T. J. Jackson Lears writes about fate, chance, grace, luck, authenticity, and confidence. He’s one of our premier interlocutors of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, a cultural critic, the editor of Raritan Quarterly, and the Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University. This interview traces the main themes of his work, working from a discussion about confidence and trust to questions of method and discipline before connecting his contributions in cultural history to issues of credit, trust, and the assumptions of our neoliberal economy.

Earlier this year I was contacted by the editors at Zum, a new Brazilian photography quarterly, who explained how they’d lately taken an interest in the photo-philosophical musings of the celebrated documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, as evinced both in his recent book Believing is Seeing and his ongoing New York Times blog, and wondered whether I’d be willing to undertake a conversation with Mr. Morris by way of introduction to their Brazilian readers.

Over the past decade, a new style of publishing has emerged as a response to the economic and environmental conditions facing twenty-first-century Latin America. Cardboard books, colorfully hand-painted and assembled by workshop collectives, are now bought and sold in nearly every major Latin American city. The “cartonera” publishing collectives take their name from cartoneros: urbanites who earn their living by collecting recyclable materials from the streets of Latin America’s sprawling cities.

Set in 1927 Paris, The Last Nude is inspired by the Russo-Polish Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and the young woman who modeled for her most famous painting, Beautiful Rafaela. De Lempicka met Rafaela on a walk in the Bois de Boulogne and drove her back to the studio: the two women became lovers, and their relationship generated six of de Lempicka’s most powerful paintings.