Sasha Abramsky 2009
Sasha Abramsky 2007
Sasha Abramsky 2006
Terry K Aladjem
Joe Allen
Graham Allison
John Anderson
Greg Anrig
William Arkin
Anthony Arnove
Mary-Wynne Ashford
Andrew J. Bacevich
John Bainbridge, Jr.
Nicholson Baker
Russ Baker
James Bamford
Benjamin Barber 9/07
Benjamin Barber 2007
Benjamin Barber 2004
Charles Barber
Maude Barlow
Albert Bates
Moazzam Begg
Mark Benjamin
Steve Berkman
Bill Bishop
Max Blumenthal
Sidney Blumenthal
Eric Boehlert
Alain de Botton 2009
Alain de Botton 2004
Tyler E. Boudreau
Ellen Bravo
Daniel Brook
Vincent Bugliosi
Will Bunch
David Callahan
Karen Cerulo
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Gordon Chang
Wendy Chapkis
Pratap Chatterjee
Jeff Chester 2008
Jeff Chester 2007
Aviva Chomsky
Jesus Christ
William R. Clark
Andrei Codrescu
Elliot D. Cohen
Penny Coleman
Francis Collins
Jonathan Cohn
Joe Conason
Robert Creamer
Lew Daly
Nick Davies
John Dean
Larry Diamond
Tamara Draut
Lou Dubose
Stephen J. Ducat
Ronnie Dugger
Stephen Duncombe
Paul V. Dutton
Ronald Dworkin
Mark Ellingsen
Daniel Ellsberg and Sibel Edmonds
David Engwicht
Barbara Ehrenreich
Christopher Ellinger
Stuart Ewen
Anne Farrow
Jay Feinman
Dexter Filkins
Karen Finley
Robert Fisk
Laura Flanders
Joshua Frank
Thomas Frank
David Frankfurter
Scott Gac
James K. Galbraith
George Galloway - 2007
George Galloway - 2005
Martin Garbus
Joel Garreau
Rose George
Heather K. Gerken
Joseph Gerson
Mikal Gilmore
Michelle Goldberg
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
Richard Goldstein - 11/6/07
Richard Goldstein -9/25/07
Suzanne Gordon
Greg Grandin
Glenn Greenwald - 10/7/08
Glenn Greenwald - 5/6/08
Taras Grescoe
Ariela J. Gross
Andrew Gumbel
Nicholas Guyatt
Michael Haas
Jennifer Harbury
Thom Hartmann
Chris Hedges
Steve Hendricks
Seymour Hersh
Theresa Hitchens
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Arianna Huffington
Edward Humes
Robert Ivker
Chip Jacobs & William Kelly
Susan Jacoby
Derrick Jensen
Chalmers Johnson
Haynes Johnson
Terry Jones
Kathryn Joyce
Wendy Kaminer
Fred Kaplan
Jackson Katz
Sue Katz
Robert Blair Kaiser
Garrison Keillor
Dacher Keltner
Maxine Hong Kingston
Michael T. Klare
Joe Klein
William Kleinknecht
Elizabeth Kolbert
Andrew Koppelman
Felicia Kornbluh
Paul Krassner
Mark Kurlansky
Robert Kuttner
Elizabeth Laird
Jim Lardner
Anne Lamott
John Lamb Lash
Barry Lando
Bruce Lawrence
Marnia Lazreg
Garry Leech
Peter Leeson
Jeremy Leggett
Greg LeRoy
Peggy Levitt
James Loewen
Bjorn Lomborg
Nicholson Baker
Nancy MacLean
R. Jay Magill, Jr.
Mahmood Mamdani
John Markoff
Matt Mason
Gabor Maté
Nicholas Maxwell
Jane Mayer
Walter Russell Mead
Karl E. Meyer
Sara Miles
Jennifer Miller
Mark Crispin Miller
George Monbiot
Captain Charles Moore
Douglas Mulhall
Peter Navarro
Victor Navasky
Andrew Newberg
Walter Nugent
Geoffrey Nunberg
Susie Orbach
Spencer Overton
Caroline Paul
Michael Parenti
Erna Paris
Robert Parry
George Pendle
John Perkins
Kevin Phillips
Peter Phillips
William Rivers Pitt
Judy Polumbaum
Sarah Posner
Clyde Prestowitz
Nomi Prins
Tim Pritchard
Robert B. Reich
Scott Ritter
Bárbara Robles
David Rose
Douglas Rushkoff 2005
Douglas Rushkoff 2009
Eva Rutland
John Sayles
Harold Schechter
Kevin M. Scott
Anthony Shadid
Michael Shermer
Barry Siegel
Jonathan Simon
P.W. Singer
David Sirota
Norman Solomon
Art Spiegelman
Norm Stamper
Ralph Steadman
Leonard Steinhorn
Charles Stone
Matt Taibbi
Daniel Tammet
John R. Talbott
Helen Thomas
Craig Unger
Tom Vanderbilt
David A. Vise
Jim Wallis
Steven T. Wax
Sharon Waxman
Harvey Weinstein
Mark Weisbrot
Ian Williams
Joseph Wilson
Mark Winne
Dr. Sidney Wolfe
Lawrence Wright
Ronald Wright
Michele Wucker
Dave Zirin

