"This is the face of totalitarianism."

Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942, and in his youth worked as a writer and editor for Ramparts magazine and became a co-founder of the magazine Mother Jones. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, the New York Times, and many other publications. He is the author of numerous books, most of which are united by dual themes of a granular examination of authoritarianism and despotism, and also of the unquenchable desire, even when facing great odds, of humankind to be free. Those books include The Mirror at Midnight, A South African Journey, The Unquiet Ghost, Russians Remember Stalin, King Leopold's Ghost, A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves and Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. We spoke about his body of work, some of the memorable characters he uncovered, and his thoughts about the current political climate in the United States.