Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak talks about her book, I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak's parents, Hanna and Aladar, met and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry, a vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. Hanna was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the patriarch of an aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories, were patrons of intellectuals and artists, and entertained dignitaries at their baronial estates. Szegedy-Maszak's family memoir tells the story of her parents' marriage and journey to the United States. It is also the story of the complicated relationship that Hungary had with its Jewish population.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak is an award-winning journalist who has worked as a reporter at the New York Post, an editor at Congressional Quarterly, a professor of journalism at American University, and as a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report.

Recorded On: Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Recorded On: Sunday, March 30, 2014

In Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, Terry Teachout reveals the many layers of a man as unique and complex as the music he created. Drawing on candid unpublished interviews with Ellington, revealing oral-history transcripts, and other little-known primary sources, Teachout tells Ellington's story as no one else ever has. Spanning the first three quarters of the 20th century, Ellington's life both reflected and shaped the dynamic cultural shifts of his time.

Terry Teachout is a jazz musician, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, and the author of numerous books including Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong and The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken.

Recorded On: Wednesday, March 26, 2014

A former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Brian Teare is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society. He is the author of four books—The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, the Lambda Award-winning Pleasure, and Companion Grasses, one of Slate's 10 best poetry books of 2013. An Assistant Professor at Temple University, he lives in Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Joshua Weiner is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (Chicago, 2013).  He is also the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn, and the poetry editor at Tikkun magazine.  He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2014 fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.  He teaches on the faculty of the MFA Program at the University of Maryland and lives with his family in Washington, D.C.

Read poems by Brian Teare.

Read poems by Joshua Weiner.

Recorded On: Wednesday, March 12, 2014

In his stunning forty-year career as a premier negotiator in the worlds of law, sports, business, and politics, Ron Shapiro has found that if there is a single key to a successful outcome, it is also the one we most often fail to turn. Because whether you are making a budget request, interviewing for a job, selling but holding your price, ending a relationship, or talking to children about divorce, success in those and other crucial situations lies in thoroughly planned, highly effective communication, and many of us just prefer to wing it.

In Perfecting Your Pitch, Shapiro shows us why we need to stop winging it, if we want to start maximizing any message, with his system of scripting, outlined efficiently as the Three Ds: “Draft, Devil’s Advocate, Deliver.”

"Advice from Ron Shapiro is money in the bank. If you want to learn how to deal with life and business communication challenges, then Perfecting Your Pitch is a must read." Ann Curry, NBC News National and International Correspondent and Anchor at Large

Recorded On: Wednesday, March 12, 2014