In this hour, William Powers wrote Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building A Good Life in the Digital Age because he feared people were getting lost in their electronic worlds. Powers tells Anne Strainchamps that the challenges of our new technologies are just the latest versions of problems we've faced every time technology changes. Sooner or later, we adjust and learn better ways to use our tools. Powers favors an Internet Sabbath at his house, even for his 12 year old son.
Next, Patrick Hennessey tells Jim Fleming about his war service in Iraq and Afghanistan and the role that books played in his life as a soldier. His memoir is The Junior Officers Reading Club.
Then, Timothy Ryback is a Holocaust scholar and cofounder of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in Paris. He's also the author of Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life. Ryback tells Steve Paulson the shocking truth that the two books that most influenced Hitler's thinking were American.
And finally, Amitav Ghosh was born in India and educated in Delhi and at Oxford. He's the author of many award winning novels, as well as non-fiction and essays. The first book in is new trilogy is Sea of Poppies. Ghosh tells Jim Fleming that English has been a global language for 200 years and cites some of the many Asian words that have long been in the Oxford English Dictionary. And he reads sections from his book. [Broadcast Date: October 20, 2010]
(Tags : To the Best of Our Knowledge: You Are What You Read Jim Fleming Audiobook, Jim Fleming Audio CD )
