Free Library Podcast
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An Evening with Renata Adler: Pickwick Salon
Renata Adler was born in Milan and raised in Connecticut. She received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr, an M.A. from Harvard, a D.d'E.S. from the Sorbonne, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an LL.D. (honorary) from Georgetown. Adler became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1963 and, except for a year as the chief film critic of The New York Times, remained at The New Yorker for the next four decades. Her books include A Year in the Dark (1969); Toward a Radical Middle (1970); Reckless Disregard:...
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Kevin Powers | The Yellow Birds
At the age of 17, Kevin Powers enlisted in the Army and later served as a machine-gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq, where the infinite sky is ''catacombed with clouds'' and ''soldiers stay awake on fear and amphetamines and Tabasco sauce daubed into their eyes'' (New York Times Book Review). After his honorable discharge he received an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. In the preface to his ''elegiac, sober, and haunting'' (Time) debut...
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Americanah
Called "the 21st-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe" (The Washington Post Book World), Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie exposes the deep scars of colonialism on the African landscape. Her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which followed a 15-year-old girl growing up in sheltered privilege in a country ravaged by political strife, received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. Her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun received the...
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Nathaniel Philbrick | Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A...
The New York Times bestselling author of modern and authoritative historical narratives, Nathaniel Philbrick's works include the National Book Award-winning In The Heart of the Sea and Boston Globe Horn Book Award recipient Revenge of the Whale, which both recounted the mythically tragic 19th century sinking that inspired Melville's Moby Dick. Philbrick's other books include Mayflower, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Sea of Glory, which circled the earth's oceans with the U.S. Exploring...
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Claire Messud | The Woman Upstairs
Known for her deft ability to conjure the lives and mores of radically different characters, Claire Messud is ''a writer of near-miraculous perfection'' (New York Times). Her books include When the World Was Steady,The Hunters, andThe Last Life-all New York Times Notable Books of the Year-and The Emperor's Children, a cutting portrait of life among Manhattan's junior intelligentsia that was long-listed for the Booker Prize. A PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, she is the recipient of Guggenheim...
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Jaron Lanier | Who Owns the Future
Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier is ''one of the deepest thinkers on the impacts of technology on society'' (New York Times). His book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto- ''a tonic and necessary call for humanism'' (Booklist)-detailed his concerns about the evolution of the internet and the ways in which the economics of free content threaten propriety, responsibility, and authenticity. One of Time's 100 Most Influential People, Lanier plays ancient world instruments, writes chamber and...
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Mika Brzezinski | Obsessed: America's Food Addiction-and...
In conversation with Joe Scarborough One of television's most outspoken journalists,Mika Brzezinski is co-host ofMSNBC's Morning Joewith Joe Scarborough-called ''the thinking viewer's choice'' (USA Weekend)-and author of the New York Times bestselling books All Things At Once and Knowing Your Value. She also pens ''Getting What You Want,'' a monthly column about career confidence and empowerment for Cosmopolitan. Prior to joining MSNBC in January 2007, Brzezinski was an anchor of the CBS...
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Michael Feinstein | The Gershwins And Me: A Personal...
''The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,'' Michael Feinstein is a multi-platinum-selling, Emmy and Grammy Award-nominated entertainer dedicated to restoring music from the golden age of American song. He educates audiences about the culture-defining work of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Mercer, and their peers through his books, radio broadcasts, and the Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative, an archive and arts center in Carmel, Indiana. His...
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Eve Ensler | In the Body of the World
One ofNewsweek's 150 Women Who Changed the World, Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the defense of the female body. Her 1996 play The Vagina Monologues recounts funny, riveting, and horrifying stories Ensler gathered from conversations with women. Since its first staging, the play has been performed in more than 120 countries and adapted as an HBO film. Her other works includeThe Good Body,Insecure at Last, andI Am an Emotional Creature. Ensler is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to...
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Temple Grandin | The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the...
ATimeMagazine Top 100 Hero, Temple Grandin has become a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. Diagnosed with autism as a child, she studied psychology and earned a Ph.D. in Animal Science. A passionate voice for the humane treatment of animals, her professional and popular writing and research on animal behavior has revolutionized the treatment of farm animals. The HBO movie based on her life, starring Claire Danes, received seven Emmy Awards. Her...
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Maria Semple | Where'd You Go, Bernadette
During her 15-year television career, screenwriter and Writers Guild Award nominee Maria Semple wrote for such shows as Mad About You, Saturday Night Live, Ellen, and Arrested Development. Her debut novel This One is Mine, called an ''uncompromising and trenchantly funny portrait of Los Angeles life that rings uncomfortably true'' (Sex and the City creator Darren Star) parodied the classic life of luxury and the ruinous choices made in the pursuit of happiness. Her new ''divinely funny,...
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Letty Cottin Pogrebin | How to Be a Friend to a Friend...
Journalist and social justice activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin is the founding editor of Ms. magazine, a national flagship platform for feminist journalism launched in 1971 that brazenly helped to shape the anti-sexist movement. Pogrebin is the bestselling author of eight books of nonfiction, including How To Make It In a Man's World, Growing Up Free, and Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America, as well as the novel Three Daughters. She is a founder of the National Women's...
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Isabel Allende | Maya's Notebook
Isabel Allende ''rearranges reality with a blend of memories, mysticism and imagination'' (Philadelphia Inquirer) in her picturesque historical fiction about family sagas, love, war, and politics. She is the recipient of 50 awards in more than a dozen countries and creator of an eponymous Foundation dedicated to empowering women and girls worldwide. Her first international bestseller The House of the Spirits was adapted into a feature film starring Meryl Streep. Her other novels include...
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Michael Pollan | Cooked: A Natural History of...
For more than 25 years, Michael Pollan has pinpointed the intersections of nature and culture. Named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People, he lectures widely on food, agriculture, health, and the environment. His six books include the New York Times bestsellers Food Rules: An Eater's Manual; In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto; The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which won the James Beard Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award;...
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Cheryl Strayed | Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific...
(This podcast contains explicit language) A blazing memoir about an adventure born of heartache and the promise of reconstructing a life undone, Cheryl Strayed's no. 1 New York Times bestselling book Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the first selection for her rebooted book club. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State, Strayed reflects on her past, ''finding her voice, and sustaining it, right in front of your eyes'' (New...
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Cass Sunstein | Simpler: The Future of Government
The Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein is the author of more than35books and textbooks. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The coauthor of the bestselling book, Nudge, Sunstein guided the administration toward simplifying regulations with his innovative methods of ''nudging'' corporate behavior while protecting citizens and maximizing freedom and business opportunity. In...
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Baratunde Thurston | How to Be Black
Comedian, author, and self-described vigilante pundit, Baratunde Thurston is the former Digital Director for The Onion and the creator of Cultivated Wit, a startup that blends comedy with new digital platforms. A regular contributor to Fast Company and named by The Root as one of the 100 most influential African Americans, he is the cofounder of the political blog Jack and Jill Politics. Honored by the ACLU of Michigan ''for changing the political and social landscape one laugh at a time,''...
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Andrew Solomon | Far From the Tree: Parents, Children...
A writer on politics, culture, and psychology, Andrew Solomon received a National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which examined the human condition with erudition and candor. A New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, the book received the Lambda Literary Award for Autobiography/Memoir. His other works include The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost and A Stone Boat, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award. In Far From...
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Ken Kalfus | Equilateral with James Salter | All That Is
Praised for his ability to flesh out vivid characters whose lives saturate puzzling cultural backdrops, Ken Kalfus is the author of the story collections Thirst and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. His novels include The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, in which the events of 9/11 make an unlikely springboard for a biting story about...
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Nancy Pearl | Book Lust Rediscoveries
Called "the talk of librarian circles" (New York Times) and immortalized as an action figure, librarian Nancy Pearl has recommended books to readers for decades. Her bestselling book, Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason contains nearly 2,000 recommendations. She has worked as a librarian and bookseller in Detroit, Tulsa, and Seattle, and is a regular literary commentator on Morning Edition. Awards for her contributions to the world of books include Library...
