Bob Edwards Weekend, December 10-11, 2011
HOUR ONE:
Peter Van Buren has written a decidedly undiplomatic account of the year he spent as a diplomat in Iraq. His book is titled We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Van Buren describes his project as “career suicide” and indeed some of his former colleagues have skewered the book.
Executive Director of This I Believe, Inc. Dan Gediman discusses the essays in the new book, This I Believe: Life Lessons.
In this week’s installment of our series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Sudie Bond Noland. When Noland was a teenager, the car she was riding in was hit by a drunk driver. He was sentenced to prison and she was left with chronic, painful injuries. But Noland realized that the prison sentence did not bring her closure. That only came later, when she was able to find compassion for the drunk driver and forgive him for his actions.
HOUR TWO:
Michael Ondaatje is the author of five novels, including The English Patient and Anil’s Ghost. He joins Bob in studio to discuss his most recent, The Cat’s Table, the tale of an eleven-year-old boy aboard a ship in the 1950s traveling from Sri Lanka to London – a trip Ondaatje also made as a young boy.
Director Tomas Alfredson’s film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy takes audiences into the heart of Cold War intrigue and hypocrisy that dominated Britain’s intelligence world in the 1970s. Based on the novel by John le Carre, actor Gary Oldman plays MI6 officer George Smiley as he struggles to identify the enemy in the murky landscape of double crossings.
Bob Edwards Weekend is heard on Sirius XM Public Radio (XM 121, Sirius 205) on Saturdays from 8-10 AM EST and Sundays from 1-3 PM.
Visit Bob Edwards Weekend on PRI’s website to find local public radio stations that air the program.