Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us over and over again). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century's greatest radicals and most compelling figures. At his funeral in 2016, eulogists said Ali had transcended race and united the country, but they got it wrong. Race was the theme of Ali's life. He insisted that America come to grips with a black man who wasn't afraid to speak out or break the rules.

Ali went from being one of the most despised men in the country to one of the most beloved. In Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig breaks new ground and radically reshapes our understanding of Muhammad Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali's life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He also had access to thousands of pages of new FBI and Justice Department files, as well as dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s.

Revealing Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics and his neurological condition, Ali is a story about race, about a brutal sport, and about a fascinating man who shook up the world.

Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of numerous books including Luckiest Man and Opening Day. He is a contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal.

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

Recorded On: Thursday, October 26, 2017

Melvin A. Goodman's long career as a respected intelligence analyst at the CIA, specializing in US/Soviet relations, ended abruptly. In 1990, after twenty-four years of service, Goodman resigned when he could no longer tolerate the corruption he witnessed at the highest levels of the agency. In 1991 he went public, blowing the whistle on top-level officials and leading the opposition against the appointment of Robert Gates as CIA director. In the widely covered Senate hearings, Goodman charged that Gates and others had subverted "the process and the ethics of intelligence" by deliberately misinforming the White House about major world events and covert operations.

In Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider's Account of the Politics of Intelligence, Goodman tells the whole story. Retracing his career with the Central Intelligence Agency, he presents a rare insider's account of the inner workings of America's intelligence community, and the corruption, intimidation, and misinformation that lead to disastrous foreign interventions. Whistleblower at the CIA is an invaluable and historic look into one of the most secretive and influential agencies of US government--and a wake-up call for the need to reform its practices.

Melvin A. Goodman was a Soviet analyst at the CIA and the Department of State for 24 years, and a professor of international relations at the National War College for 18 years. He served in the U.S. Army in Athens, Greece for three years, and was intelligence adviser to the SALT delegation from 1971–1972. Currently, Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He has authored, co-authored, and edited seven books, including National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism; Gorbachev's Retreat: The Third World; The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze; The Phantom Defense: America's Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion; Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk, and Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. His articles and op-eds have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Harper's, Foreign Policy, Foreign Service Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and The Washington Post. He lives in Bethesda, MD.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Shirley J. Brewer graduated from careers in palm-reading, bartending, and speech therapy. She serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Baltimore. Recent poems appear in Barrow Street, Comstock Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Slant, and other journals. Shirley’s poetry chapbooks include A Little Breast Music (2008, Passager Books) and After Words (2013, Apprentice House). New from Main Street Rag in 2017 is Shirley’s first full-length collection of poems, Bistro in Another Realm.

Originally from New England, Sarah Merrow pulled up roots six years ago and made Baltimore her home. Her chapbook, Unpacking the China, was the winner of the QuillsEdge Press 2015-2016 chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, and she has published essays in The Flutist Quarterly, a trade magazine. In addition to writing poetry, she rebuilds and repairs concert flutes for professional flutists.

Jadi Z. Omowale was born and bred in Baltimore, Maryland, where she began writing poetry in fifth grade and has never stopped. Her chapbook of poetry, The Goddess in the Girl, is newly released by Three Sistahs Press, LLC (spring 2017). Her work has been published in Temba Tupu!, an anthology of poetry, fiction, and essays by African American women, Essence magazine, Cave Canem anthologies 2003 and 2004, Welter, and the Black Review. She is a Cave Canem fellow and has attended Soul Mountain Retreat and the Hurston/Wright Writers Week. Jadi is currently at work on a full collection of poetry and completing her first novel, Killing Ants. She is an assistant professor of English at the Community College of Baltimore County.

Michelle M. Tokarczyk was born in the Bronx to a working-class white family; they moved to a suburban-like section of Queens when she was nine years old, but her heart remained in the Bronx. She attended Herbert Lehman College and earned a BA in English; then she went on to SUNY Stony Brook and got a doctorate. For over two decades she has been a professor at Goucher College in Baltimore. Her first book, The House I’m Running From, was published by West End Press. Her poems have also appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the minnesota review, The Literary Review, Slant, Third Wednesday, Calling Home: Working-Class Women’s Writings, and For a Living: The Poetry of Work. An avowed urbanite, she divides her time between Baltimore and New York City. (Photo credit: Melanie Henderson.)

Read "Plaque with Figure of a Python" and two other poems by Shirley Brewer (click on "Samples").

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Real American by Julie Lythcott-Haims, bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, is a deeply personal account of her life growing up as a biracial black woman in America. The only child of an African American father and a white British mother, she shows how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life. Real American also expresses, through Lythcott-Haims' path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."

Julie-Lythcott-Haims served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. She holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.

The program will be introduced with a performance by Mohamed Tall. Mohamed Tall is Baltimore City's current Youth Grand Slam champion, former Baltimore City Poet Ambassador, as well as the 2 time Muslim Interscholastic Tournament spoken word champion. Mohamed has opened up for various entertainers such as Native Deen, the National Poet Laureate and Congressman Elijah Cummings. 

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

Recorded On: Thursday, October 12, 2017

Rising Tides sounds an urgent wakeup call to the growing crisis of climate refugees, and offers an essential, continent-by-continent look at these dangers. Over the next few decades, as sea levels rise, storms intensify, and drought and desertification run rampant, hundreds of millions of civilians will abandon their homes, cities, and even entire countries. What will happen to these massive numbers of environmental refugees? Where will they go, what rights will they have, and who will take care of them? Detailing a number of solutions, John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins argue that no nation can tackle this universal problem alone. The crisis of climate refugees requires global, concerted solutions beyond the strategic, fiscal, and legal capability of a single country or agency.

John R. Wennersten is an environmental affairs writer and author of Global Thirst: Water and Society in the 21st Century. The Maryland Humanities Commission recently selected him as a Maryland Millennial Scholar.

Communications Director at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Denise Robbins is a writer and communications expert on climate change issues in Washington, DC. A graduate of Cornell University, she regularly publishes articles dealing with all aspects of global and national environmental change, with a focus on regional politics.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 11, 2017

In this definitive biography of Chester B. Himes, the African American author who had an extraordinary influence on black writers globally, Lawrence P. Jackson explores Himes' middle-class origins and his eight years in prison. He also recounts Himes' painful odyssey as a black World War II-era artist and his escape to Europe, where he became internationally famous for his Harlem detective series. Enhanced by friendships with Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Carl Van Vechten, Himes published twenty literary works over a long career, including the bestsellers If He Hollers, Let Him Go and Cotton Comes to Harlem.

Lawrence P. Jackson is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Indignant Generation and other works.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Grace Cavalieri's forthcoming book is Other Voices, Other Lives (Oct 2017.) She's the founder/producer of Public Radio’s “The Poet and the Poem” now from the Library of Congress.  She celebrates 40 years on-air and is a CPB silver medalist. She co-founded Pacifica’s newest station, WPFW-FM, in 1977. Then was Asst. Director of Children’s Programming for PBS; and after, headed Children’s Programming for NEH. In 2015 Grace received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Independent Review of Books, where she’s monthly columnist and poetry reviewer. She holds the Association Writing Program’s “George Garrett Award” for Service to Literature.  She’s twice the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award and, holds the Bordighera Poetry Prize, a Paterson Poetry Award, The Columbia Award, and “The National Commission on Working Women.” A recent poetry book Water on the Sun, is on the Pen American Center's "Best Books" list. Her latest play is “Calico and Lennie” (Theater for the New City, NYC, 2017.) Her latest book is With (2016, Somondoco Press) about her recent loss, husband (former Naval Aviator) Metal Sculptor, Kenneth Flynn. They have four children, four grandchildren and one great grandchild.  

Since 2007, Richard Harteis has worked as the president of the William Meredith Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the late US Poet Laureate and his partner of 36 years. Harteis served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia, worked as a physician assistant in North Africa and Asia and spent a Fulbright year as writer-in-residence at the American University in Bulgaria. For his work in the culture, he was accorded Bulgarian citizenship by decree of the President and Parliament in 1996. Harteis has taught literature and creative writing at a number of institutions over the years including The Catholic University of America, Creighton University, Mt. Vernon College, and Connecticut College. For two years he directed the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and created the NPR radio program The Sound of Writing serving as writer/director and host. He has received honors and awards for his work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. Reunion is his fifteenth book.

Recorded On: Thursday, September 14, 2017

Stoney is the true story of an African American groom of horse racing and his life as one of the sport's most respected of grooms. Walker "Stoney" Stone was one of the best-known grooms who ever put a rub-rag and comb and brush on a racehorse in America. He loved his craft and helped to prepare horses to run their best and arrive in the winners circle. Stoney was a large part of Maryland horse-racing history for over 50 years, and he displayed his craft throughout the United States.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Honoring the Memory, Career and Bequest of Henry Louis Mencken

The 2017 Mencken Memorial Lecture: "When America Was Great and Baltimore Knew Better" presented by Darryl G. Hart, author of Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken. D. G. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and has written several books on the history of Christianity, including Calvinism: A History and From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism.

Recorded On: Saturday, September 9, 2017

From September 11, 2001 to May 2, 2011, Osama Bin Laden evaded intelligence services and special forces units, drones and hunter killer squads. The Exile tells the extraordinary inside story of that decade through the eyes of those who witnessed it: bin Laden's four wives and many children, his deputies and military strategists, his spiritual advisor, the CIA, Pakistan's ISI, and many others who have never before told their stories. While we think we know what happened in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, we know little about the wilderness years that led to that shocking event.

Investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy gained unique access to Osama bin Laden's inner circle, and they recount the flight of Al Qaeda's forces and bin Laden's innocent family members, the gradual formation of ISIS by bin Laden's lieutenants, and bin Laden's rising paranoia and eroding control over his organization. They also reveal that the Bush White House knew the whereabouts of bin Laden's family and Al Qaeda's military and religious leaders, but rejected opportunities to capture them, pursuing war in the Persian Gulf instead, and offer insights into how Al Qaeda will attempt to regenerate itself in the coming years.

Cathy Scott-Clark has been a journalist, author and film-maker for more than twenty years, reporting from places as varied as Bosnia, Rwanda, Serbia, Russia, Mongolia, China, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran, Australia, Ireland, Europe and the UK and USA.

Adrian Levy is an internationally renowned and award-winning investigative journalist who worked as a staff writer and foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times for seven years before joining the Guardian as senior correspondent. He has reported from South Asia for more than a decade, and now lives in London and in France.

Scott-Clark and Levy have written five books—The Stone of Heaven (2001), The Amber Room (2004), Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy (2007), The Meadow: Kashmir 1995–Where The Terror Began (2012) and most recently The Siege (2014).

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 6, 2017