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Rachel Maddow | Drift: The Unmooring of American...
As host of MSNBC's award-winningThe Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel Maddow offers her take on the stories of the day-political and otherwise-and engages in lively debate with guests from all sides of the issues. The show debuted in September 2008 as the most successful show launch in MSNBC history and was named one of the Washington Post's top shows of the decade. Maddow earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University, which she attended on a Rhodes scholarship. In her no. 1 New...
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Frans de Waal | The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of...
Drawing on a wealth of pioneering research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal traces the biological roots of human morality to primate social emotions, including empathy, reciprocity, and fairness in The Bonobo and the Atheist. Named one ofTime's 100 Most Influential People, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's Psychology Department. His many works includeOur Inner Ape, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes, and The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder...
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Anne Lamott | Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My...
"A narrator who has relished and soaked up the details of her existence, equally of mirth and devastation, and spilled them onto her pages" (New York Times), Anne Lamott writes about loss with honesty and compassion and uplifts readers with her faith and wit. She is the author of seven novels and six books of non-fiction,including Operating Instructions, an account of life as a single mother during her son's first year; Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life; Traveling Mercies,...
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Judy Wicks | Good Morning, Beautiful Business: The...
When Judy Wicks founded the White Dog Café in the first floor of her University City row home in 1983, she did not plan to start a revolution. The White Dog was one of the first restaurants to feature organic, locally sourced, and humane food as the centerpiece of its menu. Thirty years later, Judy Wicks remains a standard bearer for a number of movements that barely existed when she started, including socially responsible business, local living, slow food, and farm to table. In Good...
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Mary Roach | Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
With wit and unflagging curiosity,Mary Roach has explored the posthumous human body(Stiff), ectoplasm and the afterlife(Spook),sex (Bonk), and the scientific oddities of space travel (Packing for Mars). ''One of those rare writers who can tackle the most obscure unpleasantness and distill the data into a hilarious and informative package,'' according to theSan Francisco Chronicle, Roach probes the creepy aspects of life we all wonder about but are usually too polite to mention. Her new book...
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Blaine Harden | Escape from Camp 14: One Man's...
An author and journalist who reports for PBS'sFrontlineand contributes to The Economist, Blaine Harden has worked forThe Washington Postas a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, and as a national correspondent forthe New York Times. An international bestseller, Escape from Camp 14 is ''a riveting nightmare that bears witness to the worst inhumanity, an unbearable tragedy magnified by the fact that the horror continues at this very moment without an end in sight'' (Christian...
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Ezekiel Emanuel | Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an...
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a leading oncologist, political theorist, and the author of nine books on medical ethics and healthcare. A Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, Emanuel writes for the New York Times and previously served as a special advisor for health policy in the Obama administration. His new book is a compelling memoir about three tenacious Jewish American brothers-Ari, the real-life model for the bold...
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Jonathan Dee | A Thousand Pardons with George Saunders |...
Jonathan Deeis the author of five novels, includingThe Privileges,a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald. He is a contributing writer forThe New York Times Magazine,a National Magazine Award-nominated literary critic forHarper's,and former senior editor ofThe Paris Review. Dee ''is the kind of writer who thinks hard about contemporary realities and then builds sturdy, stately novels of ideas around them'' (New York Times) that are ''full of elegance,...
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Aleksandar Hemon | The Book of My Lives
Bosnian American writer AleksandarHemoncame to Chicago in 1992 for a month-long cultural exchange program and was supposed to return to Sarajevo on May 1-the same day the city came under siege. Granted asylum in the United States as a political refugee, Hemon began writing fiction. Islands, one of his first stories written in English, appeared in Best American Short Stories 1999. An acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, The...
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Josh Wolf | It Takes Balls
Please note: this podcast contains explicit language. A roundtable member and writer onE!'s late night talk shows Chelsea LatelyandAfter Lately, comedian Josh Wolf is known for his honest and high-energy storytelling. A fan favorite at Los Angeles comedy clubs like The Improv and The Laugh Factory, Wolf was cast in Last Comic Standing and had recurring roles on Raising Hope and My Name is Earl. He also hosts The College Experiment, a comedic weekly online college football show for Fox...
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Laurie Rubin | Do You Dream in Color?: Insights From a...
Blind since birth, mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin has been praised for her ''compelling artistry'' and ''communicative power'' (New York Times), and her ''especially acute intuition about the power and subtleties of sound'' (Los Angeles Times). In her memoir Do You Dream in Color?, Rubin shows how her resolve to continually redefine expectations has enabled her to achieve international success, live independently, ski, design jewelry, and fulfill her ambition to sing on stages around the world....
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Ben Yagoda | How To Not Write Bad: The Most Common...
University of Delaware journalism professor Ben Yagoda has written about language and writing for such publications as the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, and Esquire. His books include Memoir: A History; When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It; and The Sound on the Page, ''a stylish exploration of developing a distinctive voice and writing style'' (Chicago Tribune). He contributes to blogs about language and writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times, and...
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Paul Muldoon | The Word on the Street: Rock Lyrics
"The most sophisticated and original poet of his generation," (The New York Review of Books), Paul Muldoon received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2003 poetry collection Moy Sand and Gravel. His many other honors include the T. S. Eliot Award, the Irish Times Poetry Prize, the Griffin International Prize, the Aspen Prize, and the European Prize for Poetry. Described as ''the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War,'' (The Times Literary Supplement), Muldoon also...
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GRAND FINALE with Julie Otsuka & Intercultural Journeys*
The One Book, One Philadelphia season concludes with a reading by featured author Julie Otsuka as well as a special musical tribute led by Udi Bar-David, cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Intercultural Journeys Artistic Director.* *Note: music program begins at approximately 11:30 (recorded 3/13/2013)
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Lillian Faderman | My Mother's Wars
Scholar and women's studies pioneer Lillian Faderman is the author of several groundbreaking narratives of the cultural, social, and political history of LGBT life and identity, including Surpassing the Love of Men, ''one of the most significant contributions yet made to feminist literature'' (The New York Review of Books); Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America. The recipient of six Lambda...
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Mohsin Hamid | How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Called ''both an irresistibly engaging adventure and a searching portrait of contemporary young people in Pakistan'' (Joyce Carol Oates), internationally bestselling author Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. It was followed by the elegantly subversive novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was named a Book of the Decade by The Guardian and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Hamid's stories...
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Jodi Picoult | The Storyteller
A master storyteller and queen of the book club, Jodi Picoult is known for plumbing hot-button topics in novels that feature nuanced characters, pitch-perfect descriptions of suburbia-and the darkness it often conceals-and unfettered insight into the shape-shifting terrain of family relationships. She is the author of 19 novels, including the no. 1 New York Times bestsellers House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister's Keeper, as well as the YA novel...
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Peter Edelman | So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to...
Anti-poverty advocate Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University and the Faculty Director at the Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy. His first book, Searching for America's Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope chronicled the vision for economic justice he shared with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, to whom Edelman once served as a top aide. Previously the Director of the New York State Division for Youth and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts, he has...
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Jamaica Kincaid | See Now Then
Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, Antigua native Jamaica Kincaid's novels display ''a poet's understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur'' (New York Times), and examine the powerful ties and inherent loss in the mother-child relationship. Her first book, At the Bottom of the River, a collection of short stories, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and received the Morton Darwen Zabel Award. Paying witness to the pressures of poverty and...
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Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman | Top Dog: The Science of...
Po Bronson's widely acclaimed social documentary books include Why Do I Love These People? and What Should I Do With My Life?, a no. 1 New York Times bestselling career guide. For their collaborative reporting on the science of human development in New York Magazine, Time, and elsewhere, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have won nine national awards including the PEN USA Award for Literary Journalism and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Outstanding Journalism....
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Tina Kelley | Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from...
