Bedrosian Bookclub Podcast
130 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★ - 29 ratingsAn audio book club. Our geeks read and discuss new and classic works in the policy field – fictional and non. Social justice, tech, politics, policy … we cover it all and more. Let's think about what is at the heart of being a citizen in America. This book club helps us get at the heart of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.
Sponsored by the USC Bedrosian Center
http://bedrosian.usc.edu/
Recorded at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy
http://priceschool.usc.edu
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Episodes
Career of Evil
July 29, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 101 MBWhat is a summer book club without a good detective novel? Our conversation today dives into Robert Galbraith's third installment of the Cormoran Strike novels, Career of Evil. Today's host is convinced that Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) might have the best descriptions of the complexity of London since Dickens! Host Richard Green is joined by Lisa Schweitzer and Aubrey Hicks. Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at bedrosian.bookclub@...
The Model Thinker
July 17, 2019 21:37 - 1 hour - 106 MBIf models of the world are all wrong, why are they critical to understanding our complex world? Today, host Pamela Clouser McCann discusses the book The Model Thinker with guests Jeffery A. Jenkins and James Lo. For links to some of the things we discuss, check out the showpage! Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].
Commander in Cheat
June 27, 2019 16:37 - 1 hour - 121 MBCan the way a person plays golf really explain their whole personality? Famed golf writer Rick Reilly aims to make the case in Commander in Cheat. Detailing with excruciating detail and humor the myriad of ways President Trump cheats in the golf world. Does Reilly make the case for using golf as a metaphor for President Trump's governance? Listen as we hash that out. Host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Anthony W. Orlando, David Sloane, and Richard Green. Join the conversation about each ...
Whereas
June 19, 2019 21:26 - 1 hour - 126 MBLayli Long Soldier is the author of our book for June 2019, Whereas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award, and finalist for the National Book Award. She is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Whereas in response to an "apology" to Native Americans which was buried in a department of defense appropriations bill during the Obama administration. It is a stunning use of language to build and re-build America, the land of the Plains Indians as o...
Who Fears Death
May 24, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 135 MBIn today's episode, we discuss Nnedi Okorafor's Afrofuturist novel Who Fears Death. A young woman, named Onyesonwu meaning Who Fears Death learns she is a child of rape, deals with being an outcast, and after a trauma finds out she has special powers. She learns she is at the center of a prophecy that could change the world. We discuss some themes of the book: gender, friendship, love, hatred, violence, nature, the desert, cities, and life during and after genocide. Joining host Aubrey...
White Fragility
April 26, 2019 16:50 - 1 hour - 118 MBHost Aubrey Hicks is joined by professors Chris Redfearn and Liz Falletta in a discussion of the New York Times bestselling book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. On today's podcast, we talk about how white fragility works to sustain and reproduce the racist institutions & socialization which we all inherited. Scheduling in the Spring semester is always hard. We decided to go ahead with a three white person panel for this particular book. We hope to model the kinds of conversations we ...
State of Resistance
April 05, 2019 20:50 - 40 minutes - 56 MBState of Resistance: What California's Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America's Future by Manuel Pastor Another bonus episode! Host Lisa discusses Professor Manuel Pastor's latest book, State of Resistance. The book looks at the last several decades of economic, social, and environmental transformations in California. Pastor then looks to the future to ask what these transformations can predict for the larger United States. Warnings: spoilers Read along with us...
An Unkindness of Ghosts
March 21, 2019 23:43 - 1 hour - 90.6 MBAn Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon This month, host Lisa is joined by David Sloane, Denise McIver, and Aubrey Hicks to discuss An Unkindness of Ghosts, the science fiction novel about a young neuroatypical woman on a generation ship in search of the "promised land" looking for evidence her mother had discovered something important about the ship and its journey. We talk about slave allegories, generation ships, spatial hierarchies, gender, autism ... so much to talk about with th...
