Although it doesn’t seem like it in today's world of images and 140 characters, words, stories and literature once moved people and nations and changed the world.  In fact, even in our own nation, the act of reading was once even seen as subversive. Yet it fueled the quest for freedom,  fired up our democracy, and launched a nation.

Today that same nation and its discontents, seems to eschew literature as a form of creative engagement, of social discourse and as an element of citizenship.

How we got here and what it might mean for the future is part of the backdrop of Azar Nafisi’s new work The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books.

My conversation with Azar Nafisi: