Your Results For Contemporary Issues...
- Aslan, Reza
An internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, Dr. Reza Aslan has garnered much critical praise for his work on Islam and the west. In his book How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, as renowned author Jon Meacham notes, "it is Aslan's great gift to see things clearly, and to say them clearly, and in this important new work he offers us a way forward."
Aslan’s first book was the New York Times Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award in the UK, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction. In 2010, Norton will publish his edited anthology, Words Without Borders: Writings from the Middle East.
Dr. Aslan is co-founder of BoomGen Studios, the first ever motion-picture company focused entirely on entertainment about the greater Middle East and its diaspora communities, as well as editorial executive of Mecca.com. A contributing editor at the Daily Beast, he holds degrees in religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. Sponsored by Kay and Don Gardner.- Thompson-Cannino, Jennifer and Cotton, Ronald
Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken--but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.
Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face--and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. In Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, Jennifer and Ronald unfold the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness. The authors received the 2008 Soros Justice Media Fellowship for Picking Cotton. Thompson-Cannino speaks frequently about the need for judicial reform, and is a member of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission, the advisory committee for Active Voices, and the Constitution Project. Her op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Durham-Herald Sun, and the Tallahassee Democrat. Ronald Cotton has spoken at various schools and conferences including Washington and Lee University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Georgetown Law School, and the Community March for Justice for Troy Anthony Davis in Savannah.
Sponsored by
- Peters, Gretchen
Gretchen Peters’ Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaedadetails how 70 percent of the Taliban’s funding comes from the drug trade. In a time when America's policies in Afghanistan are central to defeating our enemies, Peters offers solutions based on changing that war-ravaged country's economy.
Gretchen Peters has covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade, first for The Associated Press and later as a reporter for ABC News. Peters was nominated for an Emmy for her coverage of the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and she won the SAJA Journalism Award for a Nightline segment on the former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. She has worked with leading media outlets including The National Geographic Society, The Christian Science MonitorandThe New Republic, and she has been a commentator on NPR and CNN. She now lives in the US with her husband, Robert Capa Gold Medal-winning photographer John Moore, and their two children. In fall 2009, she entered the Josef Korbel School of International Studies to pursue a master’s degree in Homeland Securities and Criminal Justice.
Sponsored by Mike and Norma Powers- Perry-Mason, Gail
Detroiter Gail Perry-Mason is well known in the securities industry, where she has climbed the corporate ladder from receptionist to Senior Director-Investments of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. She founded and directed the first Youth Investment Club through the NAIC, along with the original money camp for teens called Money Matters. This program has instructed over 5,000 youth, both in Detroit and nationally. Gail writes for national magazines and has co-authored a national bestseller, Girl, Make Your Money Grow!
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- Blackmon, Douglas
Over the past 20 years, Douglas A. Blackmon has written extensively about the American quandary of race, exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and, repeatedly, the dilemma of how a contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past. Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.
In 2000, the National Association of Black Journalists recognized Blackmon's stories revealing the secret role of J.P. Morgan & Co. during the 1960s in funneling funds between a wealthy northern white supremacist and segregationists fighting the Civil Rights Movement in the South. A year later, he revealed in The Journal how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century, an article which led to his first book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Slavery By Another Name, which broadly examines how a form of neoslavery thrived in the U.S. long after legal abolition.
As The Wall Street Journal's bureau chief in Atlanta, he manages the paper's coverage of airlines and other major transportation companies and publicly traded companies and institutions based in the southeastern U.S. The bureau directly covers the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and more than 1,200 companies, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Bank of America, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, United Parcel Service and FedEx. The Journal staff in Atlanta also writes about key news and issues in the 11-state region, including race, immigration, poverty, politics and, in recent years, global warming and hurricanes.
Blackmon's stories or the work of his team have been widely acclaimed, including for coverage of the subprime meltdown, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Florida hurricanes in 2004 and for his 2001 examination of slave labor in the 20th century. His article on U.S. Steel was included in the 2003 edition of Best Business Stories. The Journal's coverage of Hurricane Katrina received a special National Headliner award in 2006.
Blackmon joined the Journal in October 1995 as a reporter in Atlanta. Prior to joining the Journal, Blackmon was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered race and politics, and special assignments including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Previously, he was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, managing editor of the Daily Record in Little Rock, Ark, and a writer for weekly newspapers.
Blackmon penned his first newspaper story at the age of 12, for the Progress, in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi. He graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., and lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.
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- Rawlings, Dr. William
William Rawlings was born, raised and lives in Sandersville, Georgia, home to his family for more than two centuries. In addition to his five novels in print, including his latest, The Mile High Club, he is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, writing on a wide variety of topics ranging from humor to history. One consistent theme in his writing is a well-defined sense of place, especially in relation to the landscape of rural Georgia. Rawlings states, "One of life's greatest pageants is the continuity of life in small Southern towns. Characters wander in and out, plying their intrigues and playing their roles, both major and minor. There's hardly a need for fiction, as the truth is oftentimes more bizarre. What more inspiration could a writer ask for?"
Sponsored by Heyward and Patty Gignilliat.
