Author Interviews

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Democracy Now! interviews the most important authors of the day. Check out our vast archive.

  • Whokilledche_book2_showbutton

    Part 2: "Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away with Murder": New Book Ties Johnson Admin to Che Death

    February 07, 2012 | Blog Post

    In an extended interview, co-authors Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith discuss the life of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the chilling story behind his murder by the Bolivian military. In their book, "Who Killed Che?" Ratner and Smith draw on previously unpublished U.S. government documents to argue the CIA played a critical role in the killing. [includes rush transcript]

  • Syria_showbutton

    A Struggle for Regional Supremacy: Syria Conflict Escalates as World Powers Debate Assad’s Future

    February 07, 2012 | Story

    Syria is seeing some of the worst violence of the 11-month uprising against Bashar al-Assad amid an ongoing international standoff over how to respond. Assad’s forces have launched what appears to be one of their fiercest assaults on the flashpoint city of Homs to date. Both the United States and Britain have closed their embassies in the Syrian capital of Damascus and withdrawn diplomatic personnel, citing safety fears. As the crisis escalates, Russia and China are facing criticism for blocking a U.N. Security Council resolution backed by the United States and Arab League calling for a political transition in Syria. To discuss the situation in Syria, we’re joined by Patrick Seale, a leading British writer on the Middle East and author of "Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East." "It’s at least a two- or possibly a three-stage crisis. Internally in Syria, the situation is getting worse by the day," Seale says. "At a higher level, there is a struggle between the United States, on the one hand, and its allies, and its opponents like Russia and China... Then there’s a third level, possibly, of Arab Gulf states like Qatar, for example, even Saudi Arabia behind it, who are obsessed and worried by Iran, and they think that Iran might stir up Shia communities in the region." [includes rush transcript]

  • Whokilledche_book2_showbutton

    "Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away with Murder": New Book Ties Johnson Admin to Guevara’s Death

    February 07, 2012 | Story

    Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith are the co-authors of a new book about the U.S. role in the killing of Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Born in Argentina in 1928, Che rose to international prominence as one of the key leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After a period in the new Cuban government leadership, Che aimed to spark revolutionary activity internationally. On October 8, 1967, he was captured by Bolivian troops working with the CIA. He was executed one day later. In their book, "Who Killed Che?" Ratner and Smith draw on previously unpublished government documents to argue the CIA played a critical role in the killing. "The line of the [U.S.] government was that the Bolivians did it, we couldn’t do anything about it. That’s not true," Smith said. "This whole operation was organized out of the White House by Walt Whitman Rostow. And the CIA, by this time, had become a paramilitary organization." On Che’s significance, Ratner says Che became "a symbol for revolutionary change... He still remains, of course, that today. If you go to Occupy Wall Street, if you go to Tahrir Square, you will see people who are wearing Che T-shirts, because they understand that their obligation, their necessity, is to take on the 1 percent. And that’s what Che was about. And that’s why I think he remains such a hero for people in the streets today." [includes rush transcript]

  • Gunbook-button

    Glock: As Giffords Exits, a Look at the Gun Used in Tucson Rampage and Other U.S. Mass Shootings

    January 26, 2012 | Story

    Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords resigned her seat this week, roughly a year after she was shot through the head during a meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. The attack left six people dead and 12 others injured. As Giffords steps down, we look at the iconic semi-automatic Glock pistol used in her attack and a number of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. Gun-control advocates have had little success calling for restrictions on Glocks or the large-capacity ammunition magazines they can accommodate. We speak with Paul Barrett, who wrote the landmark book about the infamous weapon, "Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun." [includes rush transcript]

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    "The Operators": Michael Hastings on the Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan

    January 18, 2012 | Story

    We speak with reporter Michael Hastings about the "disastrous past year" in Afghanistan and the mentality a decade of war has bred there. The U.S. has "funneled billions of dollars in weapons and training into a chaotic place like Afghanistan, training these young guys to kill people, and then are shocked when they see the results," Hastings says of the outcry that followed last week’s appearance of a video showing four uniformed U.S. marines urinating on the corpses of three Afghan men, which has been widely condemned by officials in the United States and in Afghanistan. His new book, "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan," originated with his 2010 Rolling Stone article, "The Runaway General," about Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of the war in Afghanistan, and his inner circle. McChrystal was fired after the article was published. [includes rush transcript]

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    Expansion of Indefinite Detention under NDAA Compounds Extradition Fears of WikiLeaks’ Assange