Body Horror
February 21, 2019 00:18 - 1 hour - 115 MBBody Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes by Anne Elizabeth Moore This month, Lisa is joined by Marisa Turesky, Chris Redfearn, and Aubrey Hicks to discuss Body Horror, a book of essays on the interaction between the abnormal, frail, resilient, squishy bodies of women and the world, from journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore. Warnings: spoilers, cursing, & triggers. Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter. Our March read: An Un...
Antigone
January 28, 2019 14:00 - 1 hour - 107 MBby Sophocles, Paul Woodruff (Translator) This month, Lisa is joined by Carla Della Gatta and Richard Green to discuss the timeless play by Sophocles: Antigone. The play has clear connections to political struggles we face thousands of years later. The struggle between law and norm, the struggle to define what the state can control, and more. Listen as our three scholars discuss the necessity of reading Antigone today. Read along for next month: Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misog...
The Real Fake: Authenticity and the Production of Space
January 18, 2019 17:11 - 40 minutes - 56.4 MBUsing the case of Thames Town, an English-like village in Shanghai, The Real Fake looks at Chinese ideas of spacial construction and what authenticity means in (re)making spaces. In today's episode, host Lisa Schweitzer talks with the author of the new book The Real Fake: Authenticity and the Production of Space, Maria Francesca Piazzoni. Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter. Lisa on Twitter: @drschweitzer For more on the Book...
Fear: Trump in the White House
December 19, 2018 14:00 - 1 hour - 112 MBThis month, Lisa is joined by Anthony Orlando, Jeff Jenkins, and Christian Grose to discuss Bob Woodward's latest reportage on the Presidency: Fear. How does this stack up to other Woodward titles and how does the principal-agent theory work it's way into conversation with these political junkies? For links to some of the things we discus, check out the showpage: bedrosian.usc.edu/bookclub/fear What we’re reading: Anthony : Heirs of the Founders by H.W. Brands Jeff : The Odessa File b...
Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds
December 14, 2018 21:26 - 44 minutes - 61.6 MBOne of the larger problems for government, is that taking risks is difficult. Risks are expensive, and can lead to a host of problems when those risks don't give desired results. Here's where social innovation is taking a chance. In the UK you have pay for results programs, called pay for success here in the states. How do these programs work? Who takes on the economic risk? How do we measure success? Can pay for success and social impact bonds help solve some of the wicked problems? Ho...
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
November 26, 2018 14:00 - 1 hour - 93.1 MBThis month, Lisa, Richard, and Aubrey discuss the new book of sonnets from Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin. Hayes' sonnets are "acrid with tear gas, and they unravel with desire." For the poetry doubters everywhere. Read along for next month : Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward You can email us at [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter. Please like the Bedrosian Bookclub on Facebook. Check out the showpage for what we're reading a...
The Death of Truth
November 20, 2018 23:14 - 1 hour - 114 MBThis month, Aubrey, Ange-Marie, Jeff, and David discuss the new book from renowned literary critic Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth : Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. Or, perhaps ... death by a thousand "realities." Read along for next month : Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward Find what we're reading and more on the showpage. You can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was produced by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz. Sound production by the...
Bless Me, Ultima
October 26, 2018 00:23 - 1 hour - 101 MBOur new tradition, on the Bedrosian Bookclub, is to read a witchy book for the month of October. This year ... We're taking a look at the coming of age novel, Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. This is the story of Antonio Marez, a six year old boy caught between his Father's love of travel, his mother's desire he become a priest, the town (modernity), and the farmland of the llano (tradition). Then a magical elder, a curandera (a healer who uses herbs and magic) comes to live with the f...
Planning for AuthentiCITIES
October 01, 2018 20:14 - 34 minutes - 48.5 MBWhat is authenticity in a community? What is an authentic community? In a world which never stops changing, growing, evolving ... how can planners take up the challenge of authenticity? Host Lisa Schweitzer talks with editors Brettany Shannon and Laura Tate of the new book Planning for AuthentiCITIES about the challenge and how to move toward inclusive and democratic communities. We're reading American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes for next month! Read along...
