Summary: David Margolick, senior contributor at Vanity Fair, discusses his book Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. He takes us back to 1939 when Billie Holiday first performed, and then recorded, one of the most extraordinary songs of the 20th century. The book reflects wide-ranging interviews, from Lena Horne to Pete Seeger, all of which describe how they were affected by the song. The song, of course, is about lynchings in the south; the fruit are the victims.