Tina Kelley was a staff writer for the New York Times for ten years and belonged to the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for covering the September 11th attacks and now works at Covenant House. In Almost Home she and co-author Kevin Ryan tell the story of six homeless teenagers from across America who overcame the struggle of life on the streets. All proceeds from the sale of Almost Home go to support Covenant House. (recorded 2/20/2013)
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Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal | A Memory of...
Robert Jordan's multi-volume epic fantasy series, Wheel of Time ''has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal''(New York Times). Following his untimely death in 2007, Jordan's wife and editor Harriet McDougal recruited bestselling fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson to use Jordan's extensive drafts and notes to complete the series with The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light. A creative writing teacher at Brigham Young University, Sanderson is the author of...
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Saru Jayaraman | Behind the Kitchen Door: What Every...
A force for social justice, Saru Jayaraman is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a New York City-based nonprofit that organizes restaurant workers to win workplace justice campaigns, conduct research and policy work, and launch cooperatively owned restaurants. A graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, she is a professor at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges and New York University, and she is co-editor of The New Urban...
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Neil Shubin | The Universe Within: Discovering the...
Evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin was a member of the field team that made the 2004 landmark discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, a fossil fish dubbed the "missing link" between fish and land animals. The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish, Shubin teaches Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as an associate dean. He has conducted field work in Greenland, China, Canada, North America, and Africa. His new book, The Universe Within makes clear the...
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Karen Russell | Vampires in the Lemon Grove with Claire...
Karen Russell's debut novel Swamplandia!, a lushly imagined narrative of a dilapidated, family-run amusement park in the Everglades, was a New York Times Best Book of the Year, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a nominee for the Orange Prize. Her new book, Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a volume of sinister stories that delightfully cross horror with magical realism. Claire Vaye Watkins's stories and essays have appeared inGranta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train. An...
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Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer | Envisioning...
An art photographer and one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography, Deborah Willis is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Barbara Krauthamer teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, and has authored a number of articles on the subjects of slavery in Indian Territory and the intersections between African American and Native American cultures. Willis and...
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Michelle Rhee | Radical: Fighting to Put Students First
Under Michelle Rhee's leadership, the Washington, D.C. public school system-the worst performing school district in the country-became the only major city system to see double-digit growth in state reading and state math scores over three years. The graduation rate rose, and after steep declines enrollment rose for the first time in 40 years. She is founder of The New Teacher Project, partnering with school districts and community agencies to transform the way schools recruit and train...
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Taylor Branch | The King Years: Historic Moments in the...
Taylor Branch received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award forAmerica in the King Years, a landmark three-volume history of the Civil Rights Movement. Branch's other works include The Cartel and The Clinton Tapes. Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award, Branch lectures widely on civil rights and nonviolence. The King Years thoughtfully sets pivotal scenes of the Civil...
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Jeremiah Ostriker | Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the...
One of the first cosmologists to suggest that galaxies are immersed in large halos of dark matter, Jeremiah Ostriker has been an influential researcher in the most exciting areas of modern astrophysics and cosmology. His areas of study include the structure and oscillations of rotating stars, dark matter and dark energy, pulsars, x-ray binary stars, the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium, gravitationallensing, astrophysical blast waves, active galactic nuclei, the cosmic web, galaxy formation,...
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General Stanley McChrystal | My Share of the Task
''A legendary warrior with a fine eye for enduring lessons about leadership, courage, and consequence'' (Tom Brokaw), General Stanley McChrystal retired in July 2010 as a four-star general in the United States Army after serving as the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the commander of the International Security Assistance Force. The former director of the Joint Staff and commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, he is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson...
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Dave Barry | Insane City
A columnist at the Miami Herald for nearly 30 years, New York Times bestselling humorist Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. His work has been syndicated in more than 500 newspapers, and his more than 30 books include I'll Mature When I'm Dead; Lunatics, coauthored with Alan Zweibel; and Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. Two of his books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom Dave's World. In his new novel, Insane City, a destination...
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Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy | Jewish Jocks: An...
Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame is a collection of essays about influential Jewish athletes, coaches, broadcasters, team owners, and trainers, including Howard Cosell, Art Shamsky, Kerri Strug, and Sandy Koufax. Contributors include New Yorker editor David Remnick; novelists Jonathan Safran Foer, Shalom Auslander, and Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson; sports writer Buzz Bissinger; economist Larry Summers; and columnist David Brooks. Franklin Foer isThe New Republic's...
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Derrick Bell | Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of...
A highly esteemed attorney, leading constitutional scholar and bestselling author, Derrick Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School. His eighth book Ethical Ambition is a meditation on the human potential for success, without compromise of dignity or integrity. Meelya Gordon Endowed Lecture (recorded 11/7/2002)
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Mary Karr | Cherry
Mary Karr's best-selling memoir, The Liar's Club, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. The sequel, Cherry, careens between hilarity and tragedy as Karr chronicles her stormy, ardent coming-of-age in, and subsequent escape from, Texas. A poet and essayist, she has won Pushcart prizes in both genres as well as the prestigious Whiting Award. She will read from Cherry. (recorded 10/18/2001)
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Barbara Kingsolver | Flight Behavior
Called ''the Woody Guthrie of contemporary American fiction'' (Boston Globe), Barbara Kingsolver is a self-described ''writer of the working class.'' Her work is rich in science, landscape, and character, and has garnered numerous awards, including the PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Fiction and the American Library Association Best Books of the Year Award. In 2000, she received the National Humanities Medal, our nation's highest honor for service through the arts.Following the...
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Alex Danchev | Czanne: A Life
Alex Danchev's writing spans art, politics, and military history, and the subjects of his acclaimed biographies include philosopher-statesman Oliver Franks, military writer Basil Liddell Hart, and cubist Georges Braque. His most recent books include On Art and War and Terror,and100 Artists' Manifestos. Danchev writes regularly forThe Times Literary Supplement andThe Times Higher Education Magazine. A professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham, he has held...
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Colm Toibin | The Testament of Mary
''Immensely gifted and accomplished'' (Washington Post) Irish novelist Colm Toibin's books include The South, winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus First Fiction Award; The Master, winner of the Dublin IMPAC Prize and the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year; and Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year. His other books include All a Novelist Needs, a collection of essays on Henry James, and The Empty Family, a collection of short stories that examine the trials and tribulations of the...
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Mark Bowden | The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden
An award-winning national correspondent for the Atlantic, Mark Bowden is the author of numerous books of investigative journalism, including the New York Times bestselling classic of war reporting, Black Hawk Down. Floodlighting modern war with first-person accounts of the courage and brutality of battle, the book was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted into a major film. Bowden's other books include Killing Pablo, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award...
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Karen Quinones Miller | An Angry-Ass Black Woman with...
Called ''the Aretha Franklin of black publishing'' by Kwan Foye, Karen Quinones Miller's self-published first novel, Satin Doll, sold nearly 30,000 copies. The author of six Essence bestsellers, including Using What You Got, Passin', and Uptown Dreams, she was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Fiction. Miller worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for nine years and is currently a literary consultant and the CEO of Oshun Publishing. An Angry-Ass Black Woman is an...
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Tom Wolfe | Back to Blood
New Journalism pioneer and literary superstar Tom Wolfe has carefully recorded popular culture for more than four decades. ''What makes him so good is his ability... to get under the skin of a phenomenon and transmit its metabolic rhythm'' (Newsweek). Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Right Stuff, which received the American Book Award and the Columbia Journalism...
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Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel | Bouchon Bakery
Named America's Best Chef by Time magazine, Thomas Keller is the renowned proprietor and chef of legendary restaurants Bouchon, per se, The French Laundry, Ad Hoc, and Bouchon Bakery. He is also the author of several cookbooks from his innovative kitchens, including The French Laundry Cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home, and Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide. Renowned for his purist techniques and phenomenal fare, Keller was the first to win back-to-back Best Chef awards from the James Beard...
