The Art of Conversation

Recalling his role in the World War II sorties of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen. General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. describes it as a second front in the black aviators' war for dignity. In contrast to his bold decision-making as Secretary of Defense in the 1960s, Robert McNamara looks back on that era with regret, especially the misguided policies he had advanced during the Vietnam War. These are but two of the candid, deeply personal revelations in this collection of conversations from "dialogue," a weekly radio and television series from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. "dialogue" is broadcast by about 150 U.S. radio stations, the MHz WORLDVIEW channel and MHz NETWORKS, National Public Radio Worldwide, the Armed Forces Radio Network, and the ichannel in Canada, reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers worldwide. Whether the guests are celebrities like Lee Hamilton, Bill Bradley, or Shelby Foote, or lesser-known scholars, poets, diplomats, officials, and authors, the conversations are uniformly gripping and thoughtful. Presented as "conversations about ideas," the broad range of topics is emblematic of the scope of human endeavor in the arts, sciences, history, and culture. The twenty-four interviews selected for The Art of Conversation are favorites from among the 900 broadcast over the past twenty years. Guided by host George Liston Seay, the guests consistently display, he says, "the joy of people who take each other seriously." In solid, plainspoken fashion they demonstrate that there is an art of conversation and that even in this fragmented video age, it still flourishes.