In his book, Are We Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, Vanity Fair Editor Cullen Murphy asks, well, are we Rome?

The comparison of the U.S. and the fallen empire is a popular one in modern times, especially since the onset of the Iraq war, when the country began to experience many of the issues that Rome did during its demise. In an interview with Colbert, who was channeling Russel Crowe, Murphy pointed to “the hollowing out” of government, the imminent corruption that makes citizens lose faith in their central institution. He also discussed our military problems, which echo Rome’s in that our forces are too small to do the jobs we need done, but still too large for us to adequately maintain, which will inevitably lead to a break down abroad. And like Rome, the U.S. has exacerbated the issue, Murphy says, by inviting in outsiders, “barbarians,” to do our dirty work, the most well known of these being Halliburton.

The similarities go on, but Murphy ends the interview on a good note saying he feels it will be largely impossible for Bush to get himself elected Emperor.

Colbert: “So he’s totally going to get stabbed, huh?”

Watch the interview.

It’s the 25th anniversary of Sheila Lukins’ Silver Palate Cookbook. Don’t know what that means? Neither did I until I listened to this great interview of Lukins by From Scratch host Jessica Harris. The two discuss the start of the little gourmet shop and its namesake cookbook that was part of the renaissance of NYC’s Columbus Avenue during the late 70s and early 80s.

The book’s accessible recipes and personal illustrations have been appreciated worldwide, with copies in English, French, Japanese, Dutch and German. Listen to the full interview here.

This week’s G8 summit got President Bush to acknowledge climate change as a “real” concern and that ignoring international environmental agreements might be a bad thing. New York Times‘ environment reporter Andrew Revkin, author of The North Pole Was Here, talks to On The Media about how Al Gore’s environmental rhetoric is actually helping distract from the current administration’s Iraq quagmire.

Listen to the discussion here.

More, more, ever more lists of what to read this summer from people who know more about books than you do. Today, NPR’s Morning Edition features such lists from three independent booksellers from around the country, and the result is one of the most interesting and varied collections I have seen yet this summer.
The lists feature under-the-radar apocalyptic hospital drama in Chris Adrian’s The Children’s Hospital, Thai murder mysteries in John Burnett’s Bangkok Haunts and the mystery of Huck Finn’s father explained in Jon Clinch’s Finn. Read the whole list here.

This is how life imitates art: During the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Catholic King James II was deposed, largely without blood, via an elaborate conspiracy that installed his protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William Henry of Orange.

As Jon Stewart points out, “That’s King Lear!”

That play was banned for several years after the revolution, and we know this because last night, Stewart sat down to talk to Michael Barone, author of Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Uprising That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers. The book argues that the American Revolution took most of its cues from the Glorious Revolution, some ninety years before. In the interview, Barone discusses the climate from which the Glorious Revolution sprung forth, the parallels in the United States, and how our War for Independence wasn’t such a revolutionary move after all.

Watch the whole interview here.

Adoption is a fairly modern concept, stemming not from Dickensian “boy for sale!” moments in Oliver Twist, but from 1920s Memphis, where a woman named Georgia Tann began quite literally stealing and selling babies. Before this point, potential parents believed in eugenics, and that the sins of the parents— sex out of wedlock say—would be visited upon the child. There were still people willing to adopt, but they were mostly mothers unable to convince their husbands to undergo the process. Tann saw this as a business opportunity and went to great lengths to facilitate the adoption process, most notably falsifying documents to make the child appear of a higher pedigree, and also refuting the popular eugenics theory with her own “blank slate” idea, which stated that a child was a product of its environment.

Barbara Bisantz Raymond’s new book on the topic is Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption, and she recently appeared on Diane Rehm to discuss, orphanages, baby farms and a terrifying story in which Tann appears at a poor woman’s door, offers to take her ill child to the hospital, and then fakes the child’s death so that she might later sell it.

Listen to the interview here.

As reported last week, journalist Carl Bernstein—who with Bob Woodward won the Pulitzer prize for exposing Nixon’s Watergate Scandal—has recently published a biography of Hillary Clinton entitled Woman in Charge. Bernstein sat down with Colbert two nights ago and admitted that she is a very controlling woman and that the farther Bernstein got with the book, the more and more she wanted to control who she spoke to and what was written about. Colbert had a field day with that.

Also discussed was the fact that Clinton is no longer an inevitable win in the democratic primary. Bernstein thinks that it’s unlikely Obama will “evict” her, but not out of the question.

Watch the whole interview (with the Shrek reference) here.

On a plane ride back from Russia in 1988, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson leaned over to Robin Givens, his wife of less than a year, and informed her quite calmly, “I’m going to kill you and get away with it.” She was pregnant with their first child.

Not long before, Givens had spoken with Barbara Walters and for the first time admitted, publicly and perhaps to herself as well, that yes, Tyson did hit her and yes, she was scared. Now, nearly two decades later, Givens has published a memoir entitled Grace Will Lead Me Home, in which she writes about her relationship with Tyson, the now-famous interview and the decision to get out while she could.

In an interview with Good Morning America, Givens discusses the cycles of domestic violence that have plagued her family for generations, which she believes predisposed her to the situation with Tyson. She also states that, were it not for the love and support she found with her family, she never would have had the strength to do what she did. Grace, she tells the GMA talking head, was her grandmother’s name.

Watch the interview and read a sample chapter.

Ah, yes, the familiar essay! As defined by essayist Anne Fadiman, that particular brand of personal essay had its heyday in the Romantic period, when authors like Charles Lamb and William Hazlett wrote about personal events that had universal significance and appeal, such as: drunkards, tailors and annoying relatives. The difference from this and say, David Sedaris, whose writing rarely stray from the topic of his family, is the amount of personal detail in it. Despite its name, the familiar essay is actually less familiar than most modern personal essays, avoiding specific details of family and friends and sticking instead to broader, more widely acknowledged generalities. After all, not everyone is related to Amy Sedaris.

Fadiman’s newest book is a collection of these familiar essays entitled At Large and At Small. She recently appeared on NPR and does a better job of explaining her craft than I did. You may listen to her do it here.

The only thing most people think of when Phil Spector comes to mind is that hair. Or maybe those boots. Didn’t he kill someone or something? Somebody seems to think so, as Spector currently stands trial for murder, and of all the people watching, Mick Brown is perhaps one of the most anxious. Brown is Spector’s biographer and interviewed the infamous record producer some two months before the alleged killing of actress Lana Clarkson took place. The writer just recently came on NPR to discuss that interview, and the resulting book, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound.

Read the excerpt and listen to the interview, in which Brown plays clips from the last Spector interview, and discusses the current state of the trial.