"Book of ages: the life and opinions of Jane Franklin", by Jill Lepore. There is a wealth of riches still to be mined from historical documents that reveal the lives of women. It's incredible to know how much is lost to history because half the population has been left out of the accessible record (i.e. books). The author was a voracious reader and as she read volume after volume of Ben Franklin's writings she found letter after letter written to Jane Mecom. There were no records of return correspondence since the volumes were about Ben's writing. Lepore tracked what letter's of Jane's that remained down. What an incredible story Lepore documented. You can see CSPAN Book TV online and can look up this author's talk and hear it directly. It was fantastic, she's a great speaker and judging from her discussion of the book, a great author. I've put a hold on the book from the library so I've not read it yet. I'm number 125 holds of about 8 copies or something but that's OK because I have a lot backed up right now and the timing will be about right when the book comes up, or, I'll end up buying a copy if the timing's not right.
Every weekend CSPAN has 48 hours of non-fiction book discussions. They broadcast authors at bookstore and book festivals mostly presenting their work. It's a relief from everything else on the tube. Sometimes there are books that wouldn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends. I'm not big on biographies of every US President you only know the name of, and Krauthammer's Fox News rants turned into a book . But sometimes the books are fantastic. Right now it's a book on Scientology and definitely interesting. Earlier today they repeated the book talk on slavery in Virginia. In the war of 1812, the Brits took in a lot of escaped slaves who remained free. The author found letters the freed men wrote and they were fascinating. The Jane Franklin book talk
Years ago, I heard about a book on CSPAN Radio's book talk, and it was one of my earliest purchases on Amazon. It was about the relationship between RFK and LBJ. I'll check out the show online. The book you mentioned does sound interesting, and I see it was just published. It seems like the kind of book that will be available either as a bargain book or a really good quality used book for much less money. (I have this experience a lot.) I put it in my amazon cart, and sometime next year I'll click on it and see that it's available for a good price. (Also the scientology book is very interesting. I read it a few months ago -- I knew they were nutty, but man o man are they nutty.)
Thought I'd resurrect this thread to point out that there is on YouTube a video discussion of Homer's Odyssey. It features Christopher Hitchens, and is an excellent discussion focusing on the Stanley Lombardo translation. I'd link it but I am on my phone.
That may not be the best recording of it. I'll edit in the link from CSPAN. It doesn't play, probably scrolled out of the archives: http://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=Discussion of Homer's Odyssey There are other YouTube copies out there if the one above isn't clear enough for people.
Thanks @GingerCoffee, you're a pal. I'm impressed by what I've seen of C-SPAN. We used to have something similar here in the UK. It was a high culture show, with a book section that would review contemporary novels and sometimes give informative presentations on it. The BBC used to push a lot of documentaries about old English poetry and such too, but it hasn't done that in a while sadly.