June 30, 2009
An interview with Mark Ellingsen author of Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to the Purpose-Driven Life.

Ellingsen demonstrates that awareness of sin is shown to lead to freedom and joy, as the pressure is removed to do and be good all the time. The book's other primary aim is to flesh out an alternative approach to life to Rick Warren's and the dominant American Christian vision. This alternative, life of brave sinning, is rooted in the worldview of the Protestant Reformation (esp. of Martin Luther). When people sin bravely, believing everything done is done in sin, people can get out of the way and recognize that all the good done is done by God despite individual seedy motives. This awareness leads to freedom and joy, since the pressure is now removed to do and be good. In addition, total dependence on God entails a self-forgetfulness that leads to happiness.

The bolder one acknowledge's their sin, in failing to take credit for the good done, the more focused on God the individual becomes. Correspondingly this self-forgetful lifestyle is a promising counter-cultural alternative to the cultural Narcissism which so dominates in many segments of contemporary American society. Ellingsen provides practical ways to sharpen these insights, to 'own' them. He aims to clarify why the lifestyle of brave sinning and total dependence on God lead to happiness, with an emphasis on current neurobiological research on happiness and brain function. Ellingsen, then, demonstrates both the how and why brave sinning leads to joy, while in so doing offers readers practical advice on living this way.

Mark Ellingsen is Associate Professor of Church History at the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta.

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June 23, 2009
An interview with Alain de Botton the author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

We spend most of our waking lives at work – in occupations often chosen by our unthinking younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our occupations mean to us.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people wake up to do each day – and night – to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art–in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.

Along the way he tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can ask about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet? Characteristically lucid, witty and inventive, Alain de Botton’s “song for occupations” is a celebration and exploration of an aspect of life which is all too often ignored and a book that shines a revealing light on the essential meaning of work in our lives.

Alain de Botton is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a 'philosophy of everyday life. They include How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety and The Architecture of Happiness. Alain also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education.

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June 16, 2009
An interview with Douglas Rushkoff the author of Life Incorporated: How the World Became a Corporation and How To Take It Back.

In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.

This fascinating journey reveals the roots of our debacle, from the late Middle Ages to today. From the founding of the chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace; the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401k plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.

Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this 600-year-old trend, and to begin to create, invest and transact directly rather than outsourcing all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff’s ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries — The Merchants of Cool looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture, and The Persuaders, about the cluttered landscape of marketing, and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance.

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June 9, 2009
An interview with John R. Talbott the author of The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street.

Talbott exposes the lies and then exposes us to the truth of what it will take to rebuild our economy. As a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he knows firsthand how the financial system operates and how to fix it. As the “oracle” who predicted the housing crisis in his 2003 book, The Coming Housing Crisis, and called the election for Obama when the senator from Illinois was still the underdog (Obamanomics), Talbott’s revelations about how Wall Street really works are as clear-eyed and undeniable as his predictions and recommendations for our economic future are tough, sensible, and exciting. We may ignore them at our peril.

Talbott is the author of six previous books on economics and politics, including, most recently, Obamanomics: How Botton-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics and Contagion: The Financial Epidemic That is Sweeping the Global Economy . . . and How to Protect Yourself from It. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Buzzflash.com, and Alternet.

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June 2, 2009
An interview with Sasha Abramsky author of Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger.

Trapped in a triangle of the housing market collapse, rising energy costs, and an increasingly dysfunctional healthcare system, America's working poor are now battling an even more formidable enemy: hunger. This time, the battle is taking place well outside of the media spotlight, which has focused on obesity, another food-related epidemic affecting the poor.

Breadline USA tells the stories of Americans in all types of communities who struggle to put any type of food on the table come the end of the month when money runs out and the social safety net isnt there to catch them.

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 2000 he was awarded a Soros Society, Crime, and Communities Media Fellowship, and he is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York City-based Demos Foundation. He is the author of American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment and Hard Time Blues.

