Politics and Prose Presents

The Accidental Critic recalls the “Happy Talk” days of local television news, when stations discovered the value of assembling a news “team.” Longtime television personality Arch Campbell participated in the creation of one of America’s most successful on-air collaborations at WRC-TV, Washington, D.C.  The combination of Jim Vance, Doreen Gentzler, George Michael, and Bob Ryan, with comic relief from Arch, created a family. The days before technology and round the clock “Breaking News” left time for fun, mischief, and genuine friendship.    

The Washington Post describes Arch Campbell as a “local legend” and “iconic broadcaster.”  His career as an entertainment reporter and movie reviewer began in 1973, when his boss charged into the newsroom and yelled, “I want a movie reviewer.  Who wants to do it?”  Arch raised his hand and has reported on entertainment ever since.  Arch has received eight Emmy awards, the Washington, D.C. Mayor’s Arts Award, and The Ed Walker Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Capitol Radio and Television Museum. Washingtonian Magazine selected him as a Washingtonian of the Year. 

Campbell is in conversation with Doreen Gentzler. Gentzler spent more than 33 years anchoring News4 at 6 and News4 at 11 for NBC4, the #1 television station in Washington, D.C. She retired from the station in December 2022. Gentzler has won several local Emmy awards for reporting and anchoring as well as three other Emmy awards for news writing and reporting while in Cleveland. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. She and her family live in Washington, D.C. 

*recorded 2/2/2025

As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Virginia, the largest, wealthiest, and most populous province in British North America, was led by Lord Dunmore, who counted George Washington as his close friend. But the Scottish earl lacked troops, so when patriots imperiled the capital of Williamsburg, he threatened to free and arm enslaved Africans--two of every five Virginians--to fight for the Crown.

Virginia's tobacco elite was reluctant to go to war with Britain but outraged at this threat to their human property. Dunmore fled the capital to build a stronghold in the colony's largest city, the port of Norfolk. As enslaved people flocked to his camp, skirmishes broke out. "Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "It has raised our countrymen into a perfect frenzy." With a patriot army marching on Norfolk, the royal governor freed those enslaved and sent them into battle against their former owners. In retribution, and with Jefferson's encouragement, furious rebels burned Norfolk to the ground on January 1, 1776, blaming the crime on Dunmore.

The port's destruction and Dunmore's emancipation prompted Virginia's patriot leaders to urge the Continental Congress to split from Britain, breaking the deadlock among the colonies and leading to adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Days later, Dunmore and his Black allies withdrew from Virginia, but the legacy of their fight would lead, ultimately, to Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time, A Perfect Frenzy offers a striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South, and reveals the seeds of the nation's racial divide.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780802164131?ic_referral=439_fBLpmZ9Y-3CG-dfhSpyNOykt0w0PvzcXl9-sXlMwM_-A-ajRtH_5HU4N5Q3K01_29-JnpikFxuKZisTml8fyRgk-lUUMJbrdjmVcfPCqtvPUUYgK39-S-lFkhe3mHpfAMg

Andrew Lawler is the author of the national bestseller The Secret Token, about the lost colony of Roanoke, and the award-winning Under Jerusalem. As a journalist he has written more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles for, among many others, the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. He is a contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology magazines. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Lawler is in conversation with Sharon Pratt, the Founding Director of the Institute of Politics Policy and History and a former mayor of Washington, DC.

*recorded 2/1/2025

Lionel Barber — Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son - with Brody Mullins — at Conn Ave

As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have--now more than ever--come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son.

In Gambling Man, the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world's most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond to see how Son's firm SoftBank has defied conventional wisdom and imposing odds to push global tech and commerce into the future.

From the dizzying highs of Uber, DoorDash, and Slack to the epic lows of WeWork and tech-infused dogwalking app Wag Son and SoftBank have been at the center of cutting-edge capitalism's absolute peaks and valleys. In the process, Son, son of a pachinko kingpin who grew up in a slum in Japan, has been a hero, a villain, and even a meme-ified hero to the internet tech- and finance-bro set all at once.

Based on in-depth research and eye-opening interviews, Gambling Man is an unforgettable character study and alarming true story of twenty-first-century commerce that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668070741?ic_referral=LtmnaNqHJ2ox4kJRAZiLOLYhoDviZHy5StfFHNYUgF8wM-mFbzjJqt9HGLPR4fBDqILML8haauuxebFhGXIySGKlR7xYGpcbVyS_fiX_-YrVmZbWOCEygpFCdK4QURw1F-wSNg

Lionel Barber is the former editor of the Financial Times. As editor, he interviewed many of the world's leaders in business and politics, including US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barber has cowritten several books and has lectured widely on foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and economics. He also served on the Board of Trustees at the Tate and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He graduated in 1978 from St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, with a joint honors degree in German and modern history and speaks French and German fluently.

