Fresh Air, Walter Isaacson and Ted Conover

By: Terry Gross

Narrated by: Terry Gross

Journalist and author Walter Isaacson and Ted Conover, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine on this edition of Fresh Air. Isaacson has written the new biography Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Reviewer and fellow Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. writes of the book, "Both an absorbing narrative biography and an acute assessment of the man and his impact on his time and on posterity." Isaacson is also the author of a biography of Kissinger, is president of the Aspen Institute, and was managing editor of Time magazine.

Ted Conover went to Guantanamo Bay to report on the detention of suspected jihadists and terrorists there. He's written about it in the June 29th edition of The New York Times Magazine, "In the Land of Guantanamo." Previously Conover spent a year as a prison guard inside New York State's infamous Sing Sing prison to experience firsthand the conditions within a prison. He wrote about it in his book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. He also chronicled his time spent with illegal aliens (Coyotes) and railroad hoboes (Rolling Nowhere). (Broadcast Date: July 3, 2003)

Then, hear titles from Walter Isaacson.

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