This Weekend's Program

Bob Edwards Weekend, May 25-26, 2013

HOUR ONE:

Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news.

During World War II, someone had to save the art and antiquities of Europe from Allied bombing and from occupying then retreating Nazi forces.  The painting of The Last Supper and Michelangelo’s sculpture of David were just two priceless works that were almost destroyed.  Bob talks with writer and World War II specialist Robert Edsel about the important work and the people who risked their lives for art.  Edsel’s new book is Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis.

Then, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.

HOUR TWO:

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to step foot on the moon and the first to punch an Apollo conspiracy theorist in the face after the man demanded Aldrin swear on a Bible that the Moon landings were not faked.  Aldrin dedicated a chapter to the incident in his 2009 autobiography Magnificent Desolation, which takes its title from the first words he uttered while walking on the moon.   Now Aldrin has authored a new book from National Geographic in which he lays out his goals for the space program and how he believes we can get humans to Mars and back safely. It’s titled Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration.

Award-winning travel writer and historian William Dalrymple looks back to an earlier time when a Western power invaded Afghanistan.  Dalrymple’s new book is titled The Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan: 1839-42.

Bob Edwards Weekend airs on Sirius XM Public Radio (XM 121, Sirius 205) Saturdays from 8-10 AM EST.

Visit Bob Edwards Weekend on PRI’s website to find local stations that air the program.

Forthcoming on The Bob Edwards Show

The Bob Edwards Show, May 27-31, 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013:  It’s been more than forty years since thousands of American troops died fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. For this Memorial Day, we pay tribute to our service men and women with an encore presentation of our award-winning show Stories from Third Med: Surviving a Jungle ER. The documentary includes stories of the Navy’s Third Medical Battalion, which served alongside the Third Marine Division. They were based near the DMZ, closest to the enemy in North Vietnam. Four decades later, the doctors and corpsmen recount the horror (and humor) they can never forget, and reflect on the forces that drive men to war in the first place.

 

Tuesday, May 28, 2013:  Writer and World War II specialist Robert Edsel’s new book is Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis.  Edsel is the founder and current president of the Monuments Men Foundation.

 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013:  Bob talks with guitarist Ben Harper and harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite about their new CD titled Get Up! The two musicians and occasional collaborators have wanted to record a full album together for over a decade and finally found the time after first clicking musically at a 1997 recording session with John Lee Hooker. Then, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Igor Stravinksy’s modernist classic The Rite of Spring, Symphony Hall host Martin Goldsmith walks Bob through what happened that fateful night and why 100 years later, this piece still packs an impressive musical punch.

 

Thursday, May 30, 2013:  Laurence Leamer’s book, The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, tells the story of two lawyers’ attempt to hold Don Blankenship, the most powerful coal baron in American history, accountable for the death and destruction he has caused.   Blankenship was head of Massey Energy, a company that provided nearly half of America’s electric power, since the early 1990s. Then, Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America’s most prized writers. In 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave a copy of Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent to President Barack Obama. Now, Uruguayan author and journalist joins Bob to discuss his most recent work, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History.

 

Friday, May 31, 2013:  Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for The Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, Bob talks with prolific documentarian Alex Gibney about his latest film. We Steal Secrets is a study of transparency and privacy in the information age. Gibney focuses the story on Julian Assange, the controversial founder of the website WikiLeaks and on the once anonymous source behind the largest security breach in US history. That source turned out to be a young Army Intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning, currently awaiting court martial in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Both he and Assange have been lauded as heroes of free speech…they’ve also been called a traitor and a terrorist. Finally, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.

The People's Library Prevails

Bob’s guest today is University of Pittsburgh English professor William Scott.  Instead of conducting research in a library or writing another book, Scott spent his sabbatical camped out at Zuccoti Park in downtown Manhattan, headquarters of Occupy Wall Street.  For six weeks, Scott explains to Bob, he  worked as a librarian for the movement, helping to build and maintain a vast collection of books which became known as the “People’s Library.”

But in the early morning hours of November 15^th  2011, an army of police in riot gear   - acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg - raided the park, seized  thousands of donated books, and destroyed nearly all of them, along with just about everything else in the library – laptops, bookshelves, storage bens and cataloging supplies.   Occupy Wall Street sued and under a settlement reached last month, the city will pay $366,700 for property damage caused during the raid.  Here’s a copy of the settlement: 

Buzz Aldrin's Magnificent Desolation

The first time Buzz Aldrin filled out the forms to be a NASA astronaut, his application was turned down.  He was a jet fighter and the newly formed space agency was only interested in test pilots.  Aldrin applied again and this time he was accepted, partly because NASA was intrigued by the thesis he had recently completed at MIT: “Guidance for Manned Orbital Rendezvous” – an outline of a plan for two piloted spacecraft to meet in space.  This would hardly be the first time Aldrin would have ideas for NASA.  The underwater training for the first Apollo mission was his idea. And he holds three US patents for his schematics of a modular space station, reusable rockets and multi-crew modules for space flight. 

Many decades have passed since Aldrin stepped onto the moon’s surface and uttered the words that popped into his head: magnificent desolation.  And he still has a lot more ideas fo space exploration: cycling ships and a flexible path concept; Block 1 Exploration Modules and the Aldrin Mars Cycler — all things he talked about in his interview with Bob.  Aldrin also talked about an infamous punch he once threw. You can see it here:

Aldrin’s new book, published by National Geographic, is Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration

This Weekend's Program

Bob Edwards Weekend, May 18-19, 2013

HOUR ONE:

Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news.

Paul Theroux has made a career of going on the road.  He travels light, and frequently, and he’s written scores of books about the places he’s visited.  His latest is about a continent that first received him as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer: Africa.  The Last Train to Zona Verde details the people and places Theroux encountered from South Africa to Angola.

Then, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe. 

HOUR TWO:

British musician Billy Bragg is known for his folk-punk albums that run the gamut from protest to love songs.  He returns to chat with Bob about his latest release, Tooth & Nail, and about the loss of one of his great sources of inspiration, Margaret Thatcher.

Life After Life is Jill McCorkle’s first novel in seventeen years. It deals with the daily life of the residents and staff of Pine Haven Estates, a retirement facility that many of Fulton, North Carolina’s elderly now call home. McCorkle calls her story “a love song to memory and life.”

Bob Edwards Weekend airs on Sirius XM Public Radio (XM 121, Sirius 205) Saturdays from 8-10 AM EST.

Visit Bob Edwards Weekend on PRI’s website to find local stations that air the program.