Women's Values and Political Change

[Interview] Charles Derber, Co-author of 'The New Feminized Majority'

Charles Derber is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, a private university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, in the United States.

So far, he has written and published 12 books, among them, The Wilding of America: Money, Mayhem, and the New American Dream (Worth Publishers, 2006); Hidden Power: What You Need to Know to Save Our Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2005); People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis (Picador, 2003) and Corporate Nation: How Corporations are Taking Over Our Lives and What We Can Do About It (St. Martin's Griffin, 2000).

In this interview, Charles Derber talks about the factors which compel him to write.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I was trying to get tenure at a major university. That required a book. I also found writing something like a meditation. It calmed me and centered me. I also found it a way to think and communicate about issues that I was passionate about.

My first book took five years and I started in the early 1970s. It's called The Pursuit of Attention and it's about who talks and who listens in ordinary conversation -- and focuses on how people subtly shift the topic of conversation to themselves. It became a classic and Oxford published a 20th commemorative edition a few years ago, selling more than 70,000 copies.

How would you describe your writing?

I write idea-driven non-fiction books focused on politics, culture and social justice. I try to write simply and clearly about issues that matter. I think of myself as a public intellectual, a relatively small breed of writers who move out of their technical specialties and influence the public.

My target audience is the literate general public, especially those interested in the link between personal life and politics.