by America’s subprime mortgages, to Donald Trump’s demand to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Marco Rubio’s sabotage of his own immigration reform bill, and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to convict Trump for his attempted coup—culminating in the ultimate betrayal of our constitutional democracy: the Roberts Court’s invitation to unbounded presidential power.Patterson’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of recent U.S. history along with his political acumen and training as a trial lawyer allow him to distill cause and effect in a deeply synthetic way, building to a comprehensive account of the perverse compound of ignorance, corruption, racism, religiosity, plutocracy, and authoritarianism wrought by Trump’s return to power. He concludes with a detailed program for establishing a truly equitable and democratic society, offering hope for America’s future.Biographyhttps://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm/author_number/290/richard-north-patterson#biographyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_North_PattersonAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Colin Asher about his new book The Midnight Special, The Secret Prison History of American Music which explores the rich tradition of music behind bars and shows how policing and prisons have shaped our musical culture from blues to hip-hop.After spending a decade as a bicycle messenger among other things, Colin received a Bachelors of Science degree from Northeastern University, and a Master of Arts from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. As he says about himself, despite the fact that I wrote a book about musicians, I have no musical talent – but that didn't stop me from spending one of the best years of his life playing in a band with Spencer Ackerman.About the bookIn American popular music, we often glorify rebellious artists and “outlaws.” But in The Midnight Special, Colin Asher tells a deeper story about the criminal justice system’s impact on our musicians, explored through compelling portraits of five artists whose careers span the twentieth century.Opening with folk and blues artist Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who was made to perform wearing prison clothes, Asher traces the intertwined histories of music and incarceration, from Southern prison farms of the Jim Crow era, through the heroin-driven mid-century drug wars that villainized a generation of jazz artists, and to our present era of mass incarceration.Asher shows how the suggestion of criminality has often benefited white artists, while prosecutions often hurt Black musicians. Comparing the divergent trajectories of jazz pianist Elmo Hope with country singer Johnny Cash, Asher examines how violent and discriminatory policing stifled Hope’s career and led to the creation of his album Sounds from Rikers Island (1963), while forgiveness and lenience brought us Cash’s masterpiece At San Quentin (1969).With keen musical analysis and sociological insight, The Midnight Special examines key themes in culture and criminal justice, from the movement for prison reform that allowed soul musician Ike White to stage thrilling concerts while locked up and record his album Changin’ Times (1977), to the crushing cultural weight of mass incarceration a generation later. Closing with Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World (1995) and stories of music in prisons today, The Midnight Special recounts how prisons occasionally incubate talent but more often shorten careers and distort the public’s perception of musicians and their value to society.An urgent book about the ways music can affirm an individual’s sense of humanity in dehumanizing circumstances, The Midnight Special writes the history of prisons into American music—a story as important as it is overlooked.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael Zeldin as he speaks with Princeton historian Julian Zelizer about his book, Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Life of Radical Amazement. In his lifetime, Rabbi Heschel helped to carve out space for progressive religious voices on the national and international stage in the civil rights, anti-war, and religious freedom movements. Coretta Scott King, called Heschel “one of the great men of our times.”Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 20 books on American political history and is the winner of the Ellis Hawley Prize for Best Book on Political History among other awards. He is a political commentator on CNN and National Public Radio.Julian E. Zelizer has been among the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst and a regular guest on NPR’s “Here and Now.” He is the author and editor of 22 books including, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (2015), the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (Norton), co-authored with Kevin Kruse and Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party (Penguin Press). The New York Times named the book as an Editor’s Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books in 2020. His most recent book is Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement (Yale University Press, Jewish Lives Series). In 2021-2022, he will publish three new edited volumes—Daniel Bell: Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours (Columbia University Press, co-edited with Paul Starr); The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment (Princeton University Press) and Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past (Basic Books, co-edited with Kevin Kruse). He is currently working on a new book about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the 1964 Democratic Convention. Zelizer, who has published over 1000 op-eds, has received fellowships from the Brookings Institution, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the New York Historical Society, and New America. He also co-hosts a popular podcast called Politics & Polls.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with best–selling author Eric Jay Dolin about his latest book The Wreck of the Mentor which tells the story of the American whaling ship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. With supplies dwindling, the eleven surviving crewmen face not only the miseries of shipwreck in unfamiliar territory but also the profound uncertainty of contact with the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau, who within days approach the deserted men brandishing axes, clubs, and spears. In this gripping saga of cultural collision, tribal wars, and dashed hopes, award–winning historian Eric Jay Dolin vividly reconstructs the Mentor’s doomed voyage, the years of perilous captivity, and the delicate negotiations and fraught naval rescue mission that followed.Illustrated by more than 100 images and maps, The Wreck of the Mentor is at once a powerful story of survival and a revealing window into the great Age of Sail―a time when maritime ambition collided with local sovereignty, and when the outcome of one voyage rippled across oceans and empires.