A wide-ranging collection of interviews and profiles from twenty years of Jonathan Cott's remarkable writings "All I really need to do is simply ask a question," Jonathan Cott occasionally reminds himself. "And then listen." It sounds simple, but in fact few have taken the art of asking questions to such heights-and depths-as Jonathan Cott, whom Jan Morris called "an incomparable interviewer," one whose skill, according to the great interviewer and oral historian Studs Terkel, "is artless yet impassioned and knowing." Collected here are twenty-two of Cott's most illuminating interviews that encourage readers to listen to film directors and musicians, actors and writers, scientists and visionaries. These conversations affirm the indispensable and transformative powers of the imagination and offer us new ways to view these lives and their worlds. What is it like to be Bob Dylan making a movie? Carl Sagan taking on the cosmos? Oliver Sacks doctoring the soul? John Lennon, on December 5, 1980? Elizabeth Taylor, ever? From Chinua Achebe to Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), Federico Fellini to Werner Herzog, and Oriana Fallaci to Studs Terkel, Listening takes readers on a journey to discover not ways of life but ways to life. Within these pages,Cott proves himself to be, in the words of Brain Pickings's Maria Popova, "an interlocutor extraordinaire," drawing candid insights and profound observations from these inspired and inspiring individuals.

Leonard Bernstein was arguably the most highly esteemed, influential, and charismatic American classical music personality of the twentieth century. Conductor, composer, pianist, writer, educator, and human rights activist, Bernstein truly led a life of Byronic intensity-passionate, risk-taking, and convention-breaking. In November 1989, just a year before his death, Bernstein invited writer Jonathan Cott to his country home in Fairfield, Connecticut for what turned out to be his last major interview-an unprecedented and astonishingly frank twelve-hour conversation. Now, in Dinner with Lenny, Cott provides a complete account of this remarkable dialogue in which Bernstein discourses with disarming frankness, humor, and intensity on matters musical, pedagogical, political, psychological, spiritual, and the unabashedly personal. Bernstein comes alive again, with vodka glass in hand, singing, humming, and making pointed comments on a wide array of topics, from popular music ("the Beatles were the best songwriters since Gershwin"), to great composers ("Wagner was always in a psychotic frenzy. He was a madman, a megalomaniac"), and politics (lamenting "the brainlessness, the mindlessness, the carelessness, and the heedlessness of the Reagans of the world"). And of course, Bernstein talks of conducting, advising students "to look at the score and make it come alive as if they were the composer. If you can do that, you're a conductorand if you can't, you're not. If I don't become Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky when I'm conducting their works, then it won't be a great performance." After Rolling Stone magazine published an abridged version of the conversation in 1990, the Chicago Tribune praised it as "an extraordinary interview" filled with "passion, wit, and acute analysis." Studs Terkel called the interview "astonishing and revelatory." Now, this full-length version provides the reader with a unique, you-are-there perspective on what it was like to converse with this gregarious, witty, candid, and inspiring American dynamo.

Jonathan Cott's reflections and conversations with six celebrated children's authors-now in a new edition Pipers at the Gates of Dawn is a unique ensemble bringing together Jonathan Cott's encounters and conversations with some of the most celebrated children's authors of the twentieth century. "Children's literature," he states, "brings us back to experiencing our earliest and deepest feelings and truths. It is our link to the past and a path to the future. And in it we find ourselves." Cott's firm belief is that children's literature can impart wisdom and delight to everyone, and he believes that the masterpieces of children's literature are simply masterpieces of literature in miniature, conveyors of wisdom and wonder. Pipers at the Gates of Dawn consists of Cott's essay-interviews with Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), Maurice Sendak, William Steig, Astrid Lindgren, Chinua Achebe, P. L.Travers, and with Iona and Peter Opie, the great scholars of the lore, games, and language of schoolchildren. He explores with the authors themselves the lives of their created characters and the character of their own lives. All share with Cott an impassioned sense of the richness and complexity of childhood, and of the enduring importance of children's literature in the lives of all of us.

Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and was friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the small group of writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of those friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say and tell will be found nowhere else.

