To the Point
Our Favorite Author Interviews of 2012
On this special end-of-the-year edition of To the Point, we rebroadcast some of our favorite author interviews from earlier this year.
By Warren Olney • • 50m ListenAlmost every day on our program, we end with a "Reporter's Notebook," on events or issues that aren't necessarily leading the news. Today, we present a collection of our favorite interviews from this year with the authors of remarkable books. We hear how Barack Obama's biographer learned more than the President knew about his own ancestry; why Exxon-Mobil's not really an American company — and how women came out of the secretarial pool into senior positions in the news industry. We also get a scathing account of America's fumbling efforts to transform Afghanistan — before and during our longest war. Plus, a conversation with Salman Rushdie about surviving a fatwa.
In this episode
5 storiesDavid Maraniss on Obama
In June, we interviewed David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winner at the Washington Post, also biographer of Bill Clinton . His latest is Barack Obama : the Story.
Read the story8 minRajiv Chandrasekaran on 'Little America' in Afghanistan
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an editor and foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. His book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City , was a scathing account of US mishandling of the war in Iraq. His latest is Little America : the War Within the War for Afghanistan. We talked to him at KCRW's studio in Santa Monica in July.
Read the story15 minSalman Rushdie's Memoir
On September 18 of this year, we interviewed the novelist Salman Rushdie, whose memoir about living under a fatwa had just been published. Rushdie says the fatwa was based on a misunderstanding of his earlier novel, The Satanic Verses , which Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini denounced as an insult to Islam.
Read the story11 minLynn Povich on the Good Girls Revolt at Newsweek
In 1975, Lynn Povich became the first female senior editor of Newsweek magazine, where she started out as a secretary. But her rise from an entry-level position to senior management was different from those of the men who preceded her.
Read the story7 minSteve Coll on ExxonMobil
Apple has challenged Exxon Mobil as the biggest American company, but Exxon Mobil deals with fuel for the energy that powers the world's economy — including Apple computers. Now it's become a sort of state on its own, with a foreign policy that may not conform to the foreign policy of its home country.
Read the story9 min