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Howard Jacobson | Zoo Time
''As the brightness of his brilliance is hard to look at, so is the darkness of his humor. I don't know a funnier writer alive,'' wrote Jonathan Safran Foer of Howard Jacobson's Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question. An acerbic critic and broadcaster with a passion for literature and art, Jacobson explores human existence through the lens of contemporary Judaism. His novels include Coming From Behind, Peeping Tom, No More Mister Nice Guy, The Mighty Walzer, and Whatever It Is,...
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Justin Cronin | The Twelve with R.L. Stine | Red Rain
Justin Cronin bombarded the summer of 2010 with vicious, limb-tearing vampires that were the catastrophic result of biomedical research in his novel, The Passage-the first book of a planned post-apocalyptic trilogy. Named one of the 10 best novels of the year by Time, the book was an international bestseller. The author of The Summer Guest and Mary and O'Neil-which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane prize-Cronin is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for...
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Camille Paglia | Glittering Images: A Journey through...
Champion of unbridled conversation, Camille Paglia acquired the nickname ''HurricaneCamille'' after publishing the 700-page tome on sex, art, and literature titledSexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson in 1990. She is one of the most celebrated and castigated scholars of the late 20th century, an ''antifeminist feminist, antigay lesbian, and antiliberal liberal'' (Playboy). A professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts, Paglia is also...
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David Mitchell | Cloud Atlas with Michael Chabon |...
Called simply ''a genius'' by the New York Times Book Review and named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People, David Mitchell was twice listed for the Man Booker Prize for his novels Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas. His other works include Black Swan Green, Ghostwritten, and the historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ?''a formidable marvel'' (The New Yorker). His ambitious Cloud Atlas was acclaimed for its adept braiding of six narratives that each evoked a different fiction...
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Jose Garces | The Latin Road Home: Savoring the Foods of...
One of the nation's most talented chefs and an ambassador of contemporary Latin cuisine, Chef Jose Garces opened his first restaurant, Amada, in 2005, and has since opened six more acclaimed Philadelphia restaurants, in addition to ventures in Atlantic City, Chicago, Scottsdale, and Palm Springs. Garces is the recipient of the James Beard Foundation's prestigious Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic Award, as well as one of Food Network's Iron Chefs. His recipes and restaurants have been featured in the...
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Paul Elie | Reinventing Bach
Paul Elie's debut book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own told the stories of four great American Catholic writers-Flannery O'Conner, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day-who crafted literature out of their search for God. Called ''a work of the spirit'' by Harold Bloom, the book received the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Elie is a senior fellow with Georgetown University's Berkley Center forReligion, Peace, and World Affairs,...
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Pete Townshend | Who I Am: A Memoir
(This podcast contains explicit language) A founding member of The Who-"possibly the greatest live band ever" (Eddie Vedder)-and mighty force in rock music, Pete Townshend wrote more than 100 songs for the band's 11 studio albums, includingtherock operasTommyandQuadrophenia, plus more than 100 songs for solo albums and other projects. Inducted with the band into theRock and Roll Hall of Fame, he ranks no. 10 inRolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. He received a...
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Chris Ware | Building Stories with Charles Burns | The...
Chris Ware's graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earthwon the Guardian First Book Award, the first time a graphic novel has won a major United Kingdom literary award. Author of the award-winning series The ACME Novelty Library, Ware has exhibited his work internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. Building Stories is a window into the lives of the residents of a Chicago apartment building. Best known for his masterwork,Black Hole-a multiple...
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Junot Diaz | This Is How You Lose Her WITH Samuel R....
(This recording contains explicit content) In Junot Daz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a Dominican American family haunted by an ancient curse is doomed to prison, torture, and ill-starred love. Like Oscar's family and the narrators of many of the short stories in Diaz's collection Drown, Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and explores the contemporary American experience with the "eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet" (Newsweek). The...
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Louise Erdrich | The Round House
In her 14 novels, children's stories, and poetry collections, Louise Erdrich revisits the beloved and familiar Native American reservation of her North Dakota childhood, grounding mythic and magical in the detail of the everyday, ''easily navigating the wavering line between a recognizable, psychological world and the more arcane world of legend and fable'' (New York Times). Her novels include Love Medicine, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Last Report on the Miracles at...
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Andrew McCarthy | The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest...
An entire generation knows Andrew McCarthy as Blaine McDonough from the 1986 John Hughes film Pretty in Pink. For the last decade, McCarthy has been building a formidable reputation in the world of travel writing, including two Lowell Thomas Grand Awards from the Society of American Travel Writers, four North American Travel Journalist Awards, and the 2011 Folio Award. His work has appeared three times in the Best American Travel annual anthology and he is an editor-at-large for National...
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Joseph Stiglitz | The Price of Inequality: How Today's...
In The Price of Inequality, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz offers a plan for a more just and prosperous future. With the top one percent of Americans controlling an estimated 40 percent of the country's wealth, Stiglitz argues that this growing inequality has stifled progress, undermined democracy, and resulted in a divided society unable to tackle critical issues. A pioneer of information economics, Stiglitz served and later chaired President Clinton's Council of Economic...
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Wyclef Jean | Purpose: An Immigrant's Story
Musician, actor, producer, and activist Wyclef Jean was born and raised in Haiti and moved with his family to New York when he was nine years old, learning English from American rap music and later forming the hip hop group The Fugees with Lauryn Hill and Pras. The trio recorded two albums, including The Score (1996), which was a multi-platinum and Grammy-winning success. In 2005, Jean founded the aid organization Yle, and five years later announced an exploratory bid for President of Haiti...
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Naomi Wolf | Vagina: A New Biography
Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf launched a new wave of feminism with her landmark first book, The Beauty Myth, which challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty. The New York Times called it one of the most important books of the 20th century. Her other books include the New York Times bestsellers Fire with Fire, Promiscuities, and The End of America, and she is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post, the Guardian,...
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Irvine Welsh | Skagboys with Lisa Zeidner | Love Bomb
(This recording contains explicit content) "Not for the fainthearted" (Sunday Times), Irvine Welsh's subterranean worlds are created with eloquent obscenity. He shot to fame with his first novel, Trainspotting, a dark comic portrait of the heroin-addicted fringe youth of 1980s Edinburgh, which was adapted into a film directed by Danny Boyle in 1996. The author of more than a dozen short story collections, screen plays, and novels, his works include Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance,...
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Jeffrey Toobin | The Oath: The Obama White House v. The...
Senior legal analyst at CNN and a New Yorker staff writer, Jeffrey Toobin is known for his elegant political analyses and legal erudition about our most provocative and high profile cases, including his Emmy Award-winning coverage of the Elin Gonzlez case. His bestselling books include The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court; Too Close to Call, an investigation into the Bush-Gore presidential recount; A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought...
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Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez | Love and Rockets:...
Co-creators of the comic art series Love and Rockets, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have been likened in the Times of London and elsewhere as ''the graphic equivalent to the fabulism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate.'' A decades-spanning oeuvre, Love and Rockets virtually defined the subversive alt-comic voice of the 1980s and has won a string of Harvey and Kirby Awards. The pair has also collaborated with their brother, Mario Hernandez, in addition to releasing several solo...
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Tony Danza | I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I...
Actor and producer Tony Danza achieved small-screen fame with his portrayals of dimwitted but lovable cab driver Tony Banta in Taxi and as live-in housekeeper and single dad Tony Micelli on the long-running sitcom Who's the Boss?. He earned an Emmy nomination for his appearances on The Practice, and has acted in film and on Broadway, including critically acclaimed roles in revivals of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. He published his first...
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Tariq Ramadan | Islam and the Arab Awakening
Tariq Ramadan is one of the leading scholars of Islam in the Western world and a professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University. Deemed a "Muslim Martin Luther" by Paul Donnelly of the Washington Post, Ramadan was barred from entering the United States by the Bush administration in 2006; in 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lifted the ban. He is the author of several books, including Radical Reform, In the Footsteps of the Prophet, and What I Believe, an accessible...
