Frank Schaeffer In Conversation with Charles King, Professor and Author of New York Times-bestselling Gods of the Upper Air.
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Charles King is the author of seven books, including the New York Times-bestselling GODS OF THE UPPER AIR (2019), winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award and the Los Angeles Times history prize; MIDNIGHT AT THE PERA PALACE (2014), a New York Times Editors' Choice and inspiration for an upcoming Netflix series of the same name; and ODESSA: GENIUS AND DEATH IN A CITY OF DREAMS (2011), winner of a National Jewish Book Award. He lectures widely on global affairs and has appeared on broadcast media such as NPR, PBS, MSNBC, and the BBC. A native of the Ozark hill country, King studied history and politics at the University of Arkansas and Oxford University, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He is Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University, where he previously served as chair of the Department of Government and faculty chair of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong.
Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled “primitive” or “advanced.” What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity.
Author Photo: Mary Fecteau