Memoirs & Biographies

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Holly George-Warren, author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry published by Oxford University Press.

Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, and a frequent commentator on Western films, music, and fashion.  A contributor to more then 40 books on popular music, she is the author of Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West and co-author of How The West Was Worn: A History of Western Wear.  She is also the author of the children's books Honky-Tonk-Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music and Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll.

Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, and many other publications.  Beginning in Fall 2006, she will be Adjunct Professor of Journalism at NUNY-Paltz.  Visit her website.

Read the Gene Autry cowboy code

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution published by W.W. Norton.

David Quammen is the author of The Song of the Dodo and Monster of God, is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, most recently for a National Geographic story on Darwin.  He has also written for Harpers, Rolling Stone and New York Times Book Review.  He wrote a column, called Natural Acts for Outside magazine for fifteen years (for which he won two National Magazine Awards.) Quannen lives in Bozeman, Montana.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Professor Arnold Rampersad, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography published by Knopf.

Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and is a member of the Department of English at Stanford University.

His books include The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. DuBois (1976); The Life of Langston Hughes (2 vols., 1986, 1988); Days of Grace: A Memoir (1993), co-authored with Arthur Ashe; and Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997). In addition, he has edited several volumes including Collected Poems of Langston Hughes; the Library of America edition (2 vols.) of works by Richard Wright, with revised individual editions of Native Son and Black Boy; and (as co-editor with Deborah McDowell) Slavery and the Literary Imagination. He was also co-editor, with Shelley Fisher Fishkin, of the Race and American Culture book series published by Oxford University Press

From1991 to 1996, he held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Visit his webpage.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Pagan Kennedy, author of The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution published by Bloomsbury.

Pagan Kennedy has published eight books. Her biography, Black Livingstone was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel Spinsters was short listed for the Orange Prize and won the Barnes and Nobles Discover Award. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, and the Village Voice among others. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.  Visit her website.

 

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. John Higgs, author of I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary published by Barricade Books.

John Higgs has spent 10 years writing and producing in a wide range of media, making him the only man who can boast of producing both a long running series for BBC Radio 4 and a best selling videogame for the PlayStation 2.

He created the innovative historical and geographical quiz show X Marks The Spot for BBC Radio 4. The series has now been running for eight years. Videogames that he has produced include Crash and Burn, and ATV: Quad Power Racing 2, which has sold over three quarters of a million copies.

In between these very different endevours he has worked extensively in television and animation, writing and producing programmes including Audrey & Friends, Pen Monkeys, and TooMuch TV, for which he earned a Best Children's Entertainment Programme BAFTA nomination. He has written for publications including The Guardian, The Independent and Mojo, and is a judge in two categories for the BAFTA Games Awards. He has a degree in Computer Science.

He lives in Brighton with his partner and two children. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney interviews Dr. Daniel Burston, author of Erik Erikson and the American Psyche: Ego, Ethics and Evolution published by Jason Aronson.

Daniel Burston, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology who holds doctorates in Psychology (1989) and in Social and Political Thought (1985) from York University in Toronto. Dr. Burston is chair of the psychology department at Duqusense Univeristy. He is also an Associate of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Advisory Board of Janus Head, and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Society for Eistential Analysis.

 His books have been reviewed in numerous journals and newspapers, including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Boston Sunday Globe, The Boston Book Review, the New Republic, and the Washington Times.  Visit his webpage

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Deborah Blum, M.A., author of Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death published by Penguin Press.

Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin.  She worked as a newpaper science writer for fifteen years, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her writing about Primate research, which she turned into the Monkey Wars.  Her other books include Sex on the Brain and Love At Goon Park.  She has written about scientific research for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Discover, Health, Psychology Today, and Mother Jones. She lives in Madison Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, and a very large boxer.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews , Dr. Thomas Cottle, author of When The Music Stopped: Discovering My Mother published by State University of New York Press.

A sociologist and licensed clinical psychologist, Thomas J. Cottle is Professor of Education at Boston University. He received his BA degree from Harvard University, his MA and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Chicago, and an LHD degree from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. He did post-doctorate clinical training at The Children's Hospital, Boston and Tavistock Clinic and Anna Freud Clinic in London.

Some of his recently published books include A Sense of Self: The Work of Affirmation; Hardest Times: The Trauma of Long Term Unemployment; At Peril: Stories of Injustice; Mind Fields: and Adolescent Consciousness in a Culture of Distraction. His essays have appeared in professional sociology, education, psychology, literary, and religious journals, as well as major newspapers and periodicals. Visit his website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood published by Ballentine Books.

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, author, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator who writes for children as well as adults. Among her award-winning books are Journey of the Pink Dolphins, Spell of the Tiger, and Search for the Golden Moon Bear.

She has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon; and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire; bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica; undressed by an orangutan in Borneo; and hunted by a tiger in India. She also worked in a pit crawling with eighteen thousand snakes in Manitoba; handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana; and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon. She lives in New Hampshire. Visit her website.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, co-authors of Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Nobert Wiener, The Father of Cybernetics published by Basic Books.

As authors, Flo Conway and Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change and Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives.