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Paul Auster | Winter Journal
Paul Auster reenergized contemporary experimental literature with his 1986 New York Trilogy, a trio of postmodern, labyrinthine meta-detective novellas where "each detail, each small revelation must be attended to as significant. And such attention brings ambiguity, confusion, and paranoia" (New York Times Book Review). Most of his work focuses on the philosophical paradoxes of self-invention and spiritual doubt, and "his characters constantly stress the force of the word set free"...
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Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan | The Silenced Majority:...
In The Silenced Majority, grassroots journalism pioneers Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan show the power of ordinary people to change their media. The host and executive producer ofDemocracy Now!, an award-winning independent news program airing on more than 1000 stations throughout the world, Amy Goodman is a recipient of the first Right Livelihood Award, a commendation for personal courage and social transformation that is known as the ''Alternative Nobel Prize.'' She is the author of four...
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Joe Posnanski | Paterno
In 46 seasons at Penn State, legendary football coach Joe Paterno won 409 games-more than any other coach in the history of college football-led five teams to undefeated, untied seasons, won two national championships, and demanded academic success from his players. A beloved figure in Happy Valley, "Joe Pa" endowed faculty positions and scholarships, and supported the construction of an interfaith spiritual center and a library that bears his name-until his inglorious dismissal under the...
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Donald Barlett and James Steele | The Betrayal of the...
Celebrated investigative reporting team Donald L. BarlettandJames B. Steelehave worked together for nearly 40 years, first atthe Philadelphia Inquirer(1971-1997), then atTimemagazine (1997?2006), and now atVanity Fairsince 2006. The authors of seven books, including theNew York TimesbestsellerAmerica: What Went Wrong, they are the only reporting team to have received two Pulitzer Prizes for newspaper reporting and two National Magazine Awards for magazine work. In The Betrayal of the...
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Tana French | Broken Harbor
Irish novelist and actress Tana French won the 2007 Edgar Award for her New York Times bestselling debut novel In the Woods. "Drawn by the grim nature of her plot and the lyrical ferocity of her writing, even smart people who should know better will be able to lose themselves in these dark woods," praised the New York Times Book Review. She followed In the Woods with The Likeness and Faithful Place, both bestselling installments in French's psychological crime series about the Dublin Murder...
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Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Little America: The War Within...
A senior correspondent and former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran is the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, ''a devastating indictment of the post-invasion failures of the Bush administration'' (Booklist). Describing the highly secure enclave of lush plants and posh villas at the headquarters of the United States occupation of Iraq, Chandrasekaran revealed an American leadership out of touch with life outside the Green Zone. The book received the...
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Kurt Andersen | True Believers WITH Don Lee | The...
(This podcast contains explicit content.) Acclaimed for his in-depth and engaging cultural studies, the novelist Kurt Andersen is the host of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360 and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, New York and Time whose journalism and essays also appear in the New York Times. Previously he was co-founder of the legendary Spy magazine, a staff writer for The New Yorker and editor-in-chief of New York. Andersen's bestselling novels are Turn of the...
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Stephen L. Carter | The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln
In the alternate history presented in Stephen Carter's new novel, President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford's Theatre. Capturing the dramatic emotional tenor of the post-Civil War United States, Carter explores the nature of presidential authority in a story steeped in conspiracy, intrigue, and suspense.The William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, Carter is the author of the bestselling thrillers The Emperor of Ocean Park, New England White, Palace Council...
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Chris Cleave | Gold
Chris Cleave's debut novel, Incendiary-in which a grieving mother pens a raw, pleading letter to Osama bin Laden in the wake of a London terrorist attack-received a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and was adapted into a film starring Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor. The book gained notoriety for the macabre coincidence of its publication in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2005-the day of the London terrorist bombings. Cleave's second novel, Little Bee-an "astonishing, flawless novel" (Library...
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Jennifer Weiner | The Next Best Thing
(This podcast contains explicit content.) Crafted with humor and heart, Jennifer Weiner's novels feature relatable characters that face real issues-from complex relationships and careers to complicated family dynamics. She is the author of eight no. 1 New York Times bestsellers, including Good in Bed, Certain Girls, and In Her Shoes, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, and the city of Philadelphia. Weiner's experience as the co-creator...
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Carol Grant Gould and James L. Gould | Nature's Compass:...
In Nature's Compass, Carol Grant Gould and James L. Gould explore elegant navigation strategies used by familiar and rare species-from the fragile monarch butterfly to the honey bee to the homing pigeon-and demonstrate how an understanding of navigation is critical for conservation. James L. Gould is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and a distinguished expert in animal behavior. Carol Grant Gould is a science writer and author of the biography, The...
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E.J. Dionne, Jr. | Our Divided Political Heart: The...
E. J. Dionne, Jr. is a senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution, a political correspondent for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous books, including Why Americans Hate Politics,which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right. In Our Divided Political Heart, Dionne analyzes past and current U.S. politics in presenting his plan to rediscover the...
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Chris Hedges | Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt
InDays of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and American Book Award-winning cartoonist Joe Sacco show how impoverished places across America-including nearby Camden, New Jersey-stand as a warning of what happens when a permanent underclass is cemented in place. A foreign correspondent for nearly two decades, Hedges was a member of theNew York Timesteam that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global...
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Amanda Bennett | The Cost of Hope
Noted for her leadership in investigative journalism, former Philadelphia Inquirer editor Amanda Bennett received her first shared Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for coverage of the AIDS crisis, and in 2001 she led a team to a Pulitzer for Public Service, reporting on problems within the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service. Currently an executive editor at Bloomberg News directing special projects and investigations, Bennett was a Wall Street Journal reporter for more than 20 years, and...
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Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot | Exit: The Endings That Set Us...
Renowned as an educator, researcher, author, and public intellectual, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot examines the culture of schools and socialization within families and communities. The Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard University, she received the MacArthur Prize in 1984 and Harvard's George Ledlie Prize in 1993. Lawrence-Lightfoot's acclaimed books includeThe Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture andThe Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25...
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First Person StorySlam: Mistaken Identities
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival Competing storytellers from Philadelphia and Detroit tell their best mistaken-identity stories. A joint production of the Philadelphia Book Festival and First Person Arts. Host: R. Eric Thomas Guest Storyteller: Adam Wade Team Philly: Bernardo Morillo, Lansie Sylvia, Juliet Hope Wayne Team Detroit: Jackie Dunayevich, Diane Ivey, SM Shrake (recorded 4/20/2012)
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P.D. James | A Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of...
P.D. James spoke at the Free Library on the occasion of the publication of A Time to Be in Earnest, a diary of her 77th year. "She uses the format as a launching pad, moving from the events of the day...to reminiscences about her life and reflections on her craft. Her fans will find both to be of great interest, whether she is describing the birth of her daughter during a V1 rocket attack on London or musing on the difficulties of adapting crime fiction to television." Booklist (recorded...
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Andrew Blum | Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the...
Andrew Blum is a correspondent at Wired and a contributing editor at Metropolis, whose writing about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art, and travel has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, and Popular Science. Blum studied English and architecture history at Amherst College, and received his M.A. in human geography from the University of Toronto. From tiny fiber optic cables buried beneath Manhattan's busy streets to the...
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Sandor Katz | The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth...
A self-avowed "fermentation fetishist," author and activist Sandor Katz (aka Sandor Kraut) travels the world spreading the gospel of foods that are transformed and ennobled by bacteria, heralding the benefits of the ancient preservation technique that he says makes foods much more digestible and nutritious."Eating bacteria is one of life's great pleasures," he says. "Beer, wine, cheese, bread, cured meats, coffee, chocolate: Our best-loved foods are almost all fermented." Katz is a long-term...
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Edward G. Rendell | A Nation of Wusses: How America's...
Dubbed "America's Mayor" by Al Gore, Ed Rendell served as Mayor of Philadelphia from 1992 to 1999. He revived the city's economy, expanded neighborhood services, and reformed the City's approach to poverty. As the Governor of Pennsylvania from 2002 to 2011, he achieved similar progress, improving education and increasing access to healthcare. Rendell served as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and has worked as a lawyer and a Professor of Government at the University of...
