Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practicees that treat every African American man like a thug. In his new book, former federal prosecutor Paul Butler shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread -- all with the support of judges and politicians.

In his no-holds-barred style, Butler uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. He also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer without relying as much on police.

Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler’s controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it’s better for a black man to plead guilty—even if he’s innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.

Paul Butler provides legal commentary for CNN, MSNBC, and NPR and has been featured on 60 Minutes and profiled in the Washington Post. A law professor at Georgetown University, he is the author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, winner of the Harry Chapin Media Award. He has published numerous op-eds and book reviews, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Washington, D.C.

The Brown Lecture Series is supported by a generous grant from the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Foundation.

Recorded On: Wednesday, December 13, 2017

During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow -- winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize -- reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America’s obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary.

Now, Merrow distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that he describes as being “addicted to reform” but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters -- including “Measure What Matters,” and “Embrace Teachers” -- that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing.

John Merrow recently retired as education correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. He founded and until 2015 was the president of Learning Matters, a nonprofit media company. In 2012 Merrow became the first journalist to win the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education. He lives with his wife in New York City and his books include Choosing Excellence, Declining by Degrees, and The Influence of Teachers.

The evening is introduced by Dr. LaMarr Darnell Shields, a social entrepreneur, author, “Ubuntu” teacher, inspirational speaker, and educator who loves to create and build with purpose. As the Co-Founder and Senior Director of Education and Innovation at the Cambio Group, and former professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, Dr. LaMarr Darnell Shields has dedicated his life to inspiring adults and youth alike to pursue a higher purpose, achieve sustainable value for long-term success, and cope with adversity in order to create opportunities in their personal, professional and spiritual lives. As the Special Advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on Educational Equity, recipient of the 2015 Social Innovator Award, and 2016-2017 Open Society Institute Fellowship, Dr. Shields has been studying, writing about, and implementing change in schools and non-profit organizations for years.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Recorded On: Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Are you interested in learning how to save money without ruining your lifestyle? What about putting extra money aside for the holidays? If so, then join us for the Budgeting Basics program, featuring InvestEd, a local organization dedicated to spreading financial literacy.

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Are you interested in the publishing world? Do you want tips and tricks on how to become a published author or how to self-publish? Have you considered marketing strategies and business plans? Then join us for a panel discussion and Q&A featuring local authors and editors.

Panelists include:

Sarah Pinsker, winner of the 2016 Nebula Award for her novelette Our Lady of the Open Road

Kenneth Rogers, Jr., author of seven books, including Thoughts in Italics and Raped Black Male

Ben Anderson, self-published author of The McGunnegal Chronicles

Christine Stewart, Editor-in-Chief of Del Sol Press, recipient of an Individual Artist Award in fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and writing teacher in the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program

Gregg Wilhelm, the co-founder of Woodholme Publishers, founder of the non-profit literary arts organization CityLit Project, and publisher of the CityLit Press imprint.

Recorded On: Saturday, November 18, 2017

Written by Dr. Lydia Kang, a practicing internal medicine physician, and Nate Pedersen, a librarian and historian, Quackery offers 67 tales of outlandish treatments complete with vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements of everything from the equipment needed for Tobacco Smoke Enemas (used to save drowning victims in the Thames River) to an ad for the morphine-laced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for children.

Looking back with fascination, horror, and dark humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments” -- conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil) -- that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction. Her YA novels include Control, Catalyst, and the upcoming The November Girl. Her adult fiction debut is entitled A Beautiful Poison. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Nate Pedersen is a librarian, historian, and freelance journalist with over 400 publications in print and online, including in the Guardian, the Believer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Art of Manliness. Nate is a contributing writer for the magazine Fine Books & Collections, where he investigates the strange and unusual side of the rare-book market. 

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Recorded On: Thursday, November 16, 2017

Hilary S. Jacqmin's first book of poems, Missing Persons, was published by Waywiser Press in spring 2017. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University, her MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate production editor at Johns Hopkins University Press. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, FIELD, and elsewhere.

Greg Williamson is the author of four volumes of poetry: The Silent Partner, Errors in the Script, A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck, and The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Nicholas Roerich Prize, an NEA Grant in Poetry, and others. His poetry has been published in more than 50 periodicals and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Poetry. He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Michele Wolf is the author of Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection, The Word Works, selected by Denise Duhamel), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry, Anhinga Press, chosen by Peter Meinke), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Series, selected by J.T. Barbarese). Her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The North American Review, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A contributing editor for Poet Lore, she teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Read "Coupling" by Hilary S. Jacqmin.

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Richard Theodore Greener (1844-1922) was a renowned black activist and scholar. He was the first black graduate of Harvard College, the first black faculty member at a southern white college, and the first black U.S. diplomat to a white country, serving in Vladivostok, Russia. Yet he died in obscurity, his name barely remembered.

Because he was light-skinned and at ease among whites, Grenner's black friends and colleagues sometimes wrongfully accused him of trying to "pass." While he was overseas on a diplomatic mission, Greener's wife and five children did just that. They stayed in New York City, changed their names, and vanished into white society. Greener never saw them again.

Katherine Reynolds Chaddock's Uncompromising Activist is a long overdue biography about a man, fascinating in his own right, who also exemplified America's discomfiting perspectives on race.

Katherine Reynolds Chaddock is distinguished professor emerita of education at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of The Multi-Talented Mr. Erskine: Shaping Mass Culture through Great Books and Fine Music and Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of Black Mountain College.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Did American troops fight in Vietnam with one hand tied behind their backs? Was the draft system fair? Did antiwar protests turn U.S. policy around?

Arnold R. Isaacs , who covered the war's last three years for the Baltimore Sun and left Saigon in the final U.S. evacuation the day before South Vietnam's surrender, discusses these and other issues that have been overlooked or distorted in the continuing American debate about Vietnam. Isaacs is the author of Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia and Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy.

Recorded On: Thursday, November 9, 2017

After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led.

The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.

Peter Cozzens is the author of seventeen books on the Civil War and the American West. He recently retired after 30 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the U. S. Department of State. He also served four years as an Army officer before joining the Foreign Service. All of Cozzens' books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and/or the Military Book Club. In 2002 Cozzens received of the American Foreign Service Association's highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. 

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 8, 2017

In Crashback, journalist Michael Fabey describes the "warm war" in the Pacific Ocean, a shoving match between the United States and China. The Chinese regard the Pacific, especially the South China Sea, as their ocean, and the United States insists on asserting freedom of navigation. The immediate danger is that the five trillion dollars in international trade that passes through the area will grind to a standstill. The ultimate danger: the U.S. and China will be drawn into all-out war.

Michael Fabey has had unprecedented access to the Navy’s most exotic aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft, and submarines, as well as those who command them. He was among the only journalists allowed to board a Chinese war vessel and observe its operations.

In sobering detail, Crashback recounts the increasingly tense and sometimes fatal interactions between the superpowers—ones in which lifesaving decisions have to be made at every turn, and where the consequences of a wrong step can be devastating. But it also illuminates the brave and calculating characters behind the stealth cruisers, ultra-modern F-35 fighters, and futuristic laser weapons who are contending for dominance, making this perhaps the most deeply accessed work of reporting on the conflict yet.

Michael Fabey has reported on military and naval affairs for most of his career, winning the prestigious Timothy White Award and earning a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In his work for National Geographic Traveler, the Economist Group, Defense News, Aviation Week, and Jane’s, he has collected more than two dozen reporting awards. No other journalist has had as much firsthand experience of America’s naval ships and aircraft and the officers who command them.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 1, 2017