September 26, 2008 - It's considered one of the greatest novels about politics ever written, but some would say it's not as much about politics as it is about the human condition. The Midmorning Book Club examines Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men."
July 30, 2008 - Political ambition and class identity drive the plot of a new novel by Ethan Canin. The Iowa Writer's Workshop instructor takes his inspiration from the Kennedy family, in particular Ted Kennedy.
June 7, 2001 - "Take the advice of no one." This is the credo of August Kleinmann, 78 year old immigrant, self-made millionaire and central character of Ethan Canin's new novel "Carry Me Across the Water." Canin is currently on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop, although he's probably the only MD on the staff. He took a brief sojourn into medicine as a backup in case his writing career failed to take off. Canin told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann the novel is the story of his hero's journey to the US and then his journey of atonement late in life, when he reaches out to the family of a Japanese soldier he killed during World War Two.
October 15, 1998 - Ten years ago, a young Harvard medical student published a book of short stories that became a national bestseller-it was Ethan Canin, whose collection Emperor of the Air earned him comparisons with writers Philip Roth and Robert Penn Warren. Since then, Canin has taken a leave from his medical career and turned to writing full time. He's now out with his second novel, For Kings and Planets, about two friends attending Columbia University in the seventies. The two are unlikely friends, one is an earnest Midwesterner, the other, a worldly, cynical risk-taker from the East Coast. Canin told Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Crann he's writing novels now instead of short stories because they're better for exploring complicated subjects.