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Alison Bechdel | Are you My Mother?
Since its inception in 1983, Alison Bechdel's comic stripDykes To Watch Out For has become a countercultural institution, widely anthologized and translated. Her 2006 bestselling memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, People, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, and San Francisco Chronicle, among others. In her new book, Bechdel embarks upon a richly layered search for answers about her...
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Frank Deford | Over Time
Pickwick Salon 2012 With his regular contributions to Sports Illustrated-where his by-line first appeared in 1962-NPR's Morning Edition, and Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO, Frank Deford is one of the most influential voices in sports media. The author of 19 books, Deford is a Hall of Fame member of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters. His many honors include an Emmy, a George Foster Peabody Award, and a National Magazine Award. Deford's new book, Over Time...
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Eva Gabrielsson | "There are Things I Want You to Know"...
For more than three decades, Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson-author of the internationally bestselling "Millenium" trilogy of Swedish crime thrillers that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-were inseparable.Famous only in death, Larsson was a fervent feminist, activist, and journalist who portrayed right-wing extremism and insidious neo-Nazi movement in Sweden. In There Are Things I Want You to Know, Gabrielsson lays out the parallels and gaps between the literary narratives of...
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Richard Ford | Canada
Celebrated for creating stories that express the shifting moods of the United States, Richard Ford is best known for his bestselling novel The Sportswriter and its 1995 sequel Independence Day-winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award-about famed everyman protagonist Frank Bascombe, a character who the New York Times Book Review ranks alongside "Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape." Ford's central themes include alienation and a sense of disappointment in...
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Colin Powell | It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership
General Colin Powell served as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush and National Security Advisor to President Reagan. The retired four-star general is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and two Presidential Medals of Freedom. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, Powell became a national figure during the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations in Kuwait. He is the author of My American Journey,...
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Steve Coll | Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American...
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll is the author of The Bin Ladens, a sprawling history of the bin Laden clan and a "psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind" (New York Times), and Ghost Wars, a narrative of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Coll has served as managing editor and South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post. In Private Empire, Coll probes the infamously secret world...
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Carlin Romano | America the Philosophical
Carlin Romano, critic-at-large ofThe Chronicle of Higher Education, spent 25 years as Literary Critic ofthe Philadelphia Inquirer, where he also served at various times as cultural reporter, general assignment city staffer, and correspondent based in St. Petersburg, Russia. A former president of the National Book Critics Circle, he was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His work has appeared inmany publications, including The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, Slate, and...
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Toni Morrison | Home
Acclaimed for her powerful and poetic depictions of African American culture, Toni Morrison received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Princeton University, and author of the esteemed novels The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and A Mercy. Her new book tells the story of a self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who returns to a racist United...
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Terry Tempest Williams | When Women Were Birds:...
Known for her ardent naturalist prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of Refuge, which simultaneously chronicled her mother's death from cancer-developed from nuclear testing in Nevada-and the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Open Space of Democracy, An Unspoken Hunger, and Finding Beauty in a Broken World. A leading advocate for ethics and the American West, Williams is the recipient of the Robert Marshall...
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Buzz Bissinger | Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind...
(This podcast contains explicit content.) Philadelphia's own Buzz Bissinger is the author of the bestselling nonfiction classic on high school football, Friday Night Lights, which was turned into a successful film as well as an NBC television series. A former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bissinger has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award, and his other books include A Prayer for the City and Three Nights in August. Father's Day is the true story of a father's journey...
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Paul Krugman | End This Depression Now!
A New York Times op-ed columnist since 1999, Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his work in international trade and economic geography. He is the author or editor of 23 books, including The Age of Diminished Expectations and The Conscience of a Liberal, as well as the former monthly columns "No Free Lunch" in Fortune and "The Dismal Science" in Slate. He received the2011 Gerald Loeb Awardfor Commentary for his "Paul Krugman Columns" in theNew York Times. In his new book, End This...
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Robert Caro | The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon...
For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and received virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the National Humanities medal. Caro's landmark first book, The Power Broker is an epic biography of the undisputed czar of public construction in New York City for over 40 years-who simultaneously accumulated...
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Madeleine Albright | Prague Winter: A Personal Story of...
The first woman to hold the position of United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright served in the Clinton administration from 1996 to 2000 and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. Called "a remarkable story of adventure and passion" by former Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel, Prague Winter is a moving and thoughtful memoir of Albright's formative years in Czechoslovakia during the tumultuous era of Nazi occupation, World War II, and the start of the Cold...
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Anna Quindlen | Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen's brand of accessible wisdom is ''tonic for the mind and soul'' (Booklist), often rooted at the domestic level, but addresses universal issues. Quindlen earned the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her New York Times column, "Public and Private," and she now writes the "Last Word" biweekly column for Newsweek. Her bestselling books include the novels Object Lessons and One True Thing, the collection Living Out Loud, and A Short Guide...
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Ross Douthat | Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of...
The youngest op-ed columnist in New York Times history, Ross Douthat represents a new generation of conservative commentators, credited with helping the movement find new relevance and new constituencies in the 21st century.A Harvard graduate, Douthat is the author of the critically acclaimed books, Privilege-a "withering indictment of Harvard's institutional culture" (Booklist)-and Grand New Party. In Bad Religion, Douthat argues that Christianity's place in American life has been...
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David Bezmozgis | The Free World with Leela Corman |...
This podcast contains explicit content. Called "an astute and compassionate observer, a meticulous historian and a gifted stylist" by Adam Langer in the New York Times, David Bezmozgis emigrated from Riga, Latvia to Toronto in 1980. His debut collection Natasha, about a family who fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams, was named a 2004 New York Times Notable Book and won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for First Book. In 2010, Bezmozgis was included inThe New...
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Cornel West and Tavis Smiley | The Rich and the Rest of...
Educator and philosopher, Dr. Cornel West is one of America's most provocative and gifted public intellectuals. Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, he is the author of the contemporary classic, Race Matters, which changed the course of America's dialogue on race, justice and democracy. The recipient of the American Book Award, his other books include the New York Times bestseller Democracy Matters and Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom. In 2009,...
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E.O. Wilson | The Social Conquest of Earth
The author of more than 25 books, including two Pulitzer Prize-winning works of nonfiction, E.O. Wilson has won a raft of scientific and conservation prizes, including the prestigious National Medal of Science. Wilson's writing explores the world of ants and other tiny creatures, illuminating how all creatures great and small are interdependent. A Harvard professor since 1953, his ideas have had an immeasurable influence on our understanding of life, nature, and society. He remains an...
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D. Graham Burnett | The Sounding of the Whale: Science...
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival In The Sounding of the Whale, D. Graham Burnett provides a comprehensive study of cetacean science, history, and policy. Called ''the definitive account of whalekind's transformation from cipher to signifier'' in Paul Greenberg's New York Times review, the book details the activities of the Discovery Investigations, the International Whaling Commission, and the save-the-whale movement-showing how science, politics, conservation, and the counterculture...
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Jonathan Haidt | The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are...
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival In what Psychology Today called the ''remedy for the modern glut of frivolous self-help literature,'' award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis was a widely praised demystification of life. Citing Plato, Buddha, and modern brain science, Haidt sifted Eastern and Western maxims for nuggets of modern wisdom. A social psychology professor at the University of Virginia, Haidt is an active exponent in the ''positive psychology'' movement,...
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Dava Sobel | A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus...
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival Award-winning science writer Dava Sobel's bestselling books include Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets. In the elegant Longitude, Sobel relayed the dramatic human story behind the invention of the chronometer, which revolutionized naval navigation. With Galileo's Daughter she infused the father of modern science with expressions of character and everyday details, bringing his enveloping struggle to life. A freelance writer for twenty years, Sobel...
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Robert Polito | David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the...
