A companion volume to the Emmy Award–winning PBS® series—interviews with “an essential voice in our national conversation” (Brian Williams, MSNBC anchor). This “provocative” and “absorbing” (Star Tribune) companion book to Bill Moyer’s acclaimed PBS series invites readers into conversations with some of the most captivating voices on the scene today, in what Kirkus Reviews calls “a glittering array of discussions.” From Jon Stewart on politics and media to Michael Pollan on food, The Wire creator David Simon on the mean streets of our cities, James Cone and Shelby Steele on race in the age of Obama, Robert Bly and Nikki Giovanni on the power of poetry, Barbara Ehrenreich on the hard times of working Americans, and Karen Armstrong on faith and compassion, Moyer’s own intelligence and insight match that of his guests and their discussions animate many of the most salient issues of our time. With extensive commentary from Moyers, marked by his customary “respect, intelligence, curiosity, humor, and graciousness,” here are the debates; cultural currents; and, above all, lively minds that shape the conversation of democracy (Booklist). “In an era of much instant and ephemeral talk, it is a pleasurable thing to hold this ‘book of ideas.’” —Publishers Weekly “[Moyers] has always been about something beyond the moment. Or put another way, while everyone else in the media has been exploring topography, Moyers has been exploring geology.” —Los Angeles Times

The Peabody Award–winning journalist shares stories and insights into our country and the crises we face in an “eloquent selection of . . . commentaries” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Millions of Americans have invited Bill Moyers into their homes over the years. With television programs covering topics from American history, politics, and religion to the role of media and the world of ideas, he has become one of America’s most trusted journalists. Now Moyers presents, for the first time, a powerful statement of his own personal beliefs—political and moral. Combining illuminating forays into American history with candid comments on today’s politics, Moyers delivers perceptive and trenchant insights into the American experience. From his early years as a Texas journalist to his role as a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, top assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent and analyst for CBS News, and producer of many of public television’s groundbreaking series, Moyers has been actively engaged in some of the most volatile episodes of the past fifty years. Drawing from these experiences, he shares his unique understanding of American politics and an enduring faith in the nation’s promise and potential. Whether reflecting on today’s media climate, corporate scandals, or religious and political upheavals, Moyers on America recovers the hopes of the past to establish their relevance for the present. “Not only a good reporter . . . a first-rate storyteller.” —The Boston Globe

People know Bill Moyers from his many years of path-breaking journalism on television. But he is also one of America's most sought-after public speakers. In this collection of speeches, Moyers celebrates the promise of American democracy and offers a passionate defense of its principles of fairness and justice. Moyers on Democracy takes on crucial issues such as economic inequality, our broken electoral process, our weakened independent press, and the despoiling of the earth we share as our common gift.

At last, the paperback edition of the monumental best-seller (almost half a million copies in print!) that has changed the way Americans think about sickness and health -- the companion volume to the landmark PBS series of the same name. In a remarkably short period of time, Bill Moyers's Healing And The Mind has become a touchstone, shaping the debate over alternative medical treatments and the role of the mind in illness and recovery in a way that few books have in recent memory. With almost half a million copies in print, it is already a classic -- the most widely read and influential book of its kind. In a series of fascinating interviews with world-renowned experts and laypeople alike, Bill Moyers explores the new mind/body medicine. Healing And The Mind shows how it is being practiced in the treatment of stress, chronic disease, and neonatal problems in several American hospitals; examines the chemical basis of emotions, and their potential for making us sick (and making us well); explores the fusion of traditional Chinese medicine with modern Western practices in contemporary China; and takes an up-close, personal look at alternative healing therapies, including a Massachusetts center that combines Eastern meditation and Western group therapy, and a California retreat for cancer patients who help each other even when a cure is impossible. Combining the incisive yet personal interview approach that made A World Of Ideas a feast for the mind and the provocative interplay of text and art that made The Power Of Myth a feast for the imagination, Healing And The Mind is a landmark work.

A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

A scathing indictment of American modern-day culture examines the current disdain for logic and evidence fostered by the mass media, religious fundamentalism, poor public education, a lack of fair-minded intellectuals, and a lazy, credulous public, condemning our addiction to infotainment, from TV to the Web, and assessing its repercussions for the country as a whole. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.