{"product_id":"talk-to-me-listening-between-the-lines-9780375501500","title":"Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines","description":"\u003cp\u003eAnna Deavere Smith  the award-winning playwright and actor  has spent a lifetime listeningreally listeningto the people around her. As a child in the segregated Baltimore of the early 1960s  Smith absorbed the words of her parents  teachers  neighborseven train conductorsand realized that there was something more being communicated than the actual words:  The conductors voice had a mild kind of grandeur that was a cousin to the vocal tones I had heard at funerals\"Ashes-to-ashes\"and at christenings and weddings. These are words that have been said many times  but the person who speaks them understands that each time it must be said as if it matters  because it does matter. We never know what lies ahead  and we never know what just happened  and all words must house respect of those two unknowns.  In Talk to Me  Smith looks back at a singular career as a seeker and interpreter of language in America  revealing the methodology behind her extraordinary search for the truth and nuances of verbal communication. For thirty years  the defining thesis of Smiths work has been that how we speak is just as important in communicating truth and identity as what we say. Everything from individual vocal tone to grammar  Smith demonstrates  can be as identifiable and revealing as a fingerprint. Her journey has taken her from the rarefied bastions of academia to riot-torn streets; she has conducted hundreds of interviews with subjects ranging from women prisoners to presidents of the United States. In 1995  her ongoing investigation led her to Washington  D.C. After all  what better place to wage an inquiry into the power of language and the language of power than in the city where \"message\" is a manufactured product? What happens when we as citizens acceptwhich we seem to be doing more and moreour chosen leaders failure to tell the truth? And how can we know that we are hearing what Washington really has to say when everything we receive is filtered through the media?  Armed with a blazing intellect and a tape recorder  Smith tackled these questions head-on  conducting more than four hundred interviews with people both inside and outside the power structure of Washington. She recorded these sessions in her trademark verbatim transcripts  which include every tic and verbal utterance of her subjects. More than thirty of these remarkable documents appear in this book  including interviews with Bill Clinton  Anita Hill  Studs Terkel  George Bush  Mike McCurry  and Helen Thomas. After five years of searing investigation into the world of the politicians  spin doctors  and power brokers who are steering the course of our country from inside the beltway  Smith has come away with a revelatory assessmentby turns devastating and hopefulof the lexicon of power and politics in America. Talk to Me is a landmark contribution from a woman whose pioneering insights into language speak volumes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666299150389,"sku":"ByrdShop_0375501509","price":20.92,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375501500.jpg?v=1782427496","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/talk-to-me-listening-between-the-lines-9780375501500","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}