David Rem­nick won a Pulitzer in 1994 for Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Sovi­et Empire. Then, in 1998, he began his suc­cess­ful run as edi­tor-in-chief of the New York­er mag­a­zine. Now, he gives you a long biog­ra­phy (672 pages) of Barack Oba­ma, the first African-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Oba­ma’s per­son­al sto­ry is well known, thanks in part to Oba­ma’s own auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account. But, Rem­nick­’s work (which debuted as the #3 best­seller on The New York Times non-fic­tion list) nonethe­less has some­thing new to say. It is exhaus­tive­ly researched and dense­ly detailed, and adds col­or in areas miss­ing from oth­er accounts. It also places Oba­ma a bit more square­ly with­in the con­text of Amer­i­ca’s black free­dom strug­gle.

To get a glimpse inside this new work, you’ll want to lis­ten to this inter­view with David Rem­nick. It was con­duct­ed by Michael Kras­ny in San Fran­cis­co last week. Down­load the mp3 or grab the iTunes ver­sion here. Or sim­ply stream it below. The book, by the way, is avail­able in audio for­mat via Audible.com, and if you try out their 14 day free tri­al, you can even down­load the audio­book for free. More info on that here.

Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed), offers some time­ly thoughts on why Haiti, once a fair­ly pros­per­ous coun­try, has sunk into endur­ing pover­ty — a con­di­tion not com­par­a­tive­ly shared by its neigh­bor on the same island, the Domini­can Repub­lic. Accord­ing to Dia­mond, Haiti’s envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions offer a par­tial expla­na­tion. But you will also find clues in the coun­try’s lan­guage, and in the lega­cy of slav­ery that has shaped Haiti’s eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship with Europe and the US. This inter­view — quite a good one — aired this morn­ing in San Fran­cis­co. You can lis­ten to it below, or access it via MP3,  iTunes or RSS Feed.