Six Questions

No Comment, Six Questions — July 6, 2012, 1:53 pm

Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Six Questions for Christoph Wolff

The last years of Mozart’s life and the prodigious and important works he created during them have been heavily romanticized in the musical literature. Now, one of this generation’s leading musicologists wants to set the picture straight. In his new book, Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune, Harvard professor Christoph Wolff carefully reconstructs Mozart’s patronage relationships, explores his engagement with Bach and other masters of the polyphonic tradition, and reassesses Mozart’s impassioned turn toward sacred music. I put six questions to Wolff about the book: 1. Many depictions of Mozart’s life, for instance Alfred Einstein’s, have tended to divide …

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Six Questions — June 29, 2012, 10:51 am

Magic Hours: Six Questions for Tom Bissell

After more than a decade spent writing on subjects as diverse as Uzbekistan, the Iraq War, and video-game voice-overs, Tom Bissell published his sixth book, a collection of some of his finest essays, this April. Titled Magic Hours: Essays On Creators and Creation, the book includes Harper’s Magazine pieces on film from 2000 and 2006, as well as his 2010 feature, “Cinema Crudité,” about the cult movie The Room. Harper’s put six questions to Bissell about art, film, and writing. 1. The first essay in your book, “Unflowered Aloes,” touches upon the role of chance in a writer’s success, pointing …

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No Comment, Six Questions — June 22, 2012, 3:12 pm

The Art of Intelligence: Six Questions for Henry Crumpton

Henry Crumpton spent twenty-four years in the CIA’s clandestine service. His work put him at the forefront of the agency’s counterterrorism efforts, and on the front lines as America took on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan following 9/11. His recently published recollections offer an exceptionally deep glimpse into the CIA’s counterterrorism operations in the last decade of the twentieth century. I put six questions to Crumpton about his bestselling book The Art of Intelligence: 1. The 9/11 Commission and investigations developed in its wake turned up information suggesting that the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) had acquired specific information …

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Six Questions — June 21, 2012, 9:32 am

A Sense of Direction: Six Questions for Gideon Lewis-Kraus

The last time Harper’s Magazine readers saw Gideon Lewis-Kraus was in 2009, when he diagnosed the diseases of the publishing world at the Frankfurt Book Fair and infiltrated the community of medical-marijuana growers in northern California. A few years ago, he moved to Berlin, where cheap rent had attracted a number of fellow writers and artists, and began using the city as a base of operations for the series of trips he recounts in A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful, which Riverhead published in May. Lewis-Kraus’s search for catharsis through meaningful wandering took him to …

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Six Questions — June 13, 2012, 9:48 am

Six Questions for Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka is the author of two novels, When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic, the latter of which was recently awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The novel traces the lives of a group of Japanese “picture-brides” from their journey to the United States in 1917 to their departure for the internment camps of World War II. Narrated in the first-person plural, the book’s eight chapters focus on important moments in the women’s lives, such as their first nights with their new spouses. One of these episodes, “Whites,” was excerpted in the August 2011 issue …

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No Comment, Six Questions — June 7, 2012, 6:04 pm

Framed: Six Questions for Sanford Levinson

The American Constitution has been the subject, just as Thomas Jefferson predicted, of a great deal of “sanctimonious reverence,” especially from American politicians who make comments demonstrating they know little about it. But the Constitution has few more-dedicated critics than political scientist and law professor Sanford Levinson, who has offered the most thorough explanation yet of why it has effectively ceased to be an attractive model to other nations around the world. I put six questions to Levinson about his new book, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance: 1. We read the refrain “The system in Washington …

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No Comment, Six Questions — June 1, 2012, 9:04 am

Traitor: Six Questions for Jesselyn Radack

Jesselyn Radack came into the Justice Department through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and worked as an ethics adviser until she found herself embroiled in a scandal that arose because she dispensed advice senior political appointees didn’t want to hear. The scandal became aggravated when Justice officials made false statements about her advice in representations to a federal judge. Radack, a recipient of the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, is now the director of national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, where she counsels and represents whistleblowers. I put six questions to her about her …

