Books and More with William Cooper

We discuss Carla's wonderful new biography Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. What a great title!
https://carlakaplan.com/
Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University, where, as the Founding Director of the university’s Humanities Center, she created a conversational hub dedicated to diversity. She has held positions at Yale Univerity, the University of Southern California, Wellesley College, and the University of Illinois, and also teaches writing through arts councils and writers’ centers.
Kaplan’s previous books include Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, the first published collection of a major African American woman’s letters. This melding of biography, cultural history, and correspondence drew on nearly fifty archives and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, a New York Times Notable Book, a New York magazine “top five” book of the season, a Book-of-the-Month Club pick, and the subject of feature articles in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.

William D. Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of five non-fiction narratives. We delve into his 2022 book Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, about the rise and fall of GE, once the world’s most powerful, valuable and important company. It was a New York Times bestseller and on the best book of the year lists published by The New Yorker, The Economist, The Financial Times and the New York Times. We also discuss his new book about Leon Black and Apollo Global Management.
https://williamcohan.com/

Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. She serves on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of America’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers," and several other publications have named her one of the country’s most influential women.  Her many honorary degrees and awards include the American Bar Association’s prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award (2017). In 2023, the National Coalition Against Censorship (an alliance of more than 50 national non-profit organizations) selected Strossen for its Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech.
When Strossen stepped down as ACLU President, three (ideologically diverse) Supreme Court Justices participated in her farewell/tribute luncheon: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and David Souter.
She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (2023).  She is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series on free speech that was released on public television in 2023 (and is also available on YouTube).
Her book Defending Pornography:  Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights was named a New York Times “notable book” of 1995, and was  republished in 2024 as part of the New York University Press “Classic” series.  Her book HATE was selected as the “Common Read” by Washington University and Washburn University.

We discuss Sarah's storied career at The Times. She's currently a writer at large, meaning that she's not assigned to a single department but covers a range of topics. This includes a monthly thrillers column for the Book Review.
X: @sarahlyall
https://www.nytimes.com/by/sarah-lyall#about

W. Ralph Eubanks’s work focuses on Race, Identity, and the Culture and Literature of the American South. We discuss his new book When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land. For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, it's an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation. Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.
https://www.wralpheubanks.com/
 
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY.
https://will-cooper.com/ 

W. Ralph Eubanks’ work focuses on Race, Identity, and the Culture and Literature of the American South. We discuss his new book When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land. For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, it's an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation. Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.
https://www.wralpheubanks.com/
 
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY.
https://will-cooper.com/ 

W. Ralph Eubanks’s work focuses on Race, Identity, and the Culture and Literature of the American South. We discuss his new book When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land. For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, it's an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation. Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.
https://www.wralpheubanks.com/
 
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY.
https://will-cooper.com/ 

Stephen Pevar was a Senior Staff Attorney in the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, and was on the National Legal Staff for 45 years. He litigated some 200 federal cases involving constitutional rights. Stephen authored The Rights of Indians and Tribes (Oxford University Press 2024). He has serves as a Lecturer at Law at Yale Law School.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rights-of-indians-and-tribes-9780190077556?cc=us&lang=en&
 
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY.
will-cooper.com

Richard A. Danzig, The Author Of The Chance Cormac Legal Thriller Series.
https://www.richardadanzigauthor.com/

Malcom Kempt worked as a criminal lawyer in the remote Arctic for seventeen years before leaving to write full-time. He now lives on the island of Newfoundland. We discuss his new novel, A Gift Before Dying.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2312857/malcolm-kempt/