Topping this Friday’s publicity round-up we have an interview with Brian Ladd, author of the timely new book, Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age, for the Patt Morrison show on Southern California’s KPCC radio. In the interview, Ladd gives a fascinating historical account of how the American addiction to the automobile, (and by proxy the currently imperiled automobile industry) has come to be. For more read an excerpt and listen to another audio interview with Ladd for the Chicago Audio Works podcast.
The Nota Bene section of the December 5 Chronicle of Higher Education contains a succinct synopsis of Mustapha Chérif’s Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. One of Derrida’s last intellectual engagements before his death in 2004, the book includes the Algerian born philosopher’s definitive take on Islam and, as the Chronicle notes, the pressing need given the current state of world affairs, to “deconstruct the European intellectual construct of Islam” and rediscover the “reciprocal fertilization of the Greek, the Arab, and the Jew.”
If you haven’t made plans for your Friday night, stay warm, stay home, and watch Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen, author’s of Tim & Tom: an American comedy in Black and White on the Jay Leno Show discussing (and maybe even cracking some jokes) about their experience touring 1960 ‘s America as the nation’s first interracial comedy team. Two nice articles about the book have also appeared in the papers recently. One in suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald and another in the Canadian paper the London Free Press. Check out the links above to read the articles or read this excerpt from the book.
And while it might be freezing cold here in Chicago it’s always summer somewhere. This time of year that somewhere would be Australia, where Peter Craven, writing for the Monthly has listed both Andrea Weiss’s In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story, and Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller’s The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples, as his picks for the “best books for summer.” Read an excerpt from In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain.
Last but not least, USA Today‘s Dan Vergano makes note of Dorrik Stow’s Oceans: An Illustrated Reference in his article “Stunning science books for holiday giving”. Vergano writes: “Dorrik Stow mixes full-color photographs with encyclopedic entries covering every aspect of the world’s seas from their origins during the Earth’s formation, to their tides and currents, to the sea life now under threat from overfishing in so many locales. A solid reference for the mariner, real or imagined, in your life.”