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No Comment, Six Questions — May 18, 2012, 9:34 am

Unimaginable Atrocities: Six Questions for William Schabas

A successfully completed prosecution in the International Criminal Court, new demands for investigations into atrocities in Syria, ongoing issues surrounding crimes committed by American officials during the Bush-era “war on terror”—international criminal-law issues are steadily topical. Canadian scholar William Schabas, now a professor at Middlesex University in London, is one of the world’s leading writers and speakers on the subject. I put six questions to him about his new book, Unimaginable Atrocities: Justice, Politics, and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals. 1. Just weeks ago, the International Criminal Court handed down its first judgment, convicting Thomas Lubanga of crimes relating …

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No Comment, Six Questions — May 5, 2012, 12:59 pm

Every Nation for Itself: Six Questions for Ian Bremmer

The world is quickly being reshaped, writes political economist Ian Bremmer. America established itself as the paramount power following the collapse of Communism, but the emerging system is one in which no nation or group of nations stands out as its leader. What will this mean for the global economy and for conflict in the near future? In Every Nation for Itself, Bremmer looks at the world forming now and sees glimmers of hope, but a somber future. I put six questions to him about his new book. 1. We have the G–7, the G–8, and the G–20—explain how you …

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No Comment, Six Questions — April 24, 2012, 9:28 am

The Crisis of Zionism: Six Questions for Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic who now writes for the Daily Beast and teaches at the City University of New York, has just published a remarkable book, The Crisis of Zionism, that tackles one of the most contentious issues in American politics: how the United States interacts with an Israel that seems increasingly unreceptive to American advice but increasingly engaged in American politics. I put six questions to Beinart about The Crisis of Zionism and its critics, who seem curiously intent on attacking him while ignoring the actual content of his book: 1. It has seemed …

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Six Questions — March 21, 2012, 11:43 am

Six Questions for Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a professor of physics and humanities at MIT, and the author of novels, poems, and such essays as “The Accidental Universe: Science’s crisis of faith” (December 2011), which was selected as one of 2011’s best magazine features by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Lightman’s latest novel, Mr g (Pantheon), is a witty, playful work that describes what happens when the title character decides, after waking up from a nap, to create the universe. Harper’s Magazine put six questions to Lightman about the novel: 1. In a recent New York Times article, Dennis Overbye discusses the growing …

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No Comment, Six Questions — March 16, 2012, 11:11 am

The Man Without a Face: Six Questions for Masha Gessen

Vladimir Putin is emerging as an iconic figure for Russian politics in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he remains rather mysterious even at home, and widely misunderstood abroad. Now Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has completed a comprehensive and penetrating look at the experiences that shaped Putin and the character of his stewardship of Russia. I put six questions to Gessen about her new book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin: 1. Vladimir Putin has been elected once more as president of the Russian Federation, but this time observers say the …

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Six Questions — March 12, 2012, 9:51 am

Pity the Billionaire: Six Questions for Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank’s Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right is the first full exploration of the rise of a new kind of false populism in the aftermath of our nation’s financial crisis. Like Frank’s best-selling What’s the Matter with Kansas and his Easy Chair columns for Harper’s Magazine, Pity the Billionaire grounds lively first-hand reporting with deep historical insight. Harper’s put six questions to Frank about his writing and the book: 1. Pity the Billionaire chronicles the revival of economic conservatism in the wake of the financial collapse. You term the means of …

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No Comment, Six Questions — March 2, 2012, 9:07 am

The United States of Fear: Six Questions for Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt is a prolific writer and editor, and the curator of TomDispatch, a popular website that presents political commentary. I put six questions to him about his new book, The United States of Fear, in which he projects a fairly gloomy near-term future for an America pulling back from Empire: 1. You write about your deep experience with the cinema during your childhood in New York, and how it helped shape your outlook on the world. Compare your experience with that of an adolescent today. Are Hollywood and its foreign competitors doing a good job of preparing us to …

