Episode #201 “Of Dust, Data, and Words”
broadcasting March 4th, , 2015) Location Sponsor: City Winery
Welcome to a new season of BDJ. Today we talk about a dusty rock, data collection, and strange bohemians with Pamela Fiori, David Shafer, Justin Martin.
Host, Frederic Colier, introduces the first episode of the second season of Books Du Jour. Whether deciphering an old parchment in some remote library or questioning the global culling of private data, authors always start with some treasure trove of information. Our first guests do not fall too far from the tree:
Pamela Fiori, “In the Spirit of Monte Carlo,” a colorful biography of Monaco, which depicts how a sun-baked desolate piece of rock clinging between France and Italy managed to become the must-place to live for the ultra riches. Pamela’s story focuses on Monte Carlo, a district of Monaco.
David Shafer, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.” In this darkly comic novel, three young adults grapple with the usual thirty-something problems: boredom, authenticity, and a cloaked and omnipotent online oligarchy, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, on the verge of privatizing all information.
Justin Martin, “Rebel Souls, Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” is an extraordinary book about New York City’s Pfaff’s Saloon, a basement bar on Broadway, near Bleecker Street, where the young Whitman and his “circle of Bohemians,” such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain, among others, were able to foster their talent as poets and writers.