Hey, I'm Josh Barrow, your new host of Left, Right, and Center.

Every week join Rich Lowry, Bob Shear and Me for a contentious yet civilized debate of the week's big political stories,

from ISIS to the U.S. economy to this 47 candidate presidential election we're having.

You can find Left, Right, and Center on KCRW's iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Well, this week I have a real discovery to tell you all about.

This is a book called Imperium.

It's by an author named Christian K-R-A-C-H-T.

It's a fiction of the South Seas, which in this case means it's a model of an imperialist novel, where people go to exotic places.

In this case, it follows a man named August Englehart, who believes in the consumption of coconuts. The coconuts are the

perfect food. Coconuts, nudity, sunlight will be the new paradise, the carefree future,

and he goes there to the South Seas to what is now

Papua New Guinea. Yes. But he does go there at the turn of the last century in 1901, 1899, something

like that. When they were all going, when it was said that the islands in the South Seas were the pearls in

the ocean of the German Empire.

But they didn't go as nudists.

...