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No Comment, Six Questions — February 7, 2012, 4:13 pm

All the Missing Souls: Six Questions for David Scheffer

Ambassador David Scheffer steered America’s engagement with the concept of war-crimes accountability throughout the Clinton years, and has been one of the nation’s leading observers and commentators on the subject since then. He has now published a major work, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals, that chronicles America’s pursuit of war criminals during the Nineties and offers clear insights into the issues these efforts raised for future generations. I put six questions to Scheffer about his book: 1. In the Wall Street Journal, torture-memo author John Yoo argues that you “fail to understand” that …

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No Comment, Six Questions — January 20, 2012, 1:34 pm

The Operators: Six Questions for Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings’s Polk Award–winning Rolling Stone article, “The Runaway General,” brought the career of General Stanley McChrystal, America’s commander in Afghanistan, to an abrupt end. Now Hastings has developed the material from that article, and the storm that broke in its wake, into an equally explosive book, The Operators, which includes a merciless examination of relations between major media and the American military establishment. I put six questions to Hastings about his book and his experiences as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan: 1. Your book presents a Barack Obama who behaves uncomfortably and perhaps too deferentially around his …

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No Comment, Six Questions — January 9, 2012, 11:02 am

Hobbes’s Mortal Gods: Six Questions for Ted H. Miller

The last decade was clearly something of a Hobbesian moment in American history. Now, political philosopher and Hobbes scholar Ted H. Miller has written a book entitled Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes, in which he examines the English philosopher’s work and its relationship to court politics, absolutist rule, and the seventeenth-century fascination with practical mathematics. I put six questions to Miller about his new book: 1. If the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes can be separated from that of John Locke on a single practical point, it is probably the notion of accountability of …

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Six Questions — December 20, 2011, 4:26 pm

Kingdom Under Glass: Six Questions for Jay Kirk

Kingdom Under Glass, by frequent Harper’s Magazine contributor Jay Kirk, came out in paperback in late November. The book tells the story of the remarkable career of Carl Akeley, the taxidermist who in 1909 dreamed up the African Wing of the American Museum of Natural History. Along the way, Kirk creates a kind of cyclorama of the early twentieth century: eugenicist museum curators; Teddy Roosevelt on safari; “Kodak King” George Eastman baking huckleberry pies in Kenya; and the forty-six-pound heart of P.T. Barnum’s Jumbo, preserved in alcohol. Harper’s asked Kirk six questions about the boundary between history and fiction, navigating …

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No Comment, Six Questions — December 16, 2011, 9:51 am

With Liberty and Justice for Some: Six Questions for Glenn Greenwald

In the wake of September 11, Glenn Greenwald emerged as the nation’s premier chronicler of the war that U.S. officials waged on the nation’s civil liberties under the pretext of battling terrorists. Persistent and technically skilled, he played a key role in unmasking shameless betrayals by government attorneys of their oath to uphold the law—exposing those who enabled the torture of prisoners, the introduction of a massive warrantless surveillance system, and the merciless war against loyal Americans who attempted to blow the whistle on such abuses. I put six questions to Greenwald about his new book, With Liberty and Justice …

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Six Questions — December 9, 2011, 11:03 am

Sweet Heaven When I Die: Six Questions for Jeff Sharlet

Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Jeff Sharlet recently published Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between, a beautifully written bricolage of reported narrative, character study, and memoir tracing his travels among the faithful in the United States. Since then, Sharlet has been spearheading Occupy Writers, which brings together authors in support of Occupy Wall Street and collects their responses to the movement. (David Bezmozgis, Lemony Snicket, Alice Walker, and many others have contributed.) Harper’s put six questions to Sharlet about his new collection and his immersive approach to journalism: 1. Sweet Heaven When I Die includes …

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