Barbara Zahm

Researcher Barbara Zahm gives a brief history of the 1971 Attica Prison Rebellion in which forty-three men died, and the college prison program which was initiated afterward. After interviews with prison inmates, "The Movement for College Programs of New York State Prisons After Attica" was formed. Zahm tells of her transformation after working with the inmates and her anguish over the Congressional decision to eliminate Pell Grants for prisoners, thus ending the program and leading to the "Last Graduation". As of 1997 funding cuts had not been restored.

The story of the legendary wits who lunched daily at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s. The core of the so-called Round Table group included short story and poetry writer Dorothy Parker; comic actor and writer Robert Benchley; The New Yorker founder Harold Ross; columnist and social reformer Heywood Broun; critic Alexander Woollcott; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber and Robert Sherwood.

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.