Down Girl
September 24, 2018 13:00 - 1 hour - 103 MBUsing contemporary examples, Kate Manne's Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, explores the definitions of misogyny and its contrast with sexism. The book is a philosophical examination of misogyny as the policing of the patriarchal state, serving to punish women who might step out of the assigned giver role. An important read, it is also not a book for the faint of heart, as David Sloane says this is a dispirited look into the state of misogyny in the US (and the author's native Australia). ...
Women & Power
August 27, 2018 22:26 - 1 hour - 105 MBIn 2017 two lectures presented in the London Review of Books’ Winter Lecture series were published together in Mary Beard’s Women & Power. The first lecture put into context the idea and resonance of women’s public voice, with the second lecture focusing on power. Host Lisa Schweitzer, joined by Aubrey L. Hicks and Pamela Clouser McCann discuss these two lectures, their experiences as women in the academy, as well as the state of women in institutions of power today.
This Is How It Ends
July 30, 2018 16:18 - 1 hour - 140 MBEva Dolan's This Is How It Ends is a thriller set in an anti-gentrification activist community in the middle of a rapidly gentrifying London. Dolan tackles the huge issue of gentrification through the story of two women engaged in the anti-gentrification movement. How do we define ourselves in places? How do we protect the self in social media, public, activist movements? In today’s episode, we marvel at Dolan's ability to mirror the gentrification fight with the relationship between you...
Draft No. 4
June 25, 2018 13:00 - 1 hour - 85.3 MBAnyone who reads or watches the news might feel like we are in a news assault. The news happens so fast, technology helps us disseminate and consume with speed, and media outlets are in a relatively new competition: a competition for relevancy. As “papers of record” are being attacked as “fake,” the question of how to communicate with fairness about important issues has never been more relevant. John McPhee has had a long, storied career in writing for magazines “of record” using in-depth ...
The Myth of Independence
May 29, 2018 13:00 - 1 hour - 92.5 MBCongressional historian Sarah Binder joins neighbor and investment manager, Mark Spindel in a look at the history of the relationship between the Federal Reserve and its legislative parent, Congress. The result is the Princeton University Press book The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve. Central to the book is the notion that the two institutions are interdependent rather than independent. The authors advocate that through legislation over the years, Congress h...
Bonus - Interview with E. Glen Weyl
May 08, 2018 22:19 - 31 minutes - 43.6 MBSpecial bonus track! An interview with one of the co-authors of Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, E. Glen Weyl. (Follow Glen on Twitter: @glenweyl) As part of a nationwide book tour for this new book, full of radical ideas, Glen stopped by USC for a book talk to some of our Econ, PoliSci, and Public Policy students, faculty, and staff. While here in sunny SoCal, Glen was also gracious enough to spend some time with our Executive Director, Aubrey Hick...
Radical Markets
May 08, 2018 22:17 - 1 hour - 115 MBIn Radical Markets, Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl envision new rules for markets in order to limit the tyranny of monopolies and majority rule. Their aim, with 5 revolutionary ideas to cure what they see as the most important issue of our time: inequality. What are some of these "radical" ideas, and does our panel think they are the revolutionary ideas we need? Host Jeffery Jenkins (@jaj7d) is joined by guests Aubrey Hicks (@AubreyHi), Matthew Kahn (@mattkahn1966 ), and Anthony Orlan...
Kindred
April 30, 2018 20:03 - 1 hour - 88.2 MBDana, a black woman living in 1976 Los Angeles and protagonist of Octavia Butler's Kindred, must confront the violent acts that begin her direct familial line. She is drawn back in time again and again to save one Rufus Weylin from death. Rufus turns out to be the white slave owner who will eventually (if he lives) become Dan's own great, great, great, grandfather. Dana must choose to save this terrible man in order to both protect the many generations of her own family, her self. How does...