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May 26, 2009
An interview with Wendy Kaminer the author of Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU.

What happens when an organization with the express goal of defending individual rights and liberties starts silencing its own board? Lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer has intimate knowledge of the ensuing conflict between independent thinking and group solidarity. In this concise and provocative book, she tells an inside story of dramatic ethical decline at the American Civil Liberties Union, using it as a poignant case study of conformity and other vices of association.

Kaminer calls on her experience as a dissident member of the ACLU national board to illustrate the essential virtues of dissent in preserving the moral character of any group. When an organization committed to free speech succumbs to pressure to suppress internal criticism and disregard or “spin” the truth, it offers important lessons for other associations, corporations, and governments, where such pressure must surely be rampant. Kaminer clarifies the common thread linking a continuum of minor failures and major disasters, from NASA to Jonestown. She reveals the many vices endemic to groups and exemplified by the ACLU’s post-9/11hypocrisies, including conformity and suppression of dissent in the interests of collegiality, solidarity, or group image; self-censorship by members anxious to avoid ostracism or marginalization by the group; elevation of loyalty to the institution over loyalty to the institution’s ideals; substitution of the group’s idealized self-image for the reality of its behavior; ad hominem attacks against critics; and deference to cults of personality.

Wendy Kaminer is the author of many books, including Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today; I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions; and Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety. Her articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Nation, the Atlantic, Newsweek, and the American Prospect.

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May 19, 2009
An interview with Captain Charles Moore the discoverer and prime researcher of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

In 1995 Captain Moore launched his purpose designed, aluminum hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania, and organized the Australian Government's first "Coastcare" research voyage to document anthropogenic contamination of Australia's east coast. Upon his return to California, he became a coordinator of the State Water Resources Control Board's Volunteer Water Monitoring Steering Committee, and developed chemical and bacterial monitoring methods for the Surfrider Foundation's "Blue Water Task Force." As a member of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project's Bight '98 steering committee, he realized the need for and provided a research vessel so that Mexican researchers from Baja California could participate for the first time in assessing the entire Southern California Bight.

The Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita and its Captain found their true calling after a 1997 yacht race to Hawaii. On his return voyage, Captain Moore veered from the usual sea route and saw an ocean he had never known, "there were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic." Ever since, Captain Moore has dedicated his time and resources to understanding and remediating the ocean's plastic load. In this February 26 presentation for TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), Captain Moore demonstrates why it is imperative that plastic ends its life in a recycling plant, rather than in our waterways and oceans.

Captain Moore’s 1999 study shocked the scientific world when it found 6 times more plastic fragments by weight in the central Pacific than the associated zooplankton. His second paper found that plastic outweighs plankton by a factor of 2.5 in the surface waters of Southern California.

Captain Moore has now done ocean and coastal sampling for plastic fragments over twenty thousand miles of the north Pacific ocean, across 22 degrees of latitude and 50 degrees of longitude. His latest 7,500 mile voyage was featured in the November 4, 2008 issue of US News and World Report.

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May 12, 2009
An interview with Andrew J. Bacevich the author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Bacevich identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.

Bacevich, uniquely respected across the political spectrum, offers a historical perspective on the illusions that have governed American policy since 1945. The realism he proposes includes respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences; aversion to claims of exceptionalism; skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving force; and a conviction that the books will have to balance. Only a return to such principles, Bacevich argues, can provide common ground for fixing America’s urgent problems before the damage becomes irreparable.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He is the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the recipient of a Lannan award and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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May 5, 2009
An interview with Peter T. Leeson, the author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.

Leeson takes us inside the wily world of late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century pirates uncovering the hidden economics behind pirates' notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a "pirate code"? And what made them so successful? Leeson uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy while arguing that the pirate customs we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits.

Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy — a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers' compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases practiced racial tolerance and equality. Leeson contends that pirates exemplified the virtues of vice — their self-seeking interests generated socially desirable effects and their greedy criminality secured social order. Pirates proved that anarchy could be organized.

Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates' trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world.

Peter T. Leeson is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.

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April 28, 2009
An interview with Heather K. Gerken the author of The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It.

Despite howls for reform, the only thing separating us from another election disaster of the kind that hit Florida in 2000, and that almost struck again in Ohio in 2004, may simply be another close vote. In this lucid and lively book, Heather Gerken diagnoses what is wrong with our elections and proposes a radically new and simple solution: a Democracy Index that would rate the performance of state and local election systems. A rough equivalent to the U.S. News and World Report ranking of colleges and universities, the Index would focus on problems that matter to all voters: How long does it take to vote? How many ballots get discarded? How often do voting machines break down? And it should work for a simple reason: no one wants to be at the bottom of the list.

