Thelonious Monk performs at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, R.I., on July 5, 1963. (AP Photo)

Post your comments below

Jazz great Thelonious Monk had a genius for unusual and daring composition, for confounding and delighting the world. He did things with rhythm, melody and chords that had never quite been heard before.

Hip America swooned for his music and for his myth: the mystical, elusive “George Washington of bebop.” From the 1940s to the 1970s and beyond, the myth of Monk nearly overshadowed the man. But his music rolls on.

A new biography from Robin Kelley tells the story of the music and the man — of Coltrane and Chopin and genius and Monk.

This hour, On Point: a deep new look at the great jazzman Thelonious Monk.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Robin Kelley joins us from Los Angeles. Professor of history and American Studies at the University of Southern California, he’s the author of the new biography “Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.” You can read an excerpt here.

And from New York we’re joined by Matthew Shipp, jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. His previous albums include “One,” “Harmony and Abyss,” and “Equilibrium.” His forthcoming album, available this January, is “4d.” You can hear him playing and talking about piano jazz at NPR.org.

Here’s a list of the Monk songs featured during the hour:

“Blue Sphere”
“Introspection”
“‘Round Midnight”
“Evidence”
“Trinkle, Tinkle”
“Brilliant Corners”
“In Walked Bud”
“This is My Story, This is My Song”
“Jackie-Ing”
“Well, You Needn’t”

More links:

In this clip from the documentary “Straight No Chaser,” you can see Monk’s famous “dance” during a performance:

And here’s Monk playing his renowned composition “‘Round Midnight” in Norway in 1966:

Post your comments below

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, we know of only one work of fiction that’s made it to the presidential nightstand.

After the briefing books and security reports, President Obama has made it known, he’s been reading last year’s widely-praised “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill.

It’s a maximally multi-cultural tale of New York life after 9/11. Of a new century’s immigrants making their way. The president has called it wonderful.

This hour, On Point: “Netherland” author Joseph O’Neill — and James McBride, bestselling author of “The Color of Water” — on President Obama’s first read in the White House.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joseph O’Neill joins us in our studio. His novel “Netherland,” now out in paperback, was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the PEN/Faulkner award.  His other books include “This is the Life,” “The Breezes,” and “Blood-Dark Truck.”

You can read an excerpt from “Netherland” at RandomHouse.com.

And joining us from New York is James McBride. A writer and musician, his memoir “The Color of Water” was a national bestseller. His new book is “Song Yet Sung.” You can hear his On Point interview from last year.

Post your comments below

Colson Whitehead has been a blazing young star on the literary scene. Black, urbane, gifted, showered with honors: from “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days” to “The Colossus of New York” he’s made glittering waves.

His new novel, “Sag Harbor,” is the opposite of blazing. It’s about boys and warm, lazy days summering and coming of age on Long Island in the 1980’s.

But it’s not the stereotype. It’s black boys with beach houses, he writes. Sons of well-set parents. Scooping ice cream. Kicking back. Coming to terms with life and race.

This hour, On Point: Colson Whitehead and “Sag Harbor.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Colson Whitehead joins us from New York  His new novel is “Sag Harbor.” He’s the author of five previous novels, including “The Intuitionist,” “John Henry Days,” “The Colossus of New York,” and “Apex Hides the Hurt.”  He’s the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.

You can read an excerpt from “Sag Harbor” at RandomHouse.com.

More links:

Whitehead created this annotated map of Main Street Sag Harbor for The Wall Street Journal.

And here he is in a YouTube video walking around Sag Harbor, talking about the book and its backstory:

Tim Gautreaux

Post your comments below

Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux is the son of a tugboat captain, grandson of a riverboat captain — and author of a new novel set on the Mississippi that follows the steamboat not in Mark Twain’s day but in the rough and tumble, down and dirty age of the 1920s.

World War I is the backdrop. A kidnapping in New Orleans is the plot starter. And the themes are wide and deep as the river. Loss. Reparation. The pull of vengeance.

Jazz is new. Human nature is old. And the river rolls.

This hour, On Point: A different life on the Misissippi, and Tim Gautreaux’s “The Missing.”

