Welcome to Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul. Is liberal a dirty word?

And if it is, should liberals be thinking about why? Thomas Frank is here to talk about his

new book, Listen Liberal. Michael Buchocca was the kind of ultimate case where he wouldn't

even use the word. And they started calling it the L word because he refused to let it cross

his lips. What would make a new mother flee from her husband with their six-year-old child?

Lydia Millet will be here to talk about her new book, Sweet Lamb of Heaven.

Eventually this escalates into a kidnapping and it actually even escalates

further than that into a situation where he invades the privacy of her mind.

Plus, Greg Cole's and Carl Sagan and I will talk about what we and other people are reading.

The word liberal has been said with a sneer for decades so much so that it's gotten hard to

say the word liberal without sneering. And that's pretty much the way Thomas Frank

means you to say the title of his new book Listen Liberal or whatever happened to the party of the

people. He argues that Democrats have become a bunch of overeducated elites who've forgotten

their commitment to the working class. Frank is here now to talk about his new book. Tom,

thanks so much for being here. So the title, very pointed one, I'm thinking of it as sort of said

this way, Listen Liberal or whatever happened to the party of the people. Did you have that title

sort of upfront and know that's what you wanted to call the book? It should have had an exclamation

point on it. I only for some reason neglected that until the very last minute. But the book is an

exclamation point. It comes from a number of sources but like you know C. Wright Mills wrote a book

once called Listen Yankee. And I was just thinking I always think about this incident that happened in

Wichita some years ago when there I was supposed to do an interview with a guy and he showed up at my

hotel and rang the telephone and I picked it up and he said it was it was early in the morning and he

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