    January 18, 2012 | Story

    Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings was with WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange when the pretrial military hearing for accused Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning was taking place in Fort Meade, Maryland, last month. Hastings says the military’s case against Manning, coupled with President Obama’s recent authorization of a measure expanding indefinite detention anywhere in the world in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has added further urgency to Assange’s effort to avoid extradition from Britain. "Julian Assange’s fear is that he will be extradited to Sweden...and then there will be some kind of media campaign where the U.S. government or the Swedish government starts leaking things about 'Oh, Assange helped the Iranians' or 'Assange helped the Taliban with this information,'" Hastings notes. "And then they’ll say, 'Well, you know, we need to try him as a spy.' And though that case might be very, very difficult to prove, it’s the threat of it that, in my mind, is so damning." [includes rush transcript]

  • Randall_robinson

    "Memory is the Active Agent of Collective Social Progress": Randall Robinson on His New Novel Makeda

    January 13, 2012 | Story

    "Makeda," the new novel by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, is set at the dawn of the civil rights era. The book follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia, who discovers his roots in Africa through his blind grandmother. "Sometimes when we think of slavery, we calculate the economic consequence of it," Robinson says. "But we have not calculated the psychosocial consequence of it, unless we factor in the loss of memory, which was occasioned by a deliberate and systematic program imposed by those who controlled us." [includes rush transcript]

  • Frank

    "Pity the Billionaire": Thomas Frank on the "Unlikely Comeback of the Right" Ahead of Iowa Caucus

    January 03, 2012 | Story

    Bestselling author and Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Frank argues that as President Barack Obama fails to provide a coherent, progressive economic alternative, the right has staged an unlikely comeback — despite the ongoing fallout from the 2008 financial crisis for which its trademark policies were largely responsible. Frank’s new book is called "Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right." "[Conservatives after 2008] didn’t take the pundit’s advice: they didn’t move to the center, they didn’t moderate themselves. They did the opposite," Frank says. "They purged their moderate wing, moved dramatically to the right with the Tea Party movement, and enjoyed this incredible success in the 2010 elections." Frank says whether the conservatives will succeed in 2012 is still "anyone’s guess" and says Obama should "start getting some of the rhetoric of the Occupy movement in there. He needs to start talking about the 1 percent. He needs to start talking about what has happened, and why, over the last 30 years." We also speak with The Nation correspondent John Nichols about the Occupy movement in Iowa. [includes rush transcript]

  • Russell_banks_play2

    Author Russell Banks on Writing Through the Voices of Outcasts, Criminals and Revolutionaries

    December 28, 2011 | Story

    We speak with acclaimed novelist Russell Banks, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist known for drawing on his working-class background to write about criminals, outcasts and revolutionaries. "I know that as a kid in a broken home that was marred by alcoholism and violence and so forth, storytelling was a way, just within the circle of the family, for me and my brothers and so on, and for myself, to save ourselves. We could make sense of an otherwise incoherent life for children." Banks has written a dozen novels and several short story collections. In "Cloudsplitter," he focused on the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown; in "Affliction," a paranoid alcoholic; and in "Rule of the Bone," a 14-year-old drug dealer. Bank’s latest book, "Lost Memory of Skin," explores the plight of sex offenders trying to live among society as outcasts. [includes rush transcript]

  • Richard_wolff_eu_us_economy

    Richard Wolff: Eurozone Woes Result from Mating of Our "Dysfunctional" Political, Economic Systems

    December 02, 2011 | Story

    European leaders are preparing to unveil their plans for addressing the sovereign debt crisis that’s threatened to tear apart the eurozone. Both France and Germany are expected to push for changes to the eurozone treaty, including centralized oversight of national budgets and tighter reins on debt. In a speech on Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said radical changes are needed in order to save the euro. Sarkozy’s address came after central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, took coordinated action to prevent a credit crunch among European banks. For more on the developing crisis in Europe and its implications worldwide, we are joined by economist and professor Richard Wolff. He is the author of several books, including "Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It." "The Fed is recognizing that another bailout is needed," Wolff says. "All the steps taken over the last few years to try to cope with this crisis of our capitalist system haven’t worked, and so we’re now again on the brink of a crisis, and again public money and public institutions are bailing out a private banking system and a private enterprise system that is not working and is not solving its own problems." Wolff continues, "The fundamental question is, you’ve got to deal with an economic system that isn’t working... You’ve got to take big steps that change the way this economic system works, or find a new system... It’s as though we have a dysfunctional economic system coupled to a now dysfunctional political system, and instead of fixing each other, these two systems are making each other in a kind of a spiral downturn." [includes rush transcript]