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Mark Helprin, whose novels include Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War and Freddy and Fredericka, is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute.

Helprin holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford. He served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force.

In his latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow,  he take us to New York in the post war years.  Helprin, who wrote speeches for Bob Dole when he was a Presidential candidate, gives us what some might consider to be an idealize version of the times.

In a wide ranging conversation, Helprin and I discuss Mad Men,  The Greatest Generation, irony, sex in the workplace and the power of love and counter culture.

My conversation with Mark Helprin: