Henry Holt
Price: $17.00
Seven Stories Press
Price: $17.95
Seven Stories Press
Price: $21.95
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RUSSELL BANKS, MIKE GRAVEL, and HOWARD ZINN
"A Conversation on American Identity"
PLEASE NOTE: PROFESSOR ZINN WILL NOT BE IN ATTENDANCE FOR THIS EVENT. (posted 5/27/08)
THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.
(12:30 pm, 5/29/08)
Harvard Book Store is delighted to present the unexpected and altogether welcome trio of RUSSELL BANKS, MIKE GRAVEL, and HOWARD ZINN for a conversation on American identity as depicted in each of their latest books. In Dreaming Up America, his first work of nonfiction, acclaimed novelist BANKS contemplates the questions of our origins, values, heroes, conflicts, and contradictions with conversational ease and the insightful historical observation found in his works of fiction. Drawing on politics, literature, film, and a deep knowledge of American history, Banks traces the first colonists' differing motives, their points of intersection through the centuries, and the inevitable influence of the existing cultures they encountered or enslaved, building a vision of an empire built upon destructive-though also creative-forces. In his candid, anecdotal portrait, A Political Odyssey, former Alaskan senator and recent presidential candidate GRAVEL expounds on his views of the military-industrial complex, the imperial presidency, postwar US foreign policy, and corporate America; critically assesses figures he worked with, such as Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy; and reveals his personal finances and private life. And in A People's History of American Empire, ZINN, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of A People’s History: the centuries-long story of America’s actions in the world. This version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution. The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America’s leading historians.
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Russell Banks is the author of sixteen works of fiction, many of which depict seismic events in US history, such as the fictionalized journey of John Brown in Cloudsplitter. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes, and two of his novels--The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction--have been made into award-winning films. His latest novel, The Reserve, was published in early 2008. President of the International Parliament of Writers and former New York State Author, Banks lives in upstate New York.
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Mike Gravel represented Alaska in the US Senate, 1969-81. Most prominently known for releasing the Pentagon Papers--the secret official study revealing the manipulations of successive US administrations that mislead the country into the Vietnam War--Gravel lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, environmental issues, and democracy.
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Howard Zinn is the author of numerous books, including his epic masterpiece, A People's History of the United States, as well as many recent books published by Seven Stories Press: Voices of a People's History of the United States, Terrorism and War, and The Zinn Reader. He is a professor emeritus of political science at Boston University.
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