Flo Conway graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in journalism.  She earned her master's degree and was advanced to doctoral candidacy at the University of Oregon, where she pioneered the first interdisciplinary program in communication. Jim Siegelman graduated with honors in philosophy from Harvard, where he also served as president of the Harvard Lampoon. He conducted graduate study in philosophy, linguistics, and semiotics as recipient of the Fiske Fellowship to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Conway and Siegelma's writings on many timely topics has kept them at the fore of the media. They have appeared on Good Morning America,the Today show, TheTonight Show,Prime Time Live,20/20,48 Hours,NBC Nightly News,CNN Late Edition, Larry King,and more than 300 radio and television programs inthe U.S., Canada and Europe. They have lectured at more than 40 colleges anduniversities, where their books have long been required texts, and addressed numerous professional associations, mainline religious denominations, and civic organizations. Articles by or about them have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Science Digest and many other periodicals.  Visit their website.

Share your comments about the book and interview on the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Mr. Jack El-Hai, author of The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest To Rid the World Of Mental Illness, published by Wiley.

Jack El-Hai is a widely published writer of nonfiction who has contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, American Heritage, The Washington Post Magazine, the History Channel Magazine and many other publications. El-Hai has has began a collaboration with the American Experience history series to produced a television documentary based on the book, The Lobotomist. It is scheduled for broadcast in the fall of 2008.

El-Hais has been awarded the Annual Book Award of the Medical Journalists Association of the United Kingdom, the Minnesota Book Award of the Minnesota Humanities Commission, and the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism. He has also received a McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Creative Prose and grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Center for Arts Criticism.

Currently serving as President of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, El-Hai has taught at the University of Minnesota, the Loft Literary Center, and the Minnesota Historical Society. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Ann Aronson, and their two daughters.  Visit his website.

Share your comments on the book and the interview on the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Dale Peterson, author of Jane Goodall, The Woman Who Redefined Man published by Houghton Mifflin. 

Dale Peterson, Ph.D. is the coauthor with Jane Goodall of Visions of Caliban ( a New York Times Notable Book) and the editor of her two books of letters, Africa In My Blood and Beyond Innocence. His other books include Storyville USA, Eating Apes, and (with Richard Wrangham) Demonic Males. They have been distinguished as an Economist Best Book, A Discover Top Science Book,  a Bloomsbury Review Editor's Favorite, a Village Voice Best Book, and a finalist for the Pen New England Award and the Sir Peter Kent Conservation Book Prize in England.  He resides in Massachusetts.  Visit the Jane Goodall Institute website.

Share your comments on the book and interview on  the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Thomas Blass, author of The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram  published by Basic Books.

Thomas Blass, PhD., is an internationally recognized expert on obedience to authority and on the research and legacy of Stanley Milgram.
After receiving his B.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in social psychology from Yeshiva University, Dr. Blass held research postions at the University of Maryland Psychiatric Institute, Shappard-Pratt Hospital, and Downsate Medical Center. For most of his career he has been at the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is currently Professor of Psychology.

In addition to his interests in obedience and the work of Stanley Milgram, Dr. Blass has researched a variety of topics over the years, including tactics of social influence, attitutional, and other self-report measures relevant to social behavior, and psychological perspectives on the Holocaust. Visit his website.

Share your comments about the book and interview on the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Deborah Blum M.A., author of Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, which was a finalist for the 2002 Los Angeles Book Prize. Her most recent book is Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. In addition, she is  co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers which was released in its second edition in 2005 and The Monkey Wars (Oxford, 1994), a Library Journal best book of the year in Science and Technology; Sex on the Brain (Viking, 1997), a New York Times Notable Book.

She was a staff writer for five newspapers and won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of primate research in 1992 while a science writer at The Sacramento Bee. She has also written for The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous magazines, from Discover to The Utne Reader. She is a former president of the National Association of Science writers and currently sits on the Board of Life Sciences of the National Research Council and the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Visit Deborah Blum's web page.

Share your comments on the book and interview on the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog.

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney  interviews Dr. Daniel Burston, author of  The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R.D. Laing  and The Crucible of Experience: R. D. Laing and the Crisis of Psychotherapy

Daniel Burston, PhD is an Associate Professor of psychology who holds doctorates in Psychology (1989) and in Social and Political Thought (1985) from York University in Toronto.  Dr. Burston is Chair of the psychology department at Duqusense University.  He is also an Associate of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and on the Advisory Board of the C. J. Jung Analyst Training Program of Pittsburg, the Advisory Board of Janus Head, and the Editorial Board of the Jornal of the Society for Eistential Analysis.  His books have been reviewed in numerous journals and newspapers, including The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Times.  Visit his webpage.

Share your comments on Dr. Burston's books and the interview on the Psychjourney Audio Book Club blog.

Dr. John Riolo, interviews Joshua Wolf Shenk about his book, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged A President and Fueled His Greatness

 Based on seven years of research on Lincoln and the medical, intellectual, and political culture around him, Lincolns Melancholy reflects Shenks longstanding interests in mental health, psychology, and spirituality in contemporary life.

Visit the Psychjourney Audio Book Club website.