scene of these young men in gaza, 70% youth unemployment for three decades now, no job, no prospect of a job, absolutely dying in despair, and therefore willing to lose their lives, i thought this enormous contrast that looked to me like british colonial coluindia. it looked like where you had the folks being served tea and crumpets while people were dying in the streets. it also looked to me like bonfire of the vanities. it was two folks you mentioned really have no reason to believe there other than the fact that they re people of privilege, sitting over a situation unable to open their eyes to the reality that s happening all around them. jared kushner as far as we know doesn t have security clearance as he works on these incredibly weighty issues. james zogby and wendy sherman, thanks for being with me. thank you. thank you. next, a mysterious professor at the center of the case for collusion has gone missing. today we learned robert mueller is tracking him down.
a man in full. bonfire of the vanities. tom wolf was celebrated for his unconventional style of nonfiction writing. became known as the new journalism. and he was celebrated for his unconventional style of dress. it was always a crisp three piece suit, and almost always white. sometimes the matching hat and pocket square to go with it. a style he called neopretentious. some of his finest writing was about politics and was fodder of some of his lines. a cult is a religion with no political power. if a conservative is a liberal who s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who s been arrested. none more apt for journalists than this one. there s no motivation higher than being a good writer. tom wolf, journalist, provok tour, and definitely a good writer, maybe even a great one.
the concern is the bonfire of the vanity. tens of thousands flock to the bonfire of the vanities. and burn their worldly possessions. it s a brilliant stroke. it s intimidating. it s public spectacle. it shows his power. and it s dramatic. it is one of the moments in this moment in history that lives on with of excess luxury. and then excess fundamentalism. pope alexander xi realizes he s no longer someone to be ignored. he domes the fire a declaration of war against the vatican.
printing press which allowed him to then dig into the things donald trump avoids of books. and i keep you know, when you when anything now in the age of trump is a different experience. i feel like reading this book two years ago if it had existed would be a different experience than i have had reading it now because i m finding parallels to it to say look how dark it got in florence in the bonfire of the vanities and look at how they came out of it because we keep looking for those cycles because many of us can feel we re in a dark period now. well, the good thing about history is it teaches us there are cycles. things act, things react. we had that. lasted less than four years to take heart from that. yeah, yeah. and, you know, florence became more tolerant again. and we had it during the joseph mccarthy period. you have a book coming out about 1968 that really has resonance. very dark period, yeah. we came out of that. in the middle of the it we didn t know we could.
with the version of tiki torches to enforce the strict new moral code, those t ki iki torches in 1497 known as the bonfire of the vanities in which books, art, clothing, cosmetics were burned and a year after that, just a year after that, popular opinion turned on rola and he was hanged and burned in the central square of florence. joining us now, the new york times best selling author and former editor of time magazine, walter isaacson. wow, lawrence, that was this is i have to say, this is your most magical life brought to us on the pages yet. this is it is such beautiful writing. it is so fascinating. it is an education for me on every page. i mean, i knew the mona lisa, did the last supper and then vaguely something about very ambitious scientific exploration