Published in its entirety for the first time, a candid conversation with Susan Sontag at the height of her brilliant career "A humanizing interview with the late cultural icon, who was often perceived as a fiercely aggressive and polarizing intellect."-Kirkus Reviews Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Published more than three decades later, this book provides the entire transcript of Sontag's remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cott's preface and recollections. Sontag's musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist." "I really believe in history, and that's something people don't believe in anymore. I know that what we do and think is a historical creation. . . .We were given a vocabulary that came into existence at a particular moment. So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate, and am tuned in better because I've read Nietzsche." "There's no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed. I love rock and roll. Rock and roll changed my life. . . .You know, to tell you the truth, I think rock and roll is the reason I got divorced. I think it was Bill Haley and the Comets and Chuck Berry that made me decide that I had to get a divorce and leave the academic world and start a new life."

One of the most idiosyncratic and charismatic musicians of the twentieth century, pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82) slouched at the piano from a sawed-down wooden stool, interpreting Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart at hastened tempos with pristine clarity. A strange genius and true eccentric, Gould was renowned not only for his musical gifts but also for his erratic behavior: he often hummed aloud during concerts and appeared in unpressed tails, fingerless gloves, and fur coats. In 1964, at the height of his controversial career, he abandoned the stage completely to focus instead on recording and writing.
Jonathan Cott, a prolific author and poet praised by Larry McMurtry as "the ideal interviewer," was one of the very few people to whom Gould ever granted an interview. Cott spoke with Gould in 1974 for "Rolling Stone "and published the transcripts in two long articles; after Gould's death, Cott gathered these interviews in "Conversations with Glenn Gould," adding an introduction, a selection of photographs, a list of Gould's recorded repertoire, a filmography, and a listing of Gould's programs on radio and TV. A brilliant one-on-one in which Gould discusses his dislike of Mozart's piano sonatas, his partiality for composers such as Orlando Gibbons and Richard Strauss, and his admiration for the popular singer Petula Clark (and his dislike of the Beatles), among other topics, "Conversations with Glenn Gould" is considered by many, including the subject, to be the best interview Gould ever gave and one of his most remarkable performances.

'I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else.'" Bob DylanDYLAN ON DYLANgathers together for the first timetwenty-nine of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, stretching over forty years from the earliest days of his career in 1962 through to 2004. Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone" interviews by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder and Mikal Gilmore, as well as the legendary 1966 Playboy" interview.In-depthand intimate, these interviews cover the gaps left by the Chronicles: Volume 1".Dylan expert Jonathan Cott writes an introduction to this must-have collection of the artist in his own words.

Winner of the NOBEL PRIZE in Literature 2016 'I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else.' Bob Dylan Gathered together for the first time: a rare and diverse collection of intimate interviews, straight from the mouth of America's most celebrated street poet. DYLAN ON DYLAN is a must-read for his millions of fans. Twenty-nine of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, stretching over forty years from the earliest days of his career in 1962 through to 2004, are brought together here to cover the gaps left by the Chronicles: Volume 1. Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone interviews by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder and Mikal Gilmore, as well as the legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Dylan expert Jonathan Cott writes an introduction to this must-have collection of the artist in his own words. 'Edited by Jonathan Cott, one of the original editors of Rolling Stone and arguably the most simpatico writer ever to converse with Mr Dylan, the interview format remains eminently readable ... Mr. Cott identifies the major sea changes in Mr Dylan's life via conversational format, without undue commentary ... Nobody can explain Mr Dylan as well as he, when he cares to do it, can explain himself' The New York Times

Odysseus, the 13th of his group of companions, is the only one to have escaped the devouring appetite of the Cyclops Polyphemus. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was launched on April 11, 1970, at 1313 hours Central Time from Pad 39 (13 x 3), and had to be aborted on April 13 after the explosion of an oxygen tank serving the commanding ship. Three of the sleeping periods scheduled for the astronauts were supposed to start 13 minutes past the hour, as was one of the possible splashdown times. There are said to be 13 stages of Buddhahood consisting of ten bohisattva stages and three additional pre-Buddhist stages. When Queen Elizabeth II paid a visit to West Germany in 1965, the number of the platform at Duisburg railway station, from which she was about to depart, was changed from 13 to 12A. The 13 weather-related disasters covered by insurance companies: (1) hurricane, (2) tornado, (3) flood/flash flood, (4) lightning, (5) blizzard, (6) avalanche, (7) ice storm, (8) dust storm, (9) hailstorm, (10) forest fire, (11) tsunami (tidal wave), (12) drought, (13) heat wave/cold wave. From the Yorkshire Post, May 1960: "A note left by a window cleaner who was found dead in a gas-filled room at his home said: 'It just needed to rain today-Friday the 13th-for me to make up my mind.'"