Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life » (Unabridged)

MICHAEL MEDVED is the host of one of the most popular talk-radio programs in the country, reaching more than four million loyal listeners. He is the bestselling author of ten other books, including Right Turns, Hollywood vs. America, and What Really Happened to the Class of ’65? A member of USA Today’s board of contributors, he also writes a weekly column for Townhall.com. For more than a decade he served as cohost of Sneak Previews, PBS’s weekly movie-review show. Medved graduated from Yale with departmental honors in American history and attended Yale Law School as well.

Nationally syndicated talk-radio host and noted film critic Michael Medved has taken an extraordinary journey from liberal activist to outspoken conservative. Along the way he has earned millions of admirers—and more than his share of enemies—by advancing controversial, often counterintuitive arguments, including:

- Liberals love losing because it makes them feel virtuous
- America isn’t normal—it’s bizarrely blessed
- Hollywood has lost touch with America—and punishes people who point that out
- Conservatives are both happier and nicer than liberals
- Talk radio is a source of hope, not hatred
- Business isn’t exploitative—it’s heroic
- There is no such thing as “planned parenthood”
- A more Christian America is good for the Jews
- Do-it-yourself conservatism provides the only cure for save-the-world liberalism

In the...

The New York Times - Harry Stein

This is what makes Michael Medved's provocative memoir, Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life, so welcome. There is certainly no question about where Medved stands: he is a leading cultural conservative with a nationally syndicated radio show; his book is blurbed by a who's who of right-wing conspirators (Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger, Bill Bennett and, yes, Ann Coulter). But its pages are mercifully free of pettiness and bile. To the contrary, what we get is precisely what many who find his ideas objectionable profess to seek: an explanation of how a complex and decent man -- a proudly Jewish, former liberal activist yet! -- came to embrace them.