Coming Up This Weekend

Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – February 13-14, 2010

 

HOUR ONE

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, leaked 7,000 pages of top secret documents about the war to the press. It was a Defense Department study never meant to be seen by the public. Its publication in the New York Times proved the war was based on lies and eventually led to president Richard Nixon’s resignation and the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam. Bob talks with Ellsberg about his decision to release the “Pentagon Papers” and with filmmakers Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith about their new documentary called The Most Dangerous Man in America.

 

In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of Harry S. Truman.  He was the 33rd President of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. Born and raised in Missouri, Truman was a farmer, businessman, World War I veteran and U. S. senator. As President, his order to drop atomic bombs on Japan helped end World War II.

 

 

HOUR TWO

 

David Rose is the author of Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland: More Personal Ads from the London Review of Books.  He edited 2006’s They Call Me Naughty Lola and is an editor for the London Review of Books.

 

Bach’s Cello Suites are one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever composed. The melodies are ubiquitous in movies, television, commercials — and they have been played at major world events: the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 memorial services, Ted Kennedy’s memorial service most recently. But the Cello Suites were almost never heard.  For centuries after Bach died, the music was lost, discovered accidentally and then popularized by the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. Eric Siblin tells the story in a book called The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece.