Ed Goldberg interviews Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists, a novel about a newspaper in Rome and the characters that staff it.

Tom Rachman was born in 1974 in London, but grew up in Vancouver. He studied cinema at the University of Toronto and completed a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York. From 1998, he worked as an editor at the foreign desk of The Associated Press in New York, then did a stint as a reporter in India and Sri Lanka, before returning to New York. In 2002, he was sent to Rome as an AP correspondent, with assignments taking him to Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt. Beginning in 2006, he worked part-time as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris to support himself while writing fiction. He now lives in London, where he is working on his second novel. 

Distinguished writer Alice Hoffman talks about her new book, The Red Garden, a collection of linked fictions about a small town in Massachusetts where a garden holds the secrets of many lives.
Alice Hoffman  has published a total of eighteen novels, two books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.
 

Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with Kenneth Sharpe, co-author with Barry Schwartz of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing. In the book, Schwartz and Sharpe make a reasoned appeal for wisdom in a world gone mad with ineffectual rules and rampant bureaucracy: from doctors too bogged down with insurance paperwork and quotas to give patients the time they deserve, to teachers too focused on standardized tests to ensure that their students are really learning.

Kenneth Sharpe has been teaching political philosophy (aka political theory) at Swarthmore College since the early 1970s. He has authored five books and completed research on how institutions and organizations--corporations, NGOs, government agencies--work. Kenneth has taught and led public lectures on practical wisdom in the workplace, professional ethics, learning in organizations, social policy and U.S. foreign policy. His most recent book is Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing(Penguin/Riverhead 2010) co-authored with Barry Schwartz.