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation Lois Romano about her new book An Inconvenient Widow, The Torment, Trial and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln a revelatory new biography of one of the most misunderstood and vilified First Ladies in American history: Mary Todd Lincoln.Book NotesMary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society’s expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary’s early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies—influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood—by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait—of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America’s greatest presidents.Biographyhttps://www.icrw.org/staff-members/lois-romano/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Andrew Graham-Dixon about his new book Vermeer, A Life Lost and Found which is a groundbreaking study of the seventeenth century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. Andrew is a British art historian, art critic, author and broadcaster and one of the leading art critics and presenters of arts television in the English-speaking world. He has presented numerous landmark series on art for the BBC and in the course of his storied career, has won numerous awards for writing and broadcasting.Joining Michael as a special guest to help facilitate this conversation is Dr. Philip Eliasoph, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.Dr. Eliasoph is a Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Book NotesThe paintings of Johannes Vermeer of Delft are some of the most beautiful, even sublime, in the history of art. Yet, like the life of Vermeer himself, they are mysterious and have for centuries defied explanation. Following new leads, and drawing on a mass of historical evidence, some of it freshly uncovered in the archives of Delft and Rotterdam, Andrew Graham-Dixon paints a dramatically new picture of Vermeer and vividly evokes the world of the Dutch Republic as it was in its so-called Golden Age. Vermeer emerges from this account as a man deeply engaged with his society: well-travelled, a reader of books, a man personally connected to many of the most interesting people of his time, including merchants, philosophers, preachers, bankers, regents and bakers. He was also deeply affected by the struggles that shook his world: the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence and the yet more terrible Thirty Years War.  Graham-Dixon shows how Vermeer was moved to become a pacifist by such atrocities, and thereafter made many of his closest friends in the ranks of Europe's first peace movement. He reveals that Vermeer's closest collaborator and chief patron was a woman. These are all previously untold stories, and they have a direct bearing on his art. The many piercing descriptions of Vermeer's pictures, which are at the heart of the book, shed new light on his intentions. Graham-Dixon reveals that nearly all of Vermeer's best loved works were originally painted for a single significant location in Delft. Every one of his major paintings, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, View of Delft and The Milkmaid, are reassessed and their meanings rethought. The two great unresolved questions about Vermeer - why did he paint his pictures, and what do they mean? - are persuasively answered here for the first time. BiographyAndrew Graham-Dixonhttps://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/books.html Paintings DiscussedPhilip Eliasophhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_EliasophAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Stanley Andrisse about his book Breaking Chains, Building Futures, Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence which Chronicles his personal journey from incarceration to earning a doctorate as an endocrinologist scientist recording at the Gaithersburg Book Festival.Watch the event hereStanley is an American endocrinologist, scientist and writer. He is a tenured associate professor at Howard University College of Medicine and Georgetown Medical Center.In his early twenties he was sentenced to ten years in maximum security penitentiary on drug-related charges. Biographyhttps://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08XHFN2ZR/aboutBook NotesExplore the realities of life behind and beyond bars through a collection of compelling, first-hand stories.In Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence, activist and endocrinologist Dr. Stanley Andrisse brings together a profoundly moving collection of first-hand accounts from individuals impacted by various lengths of incarceration. This powerful book sheds light on the struggles, triumphs, and enduring hope of people navigating life under the weight of harsh prison sentences and the daunting challenges of reentry.Through these authentic stories, you'll witness the raw humanity of life behind bars and the determination of those striving to reclaim their futures. Meet inspiring individuals like:Oswald Newbold, sentenced to life at 20 after growing up with teenage parents battling addiction.William Freeman, who spent over two decades serving a life without parole sentence.Desiree Riley, a Black mother whose story highlights the intersection of race, gender, and parental incarceration.Dr. Andrisse also shares his personal journey from incarceration to becoming a scientist and leading Prison to Professionals (P2P), a nonprofit empowering justice-impacted individuals to pursue higher education and redefine success. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the human impact of criminal sentencing and incarceration. Breaking Chains, Building Futures is more than a chronicle of hardship―it's a testament to courage, resilience, and the unyielding pursuit of a better tomorrow.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join Michael in his conversation with Irvin Ungar about his new book Reviving the Artist Who Fought Hitler, My Life with Arthur Szyk which tells the story of his journey from pulpit rabbi to the world’s foremost authority of the artist who became America’s leading anti-Nazi artist. Irvin has devoted the past three decades to scholarship on Arthur Szyk. He is the author of Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk and the National Jewish Book Award–winning Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art; and he is the creator and publisher of the luxury limited edition of The Szyk Haggadah among many other accomplishments.During World War II, the Polish-Jewish immigrant Arthur Szyk became America’s leading anti-Nazi artist. His art was so effective that Adolf Hitler reportedly put a bounty on his head while the US military declared him a “citizen-soldier” of the free world. Szyk steadfastly fought for the rescue of European Jewry during the Holocaust, creating artworks like De Profundis, which imagines Jesus sharing the suffering of countless lifeless Jews. His civil rights art challenged segregation and his illuminated Declaration of Independence resides in the Library of Congress. Szyk’s masterwork, an illustrated Passover Haggadah, is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful books ever produced by human hands.Once world-famous, Arthur Szyk was all but forgotten after his death in 1951. Reviving the Artist Who Fought Hitler recounts Irvin Ungar's decades-long journey to restore Szyk to public consciousness, and become the principal collector, dealer, scholar, and promoter of Szyk’s art in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Richly illustrated and full of forgotten history, this memoir is an inspiring story of artistic passion and an invitation to commune with a heroic advocate for all humanity.Irvin Ungarhttps://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477333020/https://www.szyk.com/Check out some selected works by Arthur SzykAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy