Prize winners corner:- Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) won a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her reaction and plans here.
- Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) writes about the connections between the Iranian recipients of this years Anna Politkovskaya Award and the award's namesake and previous winner Natalya Estemirova.
- Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) and Wangari Maathai (Unbowed) defend President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nick Kristof suggests Greg Mortenson and Paul Farmer as alternative winners. Foreign Policy runs down a list of Nobel losers including Rights Readers faves Eleanor Roosevelt and Ken Saro-Wiwa.
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the most read book on the New York City subway.
- Greg Mortenson has a new book coming out for your holiday gift list.
- Ha Jin's novel Waiting is to be made into a movie and Mira Nair's next project is the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
- Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International (and Nicolas Kristof) talk about the current state of the human rights movement at NPR's On Point. A very interesting discussion, though we don't learn much about Khan's new book, (The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights).
- John Conroy (Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture) has written a play about the Chicago police torture scandal. Also, check out this provocative article about his personal experience as a crime victim.
- Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) chats about the cities he's lived in and his next book:
Interview with Dinaw Mengestu from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
On the issues:
- Bill Moyers interviews Dr. Jim Yong Kim (see Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains) about the connections between our current national healthcare debate and global health issues.
- Ted Conover (Newjack)
is interviewed by On the Media about the ethics of his undercover reporting at Sing Sing prison.
- Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) discusses poverty and the recession on NPR's On Point and then stands up for the grumpy among us on the The Daily Show.
- Meanwhile looking ahead to Copenhagen and the climate change talks, Orville Schell (Mandate Of Heaven) writes for the NYT- The Thaw at the Roof of the World- and Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) in the Nation- Climate Roulette. Wangari Maathai leaves us with this PSA:
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