For a process that is supposed to be all about counting, U.S. elections yield few reliable numbers about anything — least of all how well the voting system is managed. The Democracy Index would change this with a blueprint for quantifying election performance and reform results, replacing anecdotes and rhetoric with hard data and verifiable outcomes. A fresh vision of reform, this book shows how to drive improvements by creating incentives for politicians, parties, and election officials to join the cause of change and to come up with creative solutions — all without Congress issuing a single regulation.

In clear and energetic terms, Gerken explains how to realize the full potential of the Index while avoiding potential pitfalls. Election reform will never be the same again.

Heather K. Gerken is a professor at Yale Law School, where she teaches election and constitutional law. She is a frequent media commentator on elections and has written for the New Republic, Roll Call, Legal Affairs, and the Legal Times.

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April 21, 2009
An interview with Kathryn Joyce the author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

Fundamentalist Christianity may have lost some access to power in the last election, but it has long-term plans. Joyce introduces us to the world of the patriarchy movement and Quiverfull families. Here, in direct and conscious opposition to feminist calls for marital equity, women live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship. Instead of raising independent daughters, these Christians advocate a return to keeping daughters at home — and out of college — until their marriage to a suitor approved by Dad. To counter reproductive rights, they eschew all contraception in favor of the Quiverfull philosophy of letting God give them as many children as possible — families of twelve and more children that will, they hope, enable them to win the religious and culture wars through demographic means.

Quiverfull is a fascinating examination of the twenty-first-century women and men who proclaim self-sacrifice and submission as model virtues of womanhood — and as warfare on behalf of Christ.

Kathryn Joyce is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her freelance writing and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Mother Jones, Salon, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The American Prospect, Search, Religion Dispatches, The Massachusetts Review, RH Reality Check, Newsweek.com, Alternet and other publications. She is former managing editor of The Revealer.org, a project of the New York University Center for Religion and Media, and currently writes and produces at the Revenue Watch Institute.

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April 14, 2009
An interview with Mahmood Mamdani the author of Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror.

Mamdani explains how the conflict in Darfur began as a civil war (1987—89) between nomadic and peasant tribes over fertile land in the south, triggered by a severe drought that had expanded the Sahara Desert by more than sixty miles in forty years; how British colonial officials had artificially tribalized Darfur, dividing its population into “native” and “settler” tribes and creating homelands for the former at the expense of the latter; how the war intensified in the 1990s when the Sudanese government tried unsuccessfully to address the problem by creating homelands for tribes without any. The involvement of opposition parties gave rise in 2003 to two rebel movements, leading to a brutal insurgency and a horrific counterinsurgency – but not to genocide, as the West has declared.

Mamdani also explains how the Cold War exacerbated the twenty-year civil war in neighboring Chad, creating a confrontation between Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi (with Soviet support) and the Reagan administration (allied with France and Israel) that spilled over into Darfur and militarized the fighting. By 2003, the war involved national, regional, and global forces, including the powerful Western lobby, who now saw it as part of the War on Terror and called for a military invasion dressed up as “humanitarian intervention.”

Ugandan-born Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and the author of numerous books including When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda.

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April 7, 2009
An interview with Erna Paris author of The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America — an investigation of the story and individuals behind America’s refusal to acknowledge international law and an inquiry into the urgent role of international criminal justice.

At the end of the twentieth century, two extraordinary events took place. The first was the end of the Cold War, which left the world with a single empire that dominated global affairs with a ready fist. The second event was the birth of the International Criminal Court–the first permanent tribunal of its kind. The ICC prosecutes crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. Its mandate is to confront impunity and demand accountability for the worst crimes known.
But on March 11, 2003, when the new court was inaugurated in a moving ceremony, one country was conspicuously missing from the celebrations. The government of the United States had made it clear that the International Criminal Court was not consistent with American goals and values.

The Sun Climbs Slow grapples with an emerging dilemma of the twenty-first century: the tension between unchallenged political power and the rule of international law.

Erna Paris is the winner of ten national and international writing awards, including a gold medal from the National Magazine Awards Foundation. She is the author of seven books of literary non-fiction, including The End of Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, which won the 1996 Canadian Jewish Book Award for History.

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March 31, 2009
An interview with Russ Baker the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America.

After eight disastrous years, George W. Bush leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Baker asks the question that lingers even as this benighted administration winds down: Who really wanted this man at the helm of the country, and why did his backers promote him despite his obvious liabilities and limitations?

Baker goes deep behind the scenes to deliver an arresting new look at George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, their family, and the network of figures in intelligence, the military, finance, and oil who enabled the family’s rise to power. Baker’s exhaustive investigation reveals a remarkable clan whose hermetic secrecy and code of absolute loyalty have concealed a far-reaching role in recent history that transcends the Bush presidencies. Baker offers new insights into lingering mysteries — from the death of John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon’s downfall in Watergate. Here, too, are insider accounts of the backroom strategizing, and outright deception, that resulted in George W. Bush’s electoral success. Throughout, Baker helps us understand why we have not known these things before.

Russ Baker has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Esquire, and served as Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor. In 2005, he founded the Real News Project, a nonprofit investigative news organization. His exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record received a 2005 Deadline Club award.

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March 24, 2009
An interview with P. W. Singer the author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot -- remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops.

Wired for War takes the reader on a journey to meet all the various players in this strange new world of war: odd-ball roboticists working in latter-day "skunk works" in the midst of suburbia; military pilots flying combat mission from their office cubicles outside Las Vegas; the Iraqi insurgents who are their targets; journalists trying to figure out just how to cover robots at war; and human rights activists wrestling with what is right and wrong in a world where our wars are increasingly being handed over to machines.

Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. His first book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry pioneered the study of the new industry of private companies providing military services for hire, an issue that soon became important with the use and abuse of these companies in Iraq.

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March 17, 2009
An interview with Andrei Codrescu author of The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess.

The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world — all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse — a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution — lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world.

Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth — and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada — and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources."

Andrei Codrescu is an award-winning writer and National Public Radio commentator. His latest books are Jealous Witness: New Poems and New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City. The author of many essay collections, including The Disappearance of the Outside, he is the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.

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March 10, 2009
An interview Susie Orbach the author of Bodies.

Throughout the Western world, people have come to believe that general dissatisfaction can be relieved by some change in their bodies. Orbach explains the origins of this condition, and examines its implications for all of us. Challenging the Freudian view that bodily disorders originate and progress in the mind, Orbach argues that we should look at self-mutilation, obesity, anorexia, and plastic surgery on their own terms, through a reading of the body itself. Incorporating the latest research from neuropsychology, as well as case studies from her own practice, she traces many of these fixations back to the relationship between mothers and babies, to anxieties that are transferred unconsciously, at a very deep level, between the two. Orbach reveals how vulnerable our bodies are, how susceptible to every kind of negative stimulus — from a nursing infant sensing a mother's discomfort to a grown man or woman feeling inadequate because of a model on a billboard. That vulnerability makes the stakes right now tremendously high.

In the past several decades, a globalized media has overwhelmed us with images of an idealized, westernized body, and conditioned us to see any exception to that ideal as a problem. The body has become an object, a site of production and commerce in and of itself. Instead of our bodies making things, we now make our bodies. Susie Orbach reveals the true dimensions of the crisis, and points the way toward healing and acceptance.

Orbach is the co-founder of the Women's Therapy Centre in London and New York. A former Guardian (UK) columnist, she was visiting professor for ten years at the London School of Economics and is the convener of Any-body.org. She is a consultant and co-originator of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The author of a number of books, including On Eating, The Impossibility of Sex, and the bestseller Fat is a Feminist Issue, she lectures extensively worldwide.

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March 3, 2009
An interview with William Kleinknecht author of The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America.

Since Ronald Reagan left office — and particularly after his death -his shadow has loomed large over American politics: Republicans and many Democrats have waxed nostalgic, extolling the Republican tradition he embodied, the optimism he espoused, and his abilities as a communicator.

This carefully calibrated image is complete fiction, argues award-winning journalist William Kleinknecht. The Reagan presidency was epoch shattering, but not — as his propagandists would have it — it invigorated private enterprise or made America feel strong again. His real legacy was the dismantling of an eight-decade period of reform in which working people were given an unprecedented sway over our politics, our economy, and our culture. Reagan halted this almost overnight.

In the tradition of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, Kleinknecht explores middle America — starting with Reagan's hometown of Dixon, Illinois — and shows that as the Reagan legend grows, his true legacy continues to decimate middle America.

William Kleinknecht is a veteran crime correspondent for the Newark Star-Ledger. He previously covered the crime beat for the New York Daily News. The winner of awards from the Associated Press and the American Society of Professional Journalists, he has contributed to American Journalism Review, National Law Journal, and the Boston Phoenix. The author of New Ethnic Mobs: The Changing Face of Organized Crime in America, he lives in Glen Rock, New Jersey.

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