KPFA - Letters and Politics

Guest: Glory Liu is a lecturer in social studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism. The post How Adam Smith Became A Capitalist Icon appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s Letters & Politics is preempted by a special KPFA broadcast: Mitch Jeserich hosts a special 2-hour remembrance of former broadcaster Larry Bensky. This program airs live from 10am-noon and includes time for listeners to call in with memories of Larry. KPFA call-in numbers: 510-848-4425, 800-958-9008     The post KPFA Special Programming: A Tribute to Larry Bensky appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Sudhir Hazareesingh is a British-Mauritian historian. He is a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy.  He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history, among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. His latest book is Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture. Image credit: Wikimedia The post The Making of a Haitian Revolutionary: From Toussaint Breda to Toussaint L’Ouverture appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York City.  Richard Wolff is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of the weekly national syndicated television and radio program Economic Update that airs weekly on KPFA. The post KPFA Special: Richard Wolff on US-China Dynamics and the New Global Order appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Benjamin Balthaser is associate professor of multi-ethnic US literature at Indiana University, South Bend. He is the author of Anti-Imperialism Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War, and Dedication, a personal history of growing up in a Jewish “red diaper” family. His forthcoming book from Verso, Citizens of the Whole World:  The American Jewish Left and Cultures of Anti-Zionism, is due to be out this fall.   Image credit: Wikimedia An elections poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev, 1917.  The note reads: “Where we live, there is our country!.”  Bottom: “A democratic republic! Full national and political rights for Jews!” The post KPFA Special – A History of Jewish Anti-Zionism: From The Communist Party to The New Left appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Adam Shatz is the US editor of the London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is the author of Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination and The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.  He is the host of the podcast Myself with Others. Thank You for Supporting KPFA Fanon Resistance Pack $220.   The post KPFA Special – The Life & Works of Frantz Fanon appeared first on KPFA.

Mitch Jeserich reads from Thoreau’s Essay Civil Disobedience. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience” (originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government”), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.   Thank-you gifts: On Thoreau: Nature & Duty Pack $180 Includes: The American Transcendentalists by Lawrence Buell and The Daily Henry David Thoreau by Laura Dassow Walls – The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings Edited by the scholar Lawrence Buell $100 – The Daily Henry David Thoreau: A Year of Quotes from the Man Who Lived in Season Foreword by Laura Dassow Walls $100 The post Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience & Why it Matters Today appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Amy Tan is the author of several novels, including The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter.  She is a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club and is on the board of American Bird Conservancy.  Her latest book is The Backyard Bird Chronicles. The post KPFA Special – Amy Tan: Connecting with Nature appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Gray Brechin has worked as a journalist and television producer and is coauthor of Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream; and Imperial San Francisco, With a New Preface: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. KPFA is offering today as a thank-you gift to you a 3 Books Pack: Techno-Road to Rebellion for $350   The 3 books Pack Includes:  – Imperial San Francisco, With a New Preface: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin $150 – Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis $100 – Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech $150   The post KPFA Special – The Creation of Cities: Wealth, Inequality and Environmental Destruction appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and academic, a bestselling author, and the former finance minister of Greece. He is a co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025.  His books include And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, and his latest, Technofeudalism: WHAT KILLED CAPITALISM.   Foto credit: Wikimedia The post KPFA Special – Yanis Varoufakis: How Techno-Feudalism is Replacing Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.