Ender's Game
March 23, 2018 19:04 - 1 hour - 107 MBIn Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card is a dystopian novel looking at how adults groom manipulate, and use Ender Wiggin to wage war on an alien race. From the time he was a toddler, Ender is monitored by an organization to determine if he is eligible for Battle School. Six year old Ender is shipped off to military training with other precocious children. Soon Ender's life is one constant war game, against other squads, all the other children, the teachers ... and ultimately the aliens. Do t...
Killers of the Flower Moon
February 27, 2018 00:01 - 1 hour - 105 MBIn Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann brings readers back to Osage County Oklahoma in the 1920s. After discovering oil, members of the Osage U.S. state/federal governments, the money was often held in guardianship for tribe members. Soon, the Osage were found murdered, or killed under mysterious circumstances. What followed is a tale of greed and corruption at multiple levels. Who were the heroes of this story? How did Hoover use these murders to create a narrative to bolster the FBI...
Ursula K. Le Guin and the Walk Away from Omelas
February 06, 2018 18:36 - 46 minutes - 64.1 MBThe world lost one of the greats on Monday, January 22nd. Ursula K. Le Guin passed away at the age of 88 and left a hole in many hearts around the world. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." We use this short, short story as a jumping off point to discuss our mutual love of Ursula K. Le Guin, science fiction/fantasy, and how reading shaped our lives. Omelas is the city of happiness, what does it mean to travel to the city of happiness? Why doesn't everyone live there? Why would you walk a...
Coriolanus
January 30, 2018 19:28 - 1 hour - 99 MBIn Coriolanus, Shakespeare brings us to a Rome in a time of transitional government, leadership, citizenship. Patrician Menenius tries to calm a mutiny among the Roman plebeians over the way they feel they have been treated by the nobles. His friend, the great war hero, Caius Martius Coriolanus agrees to run for counsel. However, Coriolanus treats the plebeians with contempt, giving tribunes Sicinius and Brutus the ability to destroy Coriolanus' governing hopes, to destroy his reputation in ...
Democracy in Chains
December 19, 2017 00:26 - 59 minutes - 83.2 MBDemocracy in Chains begins as the story of James Buchanan, the Nobel Prize winning economist who popularized public choice economist. MacLean argues that Buchanan joined up with wealthy special interest individuals to influence politics. In partnership with the Koch brothers, MacLean argues that Buchanan and other public choice economists, worked directly to benefit a small group of propertied individuals over the will of the majority. The work was short listed for the National Book Award ...
All the President’s Men (40th Anniversary Edition)
November 28, 2017 00:38 - 1 hour - 129 MBBernstein and Woodward published All the President's Men a mere three months before Nixon's resignation. We're revisiting (or visiting for the first time) this classic work of political journalism in the wake of the many callbacks since the 2016 Presidential election. Are dirty tricks just part of politics? What role does the press play? Are there parallels to the Trump administration? Featuring host Jeffery Jenkins (@jaj7d ), and guests Aubrey Hicks (@AubreyHi), Lisa Schweitzer (@drschwe...
City of Inmates
October 30, 2017 22:16 - 1 hour - 125 MBHistorian Kelly Lytle Hernández brings us the lengthy history of how authorities in Los Angeles have used imprisonment as a tool to control both labor and migration. City of Inmates takes the reader from a brief look at the Tongva Communities in the Tongva Basin, to the Spanish colonial era of the late 18th century, and through the Watts Rebellion in 1965. “This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation...
BONUS – Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman
October 13, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 112 MBLolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman is the deceptively simple novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner, about a woman who after 40 years spent in devotion to taking care of her father, and her brother's family, decides to move to the countryside and become a witch! Does she find freedom, or does she exchange one form of subjugation for another? If you haven’t read the novel yet, beware - we assume you’ve read it, so here's your spoiler alert! Featuring Aubrey Hicks (@AubreyHi), Lisa Schweitze...
The Death of Expertise
August 29, 2017 20:11 - 1 hour - 121 MBTom Nichols' The Death of Expertise is a broad look at the antipathy toward "experts" and "expertise" among the citizenry of contemporary United States. Nichols contends that this antipathy is dangerous for our democracy, that this distrust not only makes for unhealthy conversation but damages both political and public relationships with the very experts' guidance. We discuss the argument, the nature of expertise, the role of the academic in civic education, and the state of civics in gen...
White Tears
August 28, 2017 14:00 - 1 hour - 117 MBFor our discussion of Hari Kunzru's White Tears, we return to the question can America overcome its sin of racism? Or will our collective inability to deal with the consequences of our actions win the day? White Tears is a genre bending look at white male hipster culture, a ghost story of untold American stories, a revenge tale, a dive into the depths of collectors of the Blues, a beautifully written story about friendship, greed, race, music, New York City, the South ... if you have not ...
Tears We Cannot Stop
July 28, 2017 17:12 - 1 hour - 112 MBCan America overcome its sin of racism? If redemption of sin comes through repentance, can White America meet the demands necessary? Michael Eric Dyson's latest is a sermon for White Americans called Tears We Cannot Stop. We discuss the book, its format, and whether it goes far enough in terms of addressing these quite large questions and the implications behind them. Can America overcome its sin of racism?
American Swastika
June 26, 2017 20:18 - 1 hour - 113 MBIn American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate (2nd edition), Pete Simi and Robert Futrell look at the white power movement. Over 15 years of interviews allow the authors to use real stories to focus on white power families and the different ways the white power movement indoctrinates the next generation of white power warriors. We discuss the different types of groups, the different gateways people take into the movement, the ties that bind them, the family...
Slow Philosophy and The Slow Professor
June 22, 2017 19:57 - 1 hour - 118 MBLooking at academia as microcosm of society at large, we find many Americans can get something from this conversation on the difference between love of wisdom and the need to know (control). What might happen if we gave ourselves time (and permission) to understand and learn, rather than, or in addition to, acquire more and more skills? Is slowness the nature of wisdom? Inspired by the article, “In Praise of Slowness,” in Los Angeles Review of Books, we discuss two books on the idea of...
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
May 30, 2017 22:38 - 1 hour - 121 MBThe narrator of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist may be unreliable as he tells his American experience before and after 9/11 with an unknown American dinner guest, but we wonder if he is any more unreliable than the voice inside all of us. We discuss the East/West conflict, the relationship between fundamentalism and nostalgia, the narrator's reluctance and fundamentalism, the narrator's love of America and Erica, as well as puzzle over the ending as we delve into this deep and sh...
Cop in the Hood (Part 2)
April 24, 2017 20:22 - 58 minutes - 80.8 MBIn part 2 of our discussion of Cop in the Hood by Peter Moskos, we discuss the notion of discretion in the legal system - by police all the way to prosecutors & parole/probation boards. We think about discrimination in enforcement made possible by discretion. We think about conflicts of interest in investigations of police misconduct. How should we move forward?
Cop in the Hood (Part 1)
April 24, 2017 20:19 - 1 hour - 109 MBWe ask how to define "good" policing, as we discuss sociologist Peter Moskos' Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. What expectations do we put on police officers? How do police departments measure success? What should we measure for success? What does "law and order" mean? Do police receive the right kind of training to deliver the service communities want them to provide? How does Baltimore differ from Los Angeles? We also discuss the epic policy failure of the Wa...
The Underground Railroad
March 27, 2017 21:47 - 1 hour - 124 MBIn Colson Whitehead's award-winning novel The Underground Railroad, Cora, daughter and granddaughter of slaves, flees her plantation after a horrific punishment. She heads out with a fellow slave Caesar, who takes her to the underground railroad – in this novel, a real RR. She is passionately pursued by Ridgeway, a slave catcher while she experiences the horrors of American racism and the courage of the RR personnel. The book compares a mythological Southern narrative of slavery with Cora’s ...
Hillbilly Elegy
February 24, 2017 23:50 - 1 hour - 97.6 MBHillbilly Elegy is a memoir by J. D. Vance about family; about Appalachia, hillbillies, and the American white underclass in the rural and semi-rural interior of the United States. Vance relates his traumatic, poverty stricken upbringing to the larger social problems in both his hometown and the larger population. He ties the growing opioid epidemic sweeping the country to the growing divide between Red and Blue. With frankness, he describes addiction in his family, the larger trauma of comm...
American Gods
January 30, 2017 17:58 - 1 hour - 106 MBAmerican Gods is the story of America as a quilted patchwork of immigrant cultures with a diverse and every-growing number of beliefs. The story begins with Shadow, released from jail several days early because his wife is killed in a car accident. He encounters the mysterious Mr. Wednesday almost immediately upon release – once, twice, and again and is offered a job. He discovers that Mr. Wednesday is Odin, the Lord of Asgard, symbol of the forgotten gods living throughout America. With job...
Bonus - White Trash
December 21, 2016 20:06 - 1 hour - 97.5 MBIn White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America, historian Nancy Isenberg traces white poverty and class from the earliest British settlements through to the 21st century. What she finds is that the mythology of social mobility and classlessness of American Exceptionalism is just that, a myth. By taking a deep dive into a sub-class of Americans, Isenberg hopes that Americans can face a truth about the enduring poverty on inequality that has shaped the American consciousness. ...
The City & the City
December 21, 2016 19:30 - 1 hour - 115 MBThe City and The City by China Miéville is a noir detective murder mystery set in an urban fantasy landscape where the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma are not just neighboring, but enmeshed in overlapping space. What begins as a question of whether the young woman's murderer transferred the body between the cities illegally (Breach) becomes a question of how deep the conspiracy behind her murder goes. Though the plot seems a usual murder mystery, the author takes us on the journey to discover h...
Drown
November 30, 2016 00:01 - 1 hour - 97.7 MBSpoilers in this book club podcast! If you want to read before you listen ... read and come back soon! Junot Díaz made his debut with Drown (https://goo.gl/3HXB4p), ten interconnected short stories in 1997, our book club pic for November 2016. These coming-of-age stories grant the reader a brief glimpse into the lives of immigrants, their lives in poverty in the Dominican Republic through migration to life on the edges in New Jersey. "Diaz evokes a world in which fathers are gone, mothers ...
Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles
October 26, 2016 19:51 - 1 hour - 110 MBThis episode features a discussion of David Ulin’s Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles. A transplant to Los Angeles from New York, Ulin’s long essay/memoir is a meditation on moving through and defining his relationship with the sprawling diversity that is the City of Angels. The book begins with an essay on how walking can be a way to discover the city (any city or town) through serendipity. Ulin describes the discovery of an interesting church by turning a different way on a usua...
BONUS – Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
September 29, 2016 20:55 - 31 minutes - 43.9 MBSpecial bonus track! An interview with The Sympathizer author Viet Thanh Nguyen. On April 18, 2016, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category. Less than a month later, USC Professor Nguyen’s nonfiction book Nothing Ever Dies was published. These were written together over the last 13 years or so, are part of Nguyen’s exploration of the underlying issues of war and the aftermath of war on those countless affected. The novel while dark, gives voi...
The Sympathizer
September 26, 2016 23:33 - 1 hour - 120 MBThis edition of the book club features the astounding Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” whom we meet through a confession that we know to be some time after the Fall of Saigon. Our unnamed spy narrator is a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who was educated in America and returned to Vietnam during the conflict, spying on his American and army confederates. Things fall apart after the F...