Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Daniel James Brown tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. Brown happened on this little-known piece of history while visiting his dying neighbor Joe Rantz, one of the crew members. Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream The Boys in the Boat is about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times.

Daniel James Brown is the author of two previous nonfiction books, including Under a Flaming Sky. He has taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford. (www.danieljamesbrown.com)

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 17, 2013

In 2013, in a nationally televised contest, 14-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson is asked to use the word "niggardly" in a sentence. He has a meltdown and storms off, and the video of his outburst goes viral. City is sent to stay with his grandmother in Melahatchie, Mississippi where a girl named Baize Shepard has recently disappeared. City is distracted by a strange novel written by an unknown author, titled Long Division and narrated by a boy named City Coldson living in Melahatchie in 1985. Laymon weaves together the two stories in a tragi-comic exploration of race, adolescence, Southern history, authorship, and technology spanning the years from the 1960s through the '80s to the present day.

Kiese Laymon was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned an MFA from Indiana University. He is a contributing editor at Gawker.com and has written for numerous publications, including Esquire and ESPN.com. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Vassar College. His collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, will be published in August, 2013.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Jessica Anya Blau's new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, tells the story of 20-year-old Allie Dodgson who's working part-time in a dress shop which turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business. Out of her element, Allie finds herself stealing a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine and going on the lam. Jessica Blau is the author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home.

Sarah Pekkanen is the author of three previous novels: The Opposite of Me, Skipping a Beat, and These Girls. In The Best of Us, she puts four married couples in a luxury villa in Jamaica, adds one nasty storm, and lets the sparks fly. All four women are desperate not just for a reunion, but for an escape from the reality of their family lives. As a powerful hurricane bears down on the island, turmoil swirls inside the villa, forcing each of the women to reevaluate everything they know about their friends -- and themselves.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 26, 2013

"When my son came out to me, I was deeply fearful that he could never be happy, and I felt profound sorrow."
Thus began one woman's extraordinary, silence-breaking journey. Catherine Tuerk set out to educate herself and others about gay people. She became a leader in PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), wrote articles for various publications, and appeared on television and radio. Mom Knows is a collection of her writings over the past two decades. A psychotherapist in private practice, Catherine Tuerk is a senior consultant to the Gender and Sexuality Advocacy and Education Program at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Rick Atkinson is the reigning chronicler of World War II. More than 15 years ago he set out to write the "Liberation Trilogy," the most comprehensive story of the Allied Forces in Europe and North Africa. An Arm at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first in the series, won a Pulitzer Prize for history and was a New York Times bestseller, as was the second book, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

The Guns at Last Light tells the story of the final year of the European war, from Normandy and the invasion of southern France through all the monumental struggles leading to the Third Reich's surrender on May 8, 1945. The book includes 80 black and white photographs, some of which have never been seen before, plus 29 original maps drawn by master cartographer Gene Thorp.

Rick Atkinson is a former staff writer and editor at the Washington Post. His many awards include a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, the George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award.

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 18, 2013