Bob Johnstone

Host of A Musical Offering, Sunday 2:00-6:00PM

HOMETOWN

Nashville, Tennessee

FAMILY

Wife, Marjorie; daughter Gwyneth; stepson Eric

ACTIVITIES / HOBBIES / INTERESTS

Classical music, politics, history.

MY FAVORITE BOOK

• Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger
• Ian Rankin, Naming of the Dead
• F.A.O. Schwarz, Jr. & Aziz Z. Huq, Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror
• Charles Dickens, Bleak House (third re-reading)
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I teach Politics at Earlham College, with a special interest in American politics, especially the presidency.  I am a life-long lover of Dickens, and Bleak House is in my view his best novel.  And I admire A. J. Rowling immensely for her capacity to enthrall folks from 9 to 92 (as Mel Tormé might have said).

MY FAVORITE MOVIE

Henry V with Kenneth Branaugh.  One of the great takes on Shakespeare on film, and on one of my favorite plays by same.

MY FAVORITE COMPOSER / MUSIC

Elgar, Walton, the Shostakovich string quartets (especially No. 8), and chamber music by a British group called Fibonaccia Sequence.  I have an abiding love for Beethoven and Debussy.  I grew up with jazz and modern classical music (stuff beginning with Debussy and Ravel, etc.).  With Beethoven, I was largely indifferent until a moment of epiphany.  I was 22 years old, staying briefly with my uncle in Sherman Oaks, California, and rummaging around his record collection for something new to play.  I put on the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto---and my life was changed forever. I guess that qualifies as an epiphany?

MY PASSION

Teaching

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT DAYTON

It's only 50 minutes from Richmond!