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Best selling author Walter Mosley has been enthralling readers of mystery fiction for decades now. The 59 year old African American writer from Watts, Southern California, has more than 30 books under his belt. He is perhaps best known for his series of mysteries featuring the black detective and World War II veteran Easy Rawlins. Most recently Walter Mosley’s work has hit the New York Times best seller list with the third in a mystery series called When the Thrill is Gone, featuring the character Leonid McGill, a New York based African American private eye. But aside from his popular fiction, Walter Mosley is an activist and social justice thinker. In 2003 he wrote “What Next: An African American Initiative Toward World Peace,” followed by his 2006 book “Life Out of Context: Which Includes a Proposal for the Non-violent Takeover of the House of Representatives.” Mosley’s latest non-fiction offering, just published by Nation Books, is called “Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation.” In this short treatise, Mosley posits that most Americans accept the economic and social oppression they suffer as normal. Drawing from his own experiences struggling with alcohol and nicotine addictions, he suggests ways for Americans to recover from what he calls “Americanism,” through a twelve step program. The steps include democracy building through education and truth telling about oneself and society. Here is Part 1 of Sonali Kolhatkar’s conversation with Walter Mosley.

GUEST: Walter Mosley, popular crime fiction writer, and political activist, author of “Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation.”