KPFA - Letters and Politics

Host Mitch Jeserich reads excerpts from Stephen Mitchell’s Gilgamesh: A New Version.  Gilgamesh is considered the oldest epic in the world and a masterpiece of literature.  Gilgamesh is the story of a historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, and his journey of self-discovery.  Along the way, Gilgamesh discovers that friendship can bring peace to a whole city and that wisdom can be found only when the quest for it is abandoned. Get the Ancient Tales Library  $550.  Includes: – Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell $100  – The Iliad (new translation by Emily Wilson)  $200 – The Odyssey by Homer: Translated by Emily Wilson $100  – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam translated by Juan Cole $160 – The Way of Chuang Tzu $100  – Letters & Politics Ancient History Collection $100    The post KPFA Special: Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh (Part II) appeared first on KPFA.

Host Mitch Jeserich reads excerpts from Stephen Mitchell’s Gilgamesh: A New Version. Gilgamesh is considered the oldest epic in the world and and a masterpieces of literature. It is the story of a historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, and his journey of self-discovery.  Along the way, Gilgamesh discovers that friendship can bring peace to a whole city and that wisdom can be found only when the quest for it is abandoned. Get the Ancient Tales Library  $550.  Includes: – Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell $100  – The Iliad (new translation by Emily Wilson)  $200 – The Odyssey by Homer: Translated by Emily Wilson $100  – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam translated by Juan Cole $160 – The Way of Chuang Tzu $100  – Letters & Politics Ancient History Collection $100    The post KPFA Special: Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh (Part I) appeared first on KPFA.

Guest:  Pat Thomas is a counterculture historian and archival music producer. He is the author of such books as Listen, Whitey!: The Sights & Sounds of Black Power 1965–1975, Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary; and his latest Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. KPFA Special Combo $450.  Includes: “Allen Ginsberg Material Wealth” (Book and CD) by Pat Thomas Plus “Voices that Change the World” by the Pacifica Radio Archives.              +    + The post KPFA Special – Allen Ginsberg: The Great American Poet of the Twentieth Century appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Emily Wilson who is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Mitch Jeserich reads from Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad.   Book Combo: Epic Verses 3-Pack  $400  Contains: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Translated by Juan Cole. The Iliad by Homer, Translated by Emily Wilson. The Odyssey by Homer, Translated by Emily Wilson. The post KPFA Special – Grief Turns to Rage: A Reading from The Iliad by Mitch Jeserich appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and early modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. Epic Verses Pack $320 Contains: The Iliad (new translation by Emily Wilson) and The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian by Juan Cole. – The Iliad (new translation by Emily Wilson) The Iliad is an epic poem that recounts the ten-year Trojan War and explores themes of pride, honor, and the human condition. Wilson’s Iliad gives us a complete Homer for our generation and the first ever English translation by a woman. – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian by Juan Cole  The Rubaiyat is a manuscript of Persian verses attributed to Omar Khayyam, a 12th-century Persian mathematician and philosopher. The book contains pithy observations on complex subjects such as love, death, and the existence of God and an afterlife. The post KPFA Special – The Odyssey and The Iliad, Why these Epic Verses Still Matter Today appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Juan Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian. Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1131) was a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran who lived and worked at the courts of the Seljuk dynasty. Modern scholars agree that there is very little (if any) of the collected work of poetry know as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that can be certainly attributed to the historical figure. A tradition of attribution grew up in the centuries after Khayyam’s death which culminated in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation in the 19th Century. The post KPFA Special – The History Behind The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: William Dalrymple is the author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. The Anti-Colonial Pack $475 Includes: A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz The Wretched of the Earth  (60th Anniversary Edition) by Frantz Fanon The Anarchy by William Dalrymple       The post KPFA Special – The Corporate Origins of Colonialism: The East India Company 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 Rebels Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. He is the host of the podcast Myself with Others. To watch the Interview on Youtube click here  Fanon Resistance Pack $220 Includes: The biography of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz & Frantz Fanon’s landmark text “The Wretched of the Earth.” Fanon has been described as “the most influential anticolonial thinker of his time”. For decades, the life and works of Fanon have inspired national liberation movements and other freedom and political movements in Palestine, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the United States. The post KPFA Special – The Life & Works of Frantz Fanon appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Ilan Pappe is the Director of the European Center of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He has published many books on the Middle East and the Palestine Question including, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, Ten Myths about Israel, and  A History of Modern Palestine. The post KPFA Special – Ilan Pappé on the History of the Palestinian Resistance appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Dr. Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian of the 20th century United States with broad  interests in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and  Women’s and Gender Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of  Pittsburgh and the president of the African American Intellectual History Society.  She is the author of the book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America. On Twitter (@keishablain), and on Instagram (@keishanblain). The post Fannie Lou Hamer: A Life appeared first on KPFA.