You can join the conversation. Have you read Gautreaux? Do you know this river? These woods? The urge for vengeance?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Joining us from Hammond, Lousiana is Tim Gautreaux, novelist, short-story writer, and longtime teacher of creative writing. He’s a Louisiana native, and he’s now a writer in residence and professor emeritus at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and GQ, as well as the O. Henry and Best American Short Story collections. His third novel, “The Missing,” is just out.

Read an excerpt from “The Missing.”

More links:

There’s a good profile of Tim Gautreaux in the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. His new novel has been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.

For a sense of the steamboat era’s music pre-1930, Tim Gautreaux recommends Red Hot Jazz Archive. A music buff, he particularly likes the music of Fate Marable.

The music played before the breaks in today’s show, in order, is: Jelly-Roll Morton’s “Steamboat Stomp”; Fate Marable’s “Frankie and Johnny”; and King Oliver’s “New Orleans Shout.”

In the New Deal era, the Democrats owned the white working class. In the Civil Rights era, they lost them. Not all, of course, but enough to give Republicans win after big win.

This year, with economic challenges front and center again, the math could change. But in West Virginia and North Carolina, in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been dividing Democrats from within by race and class.

Can this party get over it?

This hour, On Point: race and class in the Democratic Party, after the Clinton-Obama battle.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Johanna Neuman, reporter for The Los Angeles Times.

Anna Greenberg, pollster and senior vice president at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic strategy and consulting firm.

Wilbur Rich, professor of political science at Wellesley College and author of “African American Perspectives on the Political Science Discipline.”

Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University and author of the forthcoming book “The Engaged Public.”

“He does not speak for me,” says Barack Obama, of his former Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But Jeremiah Wright keeps speaking anyway.

After weeks of lying low, in the past week Rev. Wright has been all over: with Bill Moyers Friday night, preaching in Dallas and speaking before the NAACP on Sunday, taking questions at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday.

Wright says he is defending the black church. Critics say he’s undercutting the campaign of the first black American with a real shot at the White House.

This hour, On Point: listening to Rev. Wright.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Peter Nicholas, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he covered Jeremiah Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club.

Jonathan Walton, an ordained minister, professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside, and author of the forthcoming book “Watch This! Televangelism and Black Popular Culture.”

Bill Leonard, dean of the Divinity School and professor of church history at Wake Forest University.

Barack Obama’s age of innocence has surely passed, in this long, hard season of campaigning. And now his very candidacy may hang on whether the American people saw him yesterday rising to a higher, wiser plane.

At a podium in Philadelphia, Obama took straight on the issue he has tried to sail above: Race in America. His own black spiritual mentor. His own white grandmother. Their strengths and failings and love and anger — and the nation’s.

This hour, On Point: A moment for the history books. Barack Obama and race in America.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, former mayor of Atlanta and U.S. congressman, and co-chairman of Good Works International.

Anna Deavere Smith, playwright and professor at NYU Law School and the Tisch School for the Arts.

Whit Ayres, Republican pollster and president of Ayres, McHenry & Associates.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

The prophetic and gospel messages of the Bible are pretty tough on worldly power and wealth and violence. From the Chicago pulpit of Barack Obama’s longtime minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in the cadence and language of the black church, those messages sound like hellfire for a very worldly American superpower.

Now the preacher is retired and Obama has condemned his most fiery proclamations. But when Reverend Wright meets mainstream America on YouTube and Fox News, in the middle of a red-hot campaign, you’ve got fireworks.

This hour, On Point: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the American presidency.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lisa Miller, senior editor at Newsweek. She oversees all of the magazine’s religion coverage and writes the Belief Watch column.

Dwight Hopkins, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a member of Barack Obama’s congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ.

Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for Time magazine.

Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist for The Chicago Tribune.

“Faith doesn’t just influence me,” Mike Huckabee told evangelicals last week. “It defines me.” And then he lost in South Carolina to John McCain.

In Nevada, labor lined up for Barack Obama, then Clinton took the vote. And Latinos carved their own way over political and color lines.

These are big players, speaking for the first time in the weekend’s big votes.

This hour, On Point: voices of Christian conservatism, labor and the Latino West, and their choices in campaign ‘08.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Earl Black, professor of political science at Rice University and co-author of “The Rise of Southern Republicans” and the new book, “Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics.”

Oran Smith, president of the Palmetto Family Council, the South Carolina affiliate of Focus on the Family.

Anjeanette Damon, chief political reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, she writes the blog “Inside Nevada Politics.”

Hilary Haycock, spokesperson of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 17,500 health care and public service employees across Nevada.

Mo Denis, second term assemblyman representing Nevada’s 28th District, in northeast Las Vegas, the largest Hispanic assembly district in the state, representing roughly 60,000 people.

What a backslide. In the thick of one of the most exciting, boundary-breaking presidential campaigns in history, with a woman and an African-American out front in the Democratic Party, suddenly it sounds like a junior race war out there.

Candidates and surrogates are lobbing taunts and jibes. Bull Connor and LBJ are back from the pages of time.

Obama seemed to transcend race. Clinton seemed like the last one to play the card. But, ready or not, here we are.

This hour, On Point: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the American people — and race in the ‘08 campaign.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Randall Kennedy, professor of law at Harvard University and author of the new book “Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal.”

Laura Washington, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and senior editor at In These Times.

David Greenberg, professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University and author of “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image,” he is at work on a history of spin in 20th-century presidential politics.

Nobel Laureate James Watson set off a fury when he questioned whether Africans have the same intelligence as Caucasians.

So did journalist William Saletan, who defended Watson in a recent three-part series on race and IQ for Slate magazine, and highlighted research championed by white supremacists.

Saletan has apologized. But discomforting questions remain in the air.

We’ve invited three authorities in the field to help us understand what the science does — and does not — tell us, and hear why they believe all brains are created equal.

This hour, On Point: a scientific look at race and IQ.

-James Hattori

Guests:

Richard Nisbett, Professor of Psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program at the University of Michigan. He wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times titled “All Brains Are the Same Color.”

James Flynn, Professor Emeritus of Political Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is best known for discovering the Flynn Effect — the rise in IQ test scores over time around the world. He is author of the new book “What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect.”

Eric Turkheimer, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia. He completed a major study in 2003 looking at class and IQ.

It was the Double O Express, as Oprah Winfrey pumped up crowds for Barack Obama on Saturday from Iowa to South Carolina to New Hampshire.

For Hillary Clinton, the sight of Oprah and Obama drives home one of the great surprises — and ironies — of this historic campaign: that the first woman with a real shot at the presidency is running neck and neck with a man whose feminist appeal may be as strong as her own.

What do Democratic women want? It could be the deciding question of ‘08.

This hour, On Point: the gender vote up for grabs.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Anne Kornblut, she has been following the campaign for the Washington Post.

Ellen Goodman, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist at the Boston Globe.

Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University and columnist for The Nation magazine. She has written extensively on gender and race.

Jennifer Lawless, professor of political science, Brown University. She is author of “It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office.” She was a Congressional candidate in 2006.

Country singer Merle Haggard once said he thinks Ronald Reagan should be up on Mount Rushmore. Merle Haggard and a lot of other white American males.

Since Reagan marched on the White House with his “stand tall” message, white men have been the go-to backbone of GOP election victories — and the Democrats’ Achilles heal.

In ‘08, they may be exactly that again. But Merle Haggard is going the other way, back to Democrat land. He says the GOP hasn’t delivered for the guys he sings for.

Up next, On Point: we’ll talk to Merle Haggard and Politico.com’s David Paul Kuhn about American politics and white men.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Merle Haggard, American country music singer, guitarist, and songwriter.

David Paul Kuhn, senior political writer for Politico.com, former chief political writer for CBS News, and author of the new book, “The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Post your comments below

When John Hope Franklin was six-years-old in rural Oklahoma, a white railway conductor literally threw this very young black American, and his mother, off the train — when they had the temerity to sit in a whites-only car. That was eighty-four years ago.

Now John Hope Franklin is ninety, and one of the country’s most celebrated historians of the experience of race in America. He has known the country’s highest honors, and its deepest indignities. He wrote the book that dispelled the notion of slavery-loving slaves.

Now John Hope Franklin’s looking with a knowing eye on the challenges of a new century. Hear a conversation with him about history, race, and America now.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

John Hope Franklin, author of “Mirror to America: The Autiobiography of John Hope Franklin.”

David Blight, professor of American History at Yale University.