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival An editor, poet, and critic, Robert Polito is Director of Writing Programs at The New School and the author of National Book Critics Circle Award winner Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which untangled Thompson the author from his trademark psychopathic characters and grim tales of failed lives.. Polito's new book is a landmark volume that collects five great novels from the height of noir cult favorite David Goodis's career. Born in Philadelphia,...
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Sonia Sanchez | An Evening with Sonia Sanchez
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival ''Sanchez has long been regarded as the city's unofficial poet laureate. But now the job is truly hers,'' wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer after acclaimed activist Sonia Sanchez's appointment, at the end of 2011, as the city's very first poet laureate. The recipient of numerous awards and the former Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, Sanchez is the author of several plays, children's books, and nearly 20 collections of...
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An Evening with Philip Levine
2012 Philadelphia Book Festival Known for his "big-hearted, Whitmanesque poems about working-class Detroit" (New York Times), Philip Levine was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2011. Levine's early poems, often written in narrow, seven-syllable lines, are gritty evocations of the lives of working people, inspired by his work as a factory laborer: "I believed that if I could understand my life-or at least the part my work played in it-I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an...
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Luis Carlos Montalvn | Until Tuesday
For his two tours of duty in Iraq, writer and former U.S. Army Captain Luis Carlos Montalvn earned the Combat Action Badge, two Bronze stars and the Purple Heart. After returning home, the pressures of physical wounds, traumatic brain injury, and PTSD came down heavily on him, causing isolation from the ones he loved. Alienated and in extreme physical pain, he doubted an ultimate recovery--until he met a sensitive golden retriever, Tuesday, a service dog who'd also suffered and was unable to...
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Amitav Ghosh with Shashi Tharoor
Amitav Ghosh, one of the best known Indians writing in English today. A story of love and war, The Glass Palace begins with the shattering of the Burmese kingdom and the birth of a great and passionate love. It goes on to tell the story of a people and a family through three generations of Indian history. Ghosh's books include The Circle of Reason, and In An Antique Land. He will read from The Glass Place. Diplomat, writer and champion of Indian culture, Shashi Tharoor has worked for the...
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Amy Tan | The Opposite of Fate
Amy Tan is the author of best-selling novels The Joy Luck Club, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Kitchen God's Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses. The Joy Luck Club was made into a film, for which she co-wrote the screenplay. Tan's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's and The Atlantic. The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings is her first work of non-fiction. (recorded 10/28/2003)
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Guerilla Girls | Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers
The Guerilla Girls' illustrated guide to female stereotypes. (recorded 9/25/2003)
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Rosamond Bernier | Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir
Born in Philadelphia, 95-year-old Rosamond Bernier has tamed wild animals, flown her own plane, and befriended the likes of Henri Matisse, Leonard Bernstein, and Frida Kahlo. The first-ever European features editor forVoguein post-war Paris, she co-founded the influential art magazine L'OEIL in 1955. Returning stateside in 1971, she embraced a new career as a lecturer and married the love of her life, New York Times art critic John Russell. Bernier's vivid lectures on art and artists at the...
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Arlen Specter | Life Among the Cannibals: A Political...
The longest-serving senator in Pennsylvania history, Senator Arlen Specterbegan his goodbye speech after 30 years in office by declaring: "This is not a farewell address but rather a closing argument." Referring to the internal ideological wrangling that forced him from the Republican Party in 2009-only to be defeated in a Democratic primary in 2010-Specter decried the gridlocked Senate in his farewell address, lamenting: "In some quarters, compromise has become a dirty word... Politics is...
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Lionel Shriver | The New Republic with Heidi Julavits |...
Lionel Shriver is the author of 10 novels and the recipient of the 2005 Orange Prize for her acclaimed bookWe Need to Talk About Kevin, recently adapted into a major motion picture. With her gift for psychological portraiture and a knack for skewering timely social phenomena, Shriver's work is "tough, complicated, brilliant," according to The New Republic's Ruth Franklin. "Shriver isn't the kind of writer who lets her themes bubble up opaquely; she seizes them and interrogates them for all...
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Sarah Vowell | Unfamiliar Fishes
Cultural critic and public radio giant Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for National Public Radio'sThis American Lifeand the author ofThe Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli, and Assassination Vacation.Known for her witty and irreverent exposs of the glorious conundrums of United States history, Vowell examines the far-reaches of Western intervention in our 50th state in her new book, Unfamiliar Fishes. With an eye not just to power but to (as Vowell claims), "our favorite religion,...
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Edwidge Danticat | Create Dangerously: The Immigrant...
One Book, One Philadelphia Grand Finale Featured author Edwidge Danticat will discuss the themes in the 2012 One Book, One Philadelphia selection, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. The evening will also feature an exciting musical performance by Haitian American composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, whose eclectic works have included commissions from Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress as well as collaborations with artists ranging from Philip Glass to Lady...
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Elaine Pagels | Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and...
Elaine Pagels burst the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement in her 1979 bookThe Gnostic Gospels,which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th century. Known for her work in translating the Nag Hammadi Library, she joined the Princeton faculty in 1982, shortly after receiving a MacArthur Fellowship. Her other books includeThe Origin of Satan; New York Times...
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George Dyson | Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the...
In the 1940s and 1950s, a group of brilliant engineers led by John von Neumann gathered in Princeton, New Jersey with the joint goal of realizing Alan Turing's theoretical universal machine-a thought experiment that scientists use to understand the limits of mechanical computation. As a result of their fervent work, the crucial advancements that dominated 20th century technology emerged. In Turing's Cathedral, technology historian George Dyson recreates the scenes of focused experimentation,...
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James B. Stewart | DisneyWar
James B. Stewart is the best-selling author of Blind Eye and Blood Sport, and the blockbuster Den of Thieves. A former Page-One editor at the Wall Street Journal, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and an editor-at-large for Smart Money. In DisneyWar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning business reporter tells the inside story of the bitter struggle for control of the powerful and secretive Disney Corporation. (recorded 3/22/2005)
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Arthur Schlesinger | War and the American Presidency
Arthur Schlesinger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the author of more than 20 books, including A Thousand Days: john Kennedy in the White House. (recorded 1/27/2005)
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Alain de Botton | Religion for Atheists: A...
Alain de Botton's aphoristic first novel, On Love, was a winking dissertation on romantic love, published when he was just 23. It was followed by several books that explored a philosophy of everyday life, including The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life, which have achieved bestselling status in 30 countries. He also founded and helps to run The School of Life in London, dedicated to a new vision of education on how to live well. In Religion for Atheists, de Botton...
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Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander | New American...
Jonathan Safran Foer became a certified literary wunderkind at the age of 25 with his debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, which told the story of a young man's search across the obliterated Ukrainian landscape for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. His New York Times bestseller, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was called "an uplifting myth born of the sorrows of 9/11" (Boston Globe). Nathan Englander is the author ofThe Ministry of Special Casesand For the Relief of...
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Jodi Picoult | Lone Wolf
The queen of the book club, Jodi Picoult is known for her fictional page-turners that feature nuanced characters, pitch-perfect descriptions of suburbia-and the darkness it often conceals-and unfettered insight into the shape-shifting terrain of family relationships. Her stories plumb hot-button topics ranging from teenage suicide and stem cell research to date rape and school shootings. She is the author of 18 novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers House Rules, Handle with...
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Ann Beattie | Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life...
After publishing several stories inThe New Yorker, Ann Beattie burst on the literary scene in 1976 with Chilly Scenes of Winter and promptly became the unofficial diarist of a generation, delivering "irony-laced reports from the front line of the baby boomers' war with themselves" (Vanity Fair). With spare, whip-smart prose, Beattie portrayed the sorts of relationships-the results of divorce, sexual liberation, or youthful aimlessness-that were the norm for those who came of age in the 1960s...
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Martin Luther King III | Reach for Peace
Martin Luther King's son discusses peace in America. (recorded 1/5/2005)
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Trudy Rubin, Willfull Blindness: The Bush Administration...
Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of the Inquirer's editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in the Inquirer and runs regularly in many newspapers around the U.S. A foreign policy pundit who goes to the war zones she covers: Lebanon, Bosnia, Chechnya, the West Bank and Gaza, and now Iraq, Rubin is a former foreign correspondent who was one of the few women journalists to cover the Lebanon war in the early 80s. Willful Blindness...
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Roddy Doyle | Oh, Play That Thing
Irish author Roddy Doyle writes rowdy novels rooted in the working-class experience, replete with colloquial vulgarisms and vibrant slang. In Doyle's tales, from The Commitments (his debut) to Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (the 1993 Booker Prize winner), lives are tough but beauty and tenderness shine through. Oh, Play That Thing is the fast-moving, picaresque sequel to A Star Called Henry, Doyle's novel of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. (recorded 11/10/2004)
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Terry Gross | All I Did Was Ask
Co-sponsored by WHYY Tickets $15 (215) 569-9700 All I Did Was Ask is a fascinating collection of revealing interviews by Terry Gross, the award-winning host of National Public Radio's premier interview program, Fresh Air. Over the last twenty years, Gross has talked with our most celebrated writers, actors, musicians, comics, and artists including John Updike, Sonny Rollins, Jodie Foster and Philip Roth. Fresh Air, produced by WHYY in Philadelphia, is one of NPR's most popular programs with...
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Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell's In It: Portraits of...
Director, actor, and journalist, Peter Bogdanovich studied under Stella Adler and had bit parts in some 1950s television dramas. In the 1960s, he began publishing interviews and essays on movies in Esquire and other magazines. 1971's The Last Picture Show was his big-budget directorial debut. His later films include What's Up Doc?, The Paper Chase, Daisy Miller, Mask, and Noises Off. The multi-talented director appeared recently as Dr. Melfi's psychiatrist on HBO's "The Sopranos." (recorded...
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Emma Donoghue | Life Mask and Susanna Clarke
Award-winning Irish writer Emma Donoghue has published five books of fiction, two works of literary history, two anthologies, and drama for both stage and radio. Her novel Slammerkin won the 2002 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. The Seattle Times has called her work "eccentric, un-tethered genius." In Life Mask, Donoghue relates the startling true story of a scandalous 1790s London love triangle. Appearing with Susanna Clarke. (recorded 9/13/2004)
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Carl Hiaasen | Skinny Dip
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. His nine previous novels include Sick Puppy, Lucky You, Stormy Weather, and Hoot, a 2003 Newbery honor title. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his journalism, Hiassen writes a twice-weekly metropolitan column for the Miami Herald. Skinny Dip is a "hilarious, full-throttle" ride through the warped politics of money and the human heart by a master of the genre. (recorded 7/15/2004)
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E.J. Dionne, Jr. | Stand Up Fight Back: Republican...
A political correspondent for the Washington Post and regular commentator on NPR, E. J. Dionne, Jr. is a senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution. His books include Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process and They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. His column appears on The Post's opinion page on Tuesdays and Fridays. (recorded 6/15/2004)
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Jim and Kate Lehrer
Often called the "Dean of Moderators," Jim Lehrer has presided over eleven presidential and vice-presidential debates. He is also the author of 14 novels, including Flying Crows. Mrs. Kate Lehrer is the author of several books, including Confessions of a Bigamist. (recorded 6/10/2004)
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Katherine Dunham | An On-Stage Interview with the...
Katherine Dunham has been called the "Matriarch of Black Dance." A pioneer in the use of folk and ethnic choreography, her unprecedented blend of cultural anthropology with the artistry of dance produced groundbreaking forms of movement and established black dance as an art form in its own right. Her professional troupe, formed in the 1940's, was a first for African Americans and led the way for future dance notables including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Arthur Mitchell's Dance...
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Kathryn Harrison | The Mother Knot | Interviewed by...
Kathryn Harrison's first novel, Thicker Than Water and her second, Exposure, were both New York Times Notable Books. Her best-selling memoir, The Kiss, ignited a firestorm of controversy; the subject: Harrison's four-year sexual relationship with her father. The Mother Knot addresses the psychological "knot" that bound Harrison to the memory of her estranged and capricious mother. Tracey Tanenbaum, Senior Producer of WXPN's World Caf will interview Kathryn Harrison. Co-sponsored by Blue Sky....
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David Brooks | On Paradise Drive: How We Live (And...
A native of Wayne, PA, David Brooks is a senior editor of the Weekly Standard, a columnist for the New York Times, a contributing editor the Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." His best-selling book Bobos in Paradise chronicled the rise of the "bourgeois bohemian" class. On Paradise Drive has been called a "work of comic sociology, describing how Americans actually live and behave, and how our odd behaviors have deep cultural roots that define us."...
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Diane Ravitch | Language Police: How Pressure Groups...
A dedicated historian of education, Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and holds the Brown Chair in Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. A former Assistant Secretary in the US Department of Education, she was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by President Bill Clinton. Her latest book, Language Police, takes lobbyists to task for bowdlerizing the language and content of textbooks and standardized exams. (recorded 5/26/2004)
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Ron Chernow | Alexander Hamilton
Winner of the National Book Award for his first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, Ron Chernow has been called in the New York Times "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades." Chernow also authored national bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Titan, a biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and The Warburgs, winner of the Eccles Prize for the Best Business Book, 1993. (recorded...
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Charles Ellis | Capital: The Story of Long-Term...
Charles Ellis is an expert on investment management. For thirty years, he was Managing Partner of Greenwich Associates, the leading worldwide strategy consultant to the investment industry. Ellis teaches at Harvard Business School, chairs AIMR (the investors' professional organization), and serves as a Director of Vanguard. Capital tells the story of one of the largest and most successful investment management organizations. (recorded 5/12/2004)
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James Hillman | A Terrible Love of War
James Hillman studied with psychiatrist Carl Jung in the 1950s and went on to become the first director of studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich. A profoundly subversive thinker - called "a thorn in the side of respectable psychologists" - Hillman's archetypal psychology posits a poetic basis for the psychology of psyche as "soul." He is the author of The Soul's Code, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1996. A Terrible Love of War, "undertakes a groundbreaking...
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Richard Clarke | Against All Enemies: Inside America's...
Richard Clarke's recent public testimony before the 9/11 Commission prompted an unprecedented furor in the media. Clarke's allegations are further detailed in his new book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. Known as a hard-liner against terrorists, Richard Clarke was appointed by President Clinton as the first National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism in May 1998 and continued in that position under President George W. Bush. Clarke...
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Simon Winchester | Krakatoa
Perhaps best known for his work The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester now focuses his attention on the devastating volcanic eruption of Krakatoa. The explosion, heard almost 3,000 miles a way, resulted in the deaths of nearly 40,000 people. Publisher's Weekly considers Krakatoa to be, "An erudite, fascinating account by one of the foremost purveyors of contemporary nonfiction, [that] chronicles the underlying causes, utter devastation and lasting effects of the cataclysmic 1883...
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Louis Begley | Shipwreck
Lawyer turned writer, Louis Begley first appeared on the literary landscape in 1991 with his loosely autobiographical holocaust fiction, Wartime Lies, for which he received a National Book Award nomination and a PEN/Ernest Hemingway First Fiction Award. Begley received wide acclaim again in 1996 with About Schmidt, which Bookpage called "a grimly witty, credible examination of a flawed, disappointed prince of privilege." The novel was adapted for a film written and directed by Alexander...
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Cokie Roberts | Founding Mothers
For her journalism Cokie Roberts has garnered both an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award. She is co-anchor of the ABC's This Week and serves as a news analyst for National Public Radio. She has earned Mother of the Year awards from both the National Mother's Day Committee and the American Cancer Society. Her latest book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, draws on both her maternal and journalistic experiences. Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 4/20/2004)
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Dave Eggers and Neal Pollack
Dave Eggers is the bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Neal Pollack is a major contributor to McSweeney's. (recorded 4/19/2004)
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