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Jack Beatty

Jack Beatty is On Point’s news analyst and a longtime senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly. He joined The Atlantic in September of 1983, having previously worked as a book reviewer at Newsweek and as the literary editor of The New Republic.

Beatty is the author of “The Rascal King” (1992), a biography of the legendary Boston mayor James Michael Curly that was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; “The World According to Peter Drucker” (1998), an intellectual biography of the social thinker and management theorist; and “Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900″ (2007), a thematic history of the Gilded Age. In addition, he is the editor of “Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America” (2001), an anthology of readings on the history of the American corporation named by Business Week as one of the Ten Best Business Books of the year.

He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, an Olive Branch Award from New York University, a William Allen White Award for criticism from the University of Kansas, and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Born and raised in Boston, Beatty now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.

On Point Today
Hour 2
The Christmas Revels
Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Christmas Revels

The Christmas Revels invade our studio for old Wessex carols, a Somerset Wassail, and Thomas Hardy’s “Under the Greenwood Tree.”

Comments [1]
 
Hour 1
Hope in Hard Times
Wednesday, December 24, 2008 hope1

Theologian Martin Marty and physician Jerome Groopman join us for a conversation about hope in turbulent times — where we find it, and how we hold on.

Comments [14]

Recent Shows
Cures, Quacks, and Medicine Men
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 Frontier Medicine

A new look at frontier medicine, and the wildest tonics of the old Wild West.

Comments [11]
 
Caroline Kennedy’s Senate Bid
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, listens to a reporter's question during a news conference at City Hall in Buffalo, N.Y. on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008. Kennedy is campaigning for the open Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.  (AP Photo/Don Heupel)

Caroline Kennedy reaches for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. We look at the politics, the history, at Caroline, and the national mythology, all in play.

Comments [29]
On Point Blog
Here, for the holidays…
By Eileen Imada

One of the great pleasures of directing On Point is that I hear just about every show we produce. And around the holidays, I listen back to some of our best shows to rebroadcast while the staff takes a well-deserved break. This year we’ve reached deep into our archives for some gems of the past [...]

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Canon Wars, Cont.
By John Wihbey

Jay Parini, Middlebury College professor and jack-of-all-literary trades, makes the case in our second hour today for America’s thirteen “representative” books in his new tome “The Promised Land.” Of course, the idea of a great list or “canon” of hallowed must-reads is a controversial one, having its roots in now age-old academic wars. It’s fraught with huge [...]

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How Much to Pay the College Prez?
By John Wihbey

Today’s second hour looks at how the financial crisis is hitting higher education. And as belts tighten, it’s perhaps inevitable that executive compensation – the big payouts to people at the top – will come under scrutiny in academia as it has on Wall Street and in Detroit. In fact, officials at Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University [...]

More » | Comments [5]