Barber is in conversation with Brody Mullin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took over Big Government. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mullins won the George Polk Award and was twice awarded the Everett Dirksen Award for best coverage of Congress. Washingtonian calls him one of 50 best reporters in politics. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Politico and The Atlantic.

Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled; no work was beneath him, and he often slept on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At twenty-one, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it "fast fashion." A restless entrepreneur, as Giordano prepared to go public, he was thinking about a dining concept that would disrupt Hong Kong's fast-food industry. But then came the Tiananmen Square democracy protest and the massacre of 1989.

His reaction to the violence was to enter the media business to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Apple and Next as part of a personal push for democracy--in weekly columns, at rallies and marches, and, memorably, sitting in front of a tent during the 2014 Occupy Central movement.

Lai took his activism abroad, traveling frequently to Washington, where he was well known in Congress and in political circles. China reacted with fury in 2019 when he met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was its most important target. Apple Daily was raided on August 10, 2020. He was arrested and held without bail before being convicted of trumped-up charges ranging from lighting a candle ("incitement to riot") to violating a clause in his company's lease ("fraud"). At the end of 2023, a lengthy trial began alleging "collusion with foreign forces" and printing seditious materials. China's most famous political prisoner has been in jail for more than 1,100 days and could spend the rest of his life there. The Troublemaker is his story.

Mark L. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, an NGO dedicated to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law for the people of Hong Kong. Previously, he was executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council, and a board director at Next Digital, the Hong Kong media giant founded and majority-owned by Jimmy Lai. During his twenty-eight years in Hong Kong, he served as editor-in-chief of both English-language newspapers, the South China Morning Post and The Standard, of which he was also publisher. He held senior editorial positions at BusinessWeek and the Far Eastern Economic Review, in Hong Kong and Seoul, and lived in Asia from 1987 until 2020. A history graduate of the University of California Berkeley and a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, he holds a PhD in Hong Kong history from the University of Hong Kong. Clifford has won numerous journalism, academic, and book awards, and is the author of Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World: What China's Crackdown Reveals About Its Plans to End Freedom Everywhere.

Clifford will be in conversation with Bill McGurn. McGurn is a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and writes the weekly "Main Street" column for the Journal each Tuesday. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Mr. McGurn has served as chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal in New York. He spent more than a decade overseas -- in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal/Europe and in Hong Kong with both the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In London's swinging sixties, Victor Johnson, a young immigrant from the Caribbean, arrives in Britain with dreams of becoming a journalist in the "mother country." Instead, he finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a landlord equally kind and unscrupulous, and then falls into a relationship with Peter's lonely secretary Ruth, herself a migrant from the north of England.

Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the backdrop of a country which is slowly, reluctantly, evolving into a modern, multiracial society, we discover the truth of both Peter's tragic background and Ruth's agonizing secret, and witness Victor, out of his depth, adjusting to the painful realities of life in his new country.

Both epic in its sweep and devastatingly intimate in its portrayal of damaged lives all caught between two worlds, Another Man in the Street lays bare the traumas that often overtake personal relationships in the wake of transforming societies, and the high price of attempting to reinvent oneself.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374613556?ic_referral=GjI8aBTdKCD8zcO5dvBJpcYvwC1ja-ZbP48YAtb-3ZwwM3np0K9jaaAOGWP3skLMFQi0hD3bQ1m50YeFzNa49g1MKFApXmpN4xvYPpO2X2o0FL7OXqYHF1q0zQFbVi606_SmnQ

Caryl Phillips is the award-winning author of eleven novels, four stage plays and five volumes of non-fiction, in addition to numerous radio plays, scripts and essays. His latest fiction, A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018), focuses on the life of Dominican-born writer Jean Rhys. Identity, migration and history are among the main themes of his writing, which also stands out for its formal daring.

*recorded 1/30/2025

Described by Bryan Stevenson as "the center of the quest for environmental justice in America," Catherine Coleman Flowers has dedicated her life to fighting for the most vulnerable communities--rural, poor, of color--who have been deprived of the basic civil right to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment. Both deeply personal and urgently political, the essays in Holy Ground draw on history to illuminate and contextualize the most pressing issues of this moment: from climate change to human rights, from rural poverty to reproductive justice, from the notorious history of Lowndes County, Alabama, to the broader crisis of racialized disinvestment in the South. Flowers maps the distance and direction toward justice, examining her own diverse ancestry as evidence of our interconnectedness. She reflects on trailblazers who have fought for social and environmental justice. She writes about her mother, a civil rights activist who lost her life to gun violence, and her own deeply personal experience with reproductive justice. And in a remarkably candid and moving piece, she writes about a traumatic attack that occurred at a moment of collective triumph, in which she weighs her fight for the common good against her own well-being. Flowers's faith shines throughout the collection, guiding her work and inspiring her vision of our responsibility to one another and to our shared home.

Drawn from a lifetime of organizing, activism, and change-making, Holy Ground equips us with clarity, lights a way forward, and rouses us to action--for ourselves and for each other, for our communities, and, ultimately, for our planet.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781954118683?ic_referral=A3X5Tdhk4lE_8sgWXbeR4anzO057q5icNIrPGmIG-ucwM2xTd25UsOlIh5s6adZ4ywHriNF3Q0_JkqINkf7X6GKidj-bF4kz5biytk0aC8-EcyNSjhhuss-vN9itB0opBYyaIw

Catherine Coleman Flowers is an internationally recognized environmental justice activist and founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ). A MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, Flowers sits on the board of directors of the Climate Reality Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and RMI. She has served as the co-vice chair of the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and is a practitioner-in-residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Flowers is the author of Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret and has written for the New York Review of Books and the New York Times, among other publications. In 2023, she was recognized as one of the TIME 100 most influential people in the world and one of the Forbes 50 Over 50.

Flowers is in conversation with Diane McWhorter. McWhorter, a journalist who lives in Washington, D.C., is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Carry Me Home, a civil rights history of her hometown of Birmingham. She is at work on a book about the top Nazi missile engineers who were brought to segregated Huntsville, Alabama, after World War II and built the rocket that achieved the great moral victory of the Cold War--the first man on the moon--at the time that their adopted state was the prime battleground for civil rights in this country. 

*recorded 1/30/2025

on the rise and 18 to 20-year-olds voting for the first time in American history, the Democratic Party and the nation were on the cusp of long overdue change.

A More Perfect Party explores this monumental coming together of Huey P. Newton, Barbara Lee, Berry Gordy, David Frost, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn and others. Chisholm and Huey P. Newton discussed voter turnout and community engagement. She called on leaders of the feminist movement to fortify their support for the sole woman in the race. And her interviews with David Frost challenged media narratives about who is automatically deemed a capable leader. Zooming in on one party attendee per chapter, this book highlights how each of us can approach politics from our respective positions and turn the political tides, particularly for Black women candidates.

A More Perfect Party is what happens when the people collectively answer the call. Tolliver brings this whimsical event out of the margins of history to demonstrate that whether it's the activist, celebrity, journalist, or newly registered young person, there is an opportunity for us all to fight for a better nation and return power to the people.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538770221?ic_referral=fxn862GdGRLz8SAYqIuveWTsukd-Kx0oSPJIqVKjpd0wMzW9i6qUUZi2yavZroVjschdXwjJLy_A9sa3QkZuPvKCyRphW5YgOB5Vz5Ih8pU2FfpKKVFlGTjT80P-57WMjFLEXw

Juanita Tolliver is an MSNBC Political Analyst, an Opinion Contributor for theGrio, and a Contributor for SiriusXM Progress. Previously, she served as the Director of Campaigns at the Center for American Progress. She is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tolliver is in conversation with Helena Andrews-Dyer, a reporter on The Washington Post's pop culture team. Before that, she was a columnist for the Reliable Source for several years, writing about the intersection of pop culture and politics. Before joining The Post, Andrews-Dyer was a contributing editor and writer at xoJane, a digital women’s magazine. She also previously wrote the “Single Minded” column for The Root, a division of The Post. Andrews-Dyer is the author of three books: Bitch is the New Black, Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters, and The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me.

*recorded 1/29/2025

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929-1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.

Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne's life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary--its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today's world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne's ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity.

With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne's life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne's evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today's hyperpolarized world.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780300248128?ic_referral=RG8IDROX9OZ1oacR0n_ouo9Ji_hr-LIkA5Lvyx1RQWswM5OYx9kju5Fg-pBXb3pn_pIaW91w1HVZZb6Vh7E9yoh4SiTH_mfRdeuIr-K9Fdp-3RYXCGxvPU9DN4IPrundG2eLeg

Ruth Franklin is the author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Franklin is in conversation with Frank Foer. Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Last Politician, World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World. For seven years, he edited The New Republic.

