Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

John D. Negroponte's career, spanning 50 years of unprecedented American global power, includes his service as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines and Iraq. Though considered the ultimate insider, he opposed Henry Kissinger in Vietnam and warned that the Iraq War could be another "Vietnam."

George W. Liebmann, lawyer and historian specializing in American and international diplomatic history, delivers this incisive account of Negroponte's life and career, based on personal and shared experience.

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Twenty-one years ago, Jim Ziolkowski gave up a fast-track career in corporate finance to dedicate his life to buildOn, an organization that turns inner-city teens into community leaders at home and abroad. Walk in Their Shoes tells the story of Jim's movement and the thousands of young people who have decided to step forward and make a difference.

The students of buildOn have contributed more than 1.2 million hours of service, from Detroit and the South Bronx to Haiti, Mali, and Nepal, while building more than 550 schools worldwide. Together they are breaking the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations in their own lives and transforming their communities.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 8, 2014

On June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to battle German forces. It was the greatest sea-borne assault in human history. The invasion, and the victories that followed, would not have been possible without Neptune, the massive naval operation that led to it.

Craig L. Symonds, professor of history emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy, is the author of many books on American naval history, including The Battle of Midway and Lincoln and His Admirals, co-winner of the Lincoln Prize in 2009.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Three bestselling Maryland writers – Sheri Booker (Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner City Funeral Home), Dan Fesperman (The Double Game), and Sarah Pekkanen (Catching Air) – talk about their books and the writing life with Tom Hall of WYPR’s “Maryland Morning.”

Sheri Booker, teacher at Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women is the 2014 winner of the NAACP Image Award for outstanding literary work by a debut author for her memoir, Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner City Funeral Home.

Award winning local author and former Baltimore Sun writer Dan Fesperman’s travels as a writer have taken him to thirty countries, three war zones and have proved great material for his many novels, including The Double Game, now available in paperback.

Bethesda Magazine columnist and former Baltimore Sun writer Sarah Pekkanen’s fifth novel, Catching Air, has just been published by Simon and Schuster. 

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Between 1935 and 1943, the U.S. government commissioned 44 photographers to capture American faces, along with living and working conditions, across the country. Of the 180,000 photographs taken and now preserved at the Library of Congress, Constance Schulz presents a selection from the 4,000 taken in Maryland -- the farms and coal fields of western Maryland, the tobacco fields of southern Maryland, watermen in wooden boats along the Eastern Shore. 

Constance Schulz is a professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. Presented in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Press.

Recorded On: Thursday, June 19, 2014