Talk Cocktail

As with the family of Trayvon Martin, sometimes a verdict is even more devastating than the crime.  This is what happened to the family of noted trial lawyer David Berg, after his brother was killed in cold blood, in a hit set up by actor Woody Harrelson’s father.Like two diverging paths in the woods, the lives of family members often go off in very different directions. For some the road taken leads to success and the good life, for others that road leads to a very different kind of life. This is the recurring irony of all sides of this storyThis is the story of David and Alan Berg, as told by David in his memoir Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of a Murder in My Family. One brother would become one of our nation's most respected trial lawyers, the other murdered at a young age, by a notorious hit man, hired by Charles Harrelson. My conversation with David Berg:

Most of us remember the joyful song about teaching the world to sing, in perfect harmony. It was later used as an incredibly popular Coke commercial.  Some of you may have seen the contestant on American idol with a serious stutter, that disappeared when he sang.Both are testaments to the power of song, and of singing with others. In fact, over 40 million Americans participate in some kind of group singing. But why? What's the appeal and what’s the impact?Bestselling author ;and commentator Stacy Horn takes a look at his in Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with OthersMy conversation with Stacy Horn:

As we once again debate America's role in the world, this time in the Middle East, it’s worth noting that there is most assuredly a deep strain of isolationism that courses throughout American history.  Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in the run up to the Second World War.  Even as Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, only one in forty Americans thought America should get involved.  This was the world that FDR faced as he tried to reshape America's vision and it’s place in the world.  He reminded the country that it had a “rendezvous with destiny.”He would succeed in persuading America.  How he did it, is the the subject of Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World by Michael Fullilove.My conversation with Michael Fullilove:

Imagine a nation at war, a financial crisis, congress divided, bitter partisanship, battles over taxation and the role of banks and corporations.  Members of government who believed in trickle down economics and who thought that business interests should be preeminent and that we had to show America’s strength.   You’d think we were talking about America today.  In fact it was also the America of its birth.  A time when the quest for independence ran headlong into political reality.This is the reality that David Lefer takes us into in  The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution.My conversation with David Lefer:

It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a golden age of hijacking.  Over a five-year period, starting in 1968, commercial jets we hijacked nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to Cuba, or Saigon.  Many,  imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their exploits mesmerized the country.But perhaps the the story that captures the nation's attention on many levels was the the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner’s  story of this period told in his his book The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.My conversation with Brendan Koerner:

Today we mark the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. One of the great battles of any war and one of the most significant in US history.Yet, even a century and half since the Civil War,  we are still learning new historical facts, new insights and developing new understandings of what really happened and why. Two recent books, highlight this:In A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, historian Thomas Fleming reminds us that we need appreciate that we might have avoided the war altogether, had not the rhetoric and passions and hatreds of the times lead to what he calls “a collective and incurable disease in the public mind.”Civil War historian and Gettysburg College history professor  Allen Guelzo, in  Gettysburg: The Last Invasion,  takes a look, for the first time, at the raw politics of the war.  How political and sometimes petty decisions, that were little noted at the time, will be long remembered for their impact on the war, the lives of men and their families and the course of history.  My conversation with Allen Guelzo:

There are but a few places on the planet that conjure up whole images, thoughts and emotions. Regardless of whether you’ve been there or not.  London, New York, Ireland and Paris, to name a few.  All are the subjects of sweeping novels by internationally bestselling author Edward Rutherfurd.  He was last on this program to talk about his novel, New York. Now he turns his talents to Paris: The Novel and gives us a dazzling historical portrait of the City of Light.My conversation with Edward Rutherfurd:

Ours is an age which we consciously pursues health, and yet often only believe in the reality of sickness. Susan Sontag, understood this when she said in Illness as a Metaphor that "any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.  Often because it overwhelms us."  Because in an age in which we are all focused on health, it is often the reality of sickness that changes our world and our world view.This was the experience of journalist and author Nora Gallagher, as she traveled into the nation of helath care, only to hit landfall at the Mayo Clinic.  She tells her story in The Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic. My conversation with Nora Gallagher:

The Mexico / U.S. relationship  is front and center today in the US Congress. But how much do you think members of Congress know about what’s really happening in Mexico?If you were to think about a country that has made remarkable economic progress;  a nation whose once closed economy has become one of the most open in the world;  a country that has a growing middle class, a thriving multi party, competitive democracy and a growing skilled workforce that is helping to restore manufacturing;  most likely you would not think of Mexico.Rather,  when we think of Mexico we often think of one of the most dangerous nations.  A place were over 70,000 people have been killed in criminal violence and whose law enforcement and judicial system has broken down.  The fact is that all of these things are true of Mexico.It’s complexity and it’s future are open questions for the 21st century.  Few understand this better than  Shannon K. O’Neil.  She is a senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has degrees from Yale and Harvard and is the author of Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. My conversation with Shannon K. O'Neil:

My conversation with Napa County Supervisor Bill Dodd