*recorded 1/29/2025

Amid international outcry over income inequality, labor abuses, and racial injustice, Conscience Incorporated examines the gaps in current corporate social responsibility measures. The rise of new technologies such as smartphones and social media have made it easier than ever to document and spread awareness of corporate misconduct. Despite these developments, large corporations often fail to meaningfully address the human rights abuses committed within their companies or as part of their global business practices. 

In Conscience Incorporated, Michael H. Posner addresses what lies at the root of the challenges global corporations face in addressing human rights failures by drawing on his extensive personal experience as a human rights lawyer, State Department official under President Obama, chair of the Fair Labor Association and Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern School of Business.

Drawing from research into the history of business ethics and anchoring his argument with examples of companies publically accused of human rights abuses-Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple, and more-Posner provides a blueprint for global business leaders to navigate human rights challenges and adopt sustainable corporate practices. Conscience Incorporated highlights the dangers of outsourcing labor to faraway nations and enforcing unfair deals with local suppliers. Posner argues that growing public awareness has not been enough to meaningfully alter the unethical practices of some global businesses. In doing so, he reveals how these businesses have failed to prioritize human rights time and again, betraying their vows to protect workers and communities.

Posner offers concrete reforms and argues compellingly for why businesses need to devote greater time and resources to protecting basic human rights. Conscience Incorporated is a powerful challenge to the status quo and advocates for a fundamental shift in the principles that govern global businesses.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781479825103?ic_referral=RiMldzUmAxNr8B5n1hHEecr8WKO5ZEdgZgnBthhEdBgwM1H2fwvUtUYu0wP1hDASStmewh4ozqPGvCweON_Nb_yy0W6rCo8GGLTtDUwNQVdgg-pNDpghS2XH5MElJQ-MaSYiPw

Michael H. Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance and the Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU's Stern School of Business. 

Posner is in conversation with David Leonhardt. Leonhardt is an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times. He was the founding editor of The Upshot section, which uses data visualization to analyze news. He has also served as Washington bureau chief and wrote the “Economic Scene” column for the Business section. In 2011, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his columns and won the Gerald Loeb Award in 2009. He authored the e-book Here's the Deal in 2013 and has worked as a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the Economix blog. Before joining The Times in 1999, he worked at Business Week and The Washington Post.Born in New York in 1973, Mr. Leonhardt studied applied mathematics at Yale. He is a third-generation native of New York.

*recorded 1/28/2025

During his seven-decade career in public life, George Sewall Boutwell, the son of a Massachusetts farming family of modest means, was a key figure in the politics of racial and economic equity and the principled use of American power abroad. From 1840 to 1905, Boutwell was at the center of efforts to abolish slavery, establish the Republican Party, facilitate President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and frame the civil rights-focused Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. He helped lay the foundations of the modern American economy with President Grant, investigated white terrorism in Mississippi in the 1870s, and opposed American imperialism following the Spanish-American War alongside Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington.

The first major biography of an important public figure who has long been hiding in plain sight, Boutwell is as much a history of nineteenth-century century US politics as it is a critique of the failures of governance during a turbulent and formative period in American history.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324074267?ic_referral=DTZT6yV-LeYfsnmZCygYzTsdWpGmd_xZJSZo0sAzN1owMzRlyiyfqh1mGgw3ZDDkPDBlf6JtrplMXPTz8_rqZmY-TjD5wz8PgGt2iRl76Jmjh2jvYv3AS6Cq9XNmsW5zsGdwKA

Jeffrey Boutwell is a writer, historian, and policy specialist whose forty-year career spanned journalism, government, and international scientific cooperation.  His writings cover nuclear weapons arms control, European politics, Middle East security issues, and environmental degradation and civil conflict.  Born in Boston and now living in Columbia, Maryland, Jeffrey and George share a common ancestor, the indentured servant James Boutwell, who emigrated from England in 1632 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts.

Boutwell is in conversation with Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal, a columnist for The Guardian, is the acclaimed author of All the Powers of the Earth, A Self-Made Man and Wrestling with His Angel, the first three volumes in his five-volume biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post and Washington editor and writer for The New Yorker. His books include the bestselling The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, and The Permanent Campaign. Born and raised in Illinois, he lives in Washington, DC.

*recorded 1/27/2025