The Bob Edwards Show, November 7-11, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011: On November 18, 1978, 909 people killed themselves in a jungle in Guyana. A new book titledA Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown tells the story of five of those who willingly followed pastor Jim Jones to South America and to their own demise. Author Julia Scheeres joins Bob to discuss the tragedy.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011: Lawrence Lessig is the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professor Lessig’s newest book is titled Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It. Then, Rita Dove is one of the greatest living American poets. She is a former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner. Most recently she edited The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Dove joins Bob to talk about what she feels is the most important poetry of the previous hundred years.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011: When world-renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal inherited a collection of 264 Japanese wood and ivory carvings called netsuke, he decided to find more about his family’s past and how they came to own such a priceless collection. His memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance is the story of de Waal’s ancestors, the Ephrussis, one of Vienna’s most powerful and wealthy dynasties. The family and their fortune were almost entirely destroyed by the Nazis during World War II, and the netsuke is all the remains of their once-fabulous wealth.
Thursday, November 10, 2011: Dominic Fredianelli signed up for the National Guard after graduating high school, not so much out of a sense of patriotism, but because it seemed like the best opportunity around: one weekend of training a month, a $20,000 signing bonus, and much-needed college tuition support. Soon, 10 of Dominic’s friends also joined up. Heather Courtney’s new film Where Soldiers Come From follows the effect one National Guard Unit’s Deployment has on this group of lifelong friends and the town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that they leave behind. The documentary premiers tonight at 9 p.m on the PBS program POV. Then, Jan Scruggs is the Founder and President of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. He’ll discuss the significance of the memorial, a book about it, Dreams Unfulfilled: Stories of the Men and Women on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the future “Education Center at the Wall.”
Friday, November 11, 2011: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times joins Bob to discuss the looming budget battles and how they will shape the coming political year. Next, Werner Herzog’s latest documentary concerns a death penalty case in a small Texas town that explores themes familiar from his previous films: death, violence and time. Although the details of the triple homicide are grisly, Herzog focuses the film more on the effect the crime had on the families of the victims, the families of the killers, and the killers themselves. Into the Abyss opens today in New York City. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Major Peter Godfrin. He has served in the Army for 14 years, including tours of duty in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. In honor of Veterans’ Day, Godfrin writes about the sacrifices of members of the military throughout American history, and he remembers one of the soldiers in his command who died in Iraq in 2004.