Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French's Faithful Place, is the Dublin murder squad's top detective -- and that's what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands. On one of the half-built, half-abandoned "luxury" developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it's going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can't be explained. With her signature blend of police procedural and psychological thriller, Tana French's new novel, Broken Harbor, goes full throttle with a heinous crime.

Tana French is the author of three bestselling novels, including the award-winning In the Woods. She has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for Best First Novel and the IVCA Clarion Award for Best Fiction. She trained as a professional actress at Trinity College, Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover.

Recorded On: Thursday, August 2, 2012

More than five million young adults in the U.S. have only a high school education and are facing an "opportunity divide" that strands motivated workers outside the economic mainstream. In 2000, Gerald Chertavian, a visionary businessman, former Wall Street investment banker, and longtime mentor with the Big Brother program, created Year Up to address these challenges and help close the "opportunity divide."

Year Up makes available extensive, job-focused education to underserved and marginalized urban young adults, ages 18-24, equipping them with the skills needed to enter a market starving for entry level talent. This intensive program, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, provides training, mentorship, internships, and college credits, resulting in real jobs that corporations need to fill. Today, Year Up serves more than 1400 students annually in nine cities, including Baltimore.

Recorded On: Saturday, July 28, 2012

In American Tapestry, Rachel Swarns unearths the hidden story of First Lady Michelle Obama's multiracial ancestors, a history that she herself did not know. It traces the black, white and multiracial forebears of the nation's first African American first lady back to the 19th century and reveals, for the first time, the identity of Mrs. Obama's white great-great-great grandfather, a man who remained hidden for more than a century in her family tree.

Rachel L. Swarns has been a reporter for the New York Times since 1995. She has written about domestic policy and national politics, reporting on immigration, the presidential campaigns of 2004 and 2008, and First Lady Michelle Obama. She has also worked overseas for the Times, reporting from Russia, Cuba and southern Africa where she served as the Johannesburg bureau chief.

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Harcourts of Chevy Chase, Maryland, are a respectable middle class, middle-aged, mixed-race couple with four marriageable daughters. One of the daughters, Elizabeth (Bliss) moves back home in the aftermath of a messy divorce and begins working on her Ph.D. When her younger sister Diana becomes the star of a local Bachelorette-style reality television show, "The Virgin," Bliss gets drawn into the romantic drama that ensues.

Susan Fales-Hill is the author of One Flight Up and the memoir, Always Wear Joy. A contributing editor at Essence, her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Town & Country, and Travel & Leisure.

www.susanfales-hill.com

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Rachel Hennick tells the story of her father, Bill Hennick, a firefighter and paramedic in Baltimore, a city with the busiest fire stations in the U.S. As a child, Bill survives a terrible fire and later joins the still-segregated Baltimore City Fire Department at the height of the civil rights movement. He witnesses the race riots of 1968 and the ensuing infernos. After whites begin fleeing to the suburbs, Bill develops empathy for those left behind and tries to make a difference by becoming a paramedic. a service then in its infancy. He embarks on a spiritual journey as he risks his own life in caring for the poorest of the poor in Baltimore City.

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 11, 2012

On January 1, 2009, Maggie and John Anderson, two African American professionals living in the Chicago suburbs, embarked on a year-long public pledge to "buy black." They thought that by taking a stand, the black community would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead, blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history, as well as her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our part to reverse this trend.

As CEO and cofounder of The Empowerment Experiment Foundation, Maggie Anderson has become the leader of a self-help economics movement that supports quality black businesses and urges consumers to proactively and publicly support them. Anderson received her JD and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 10, 2012

When Barack Obama took office, he brought with him a new group of foreign policy advisers intent on carving out a new global role for America in the wake of the Bush administration's war in Iraq. James Mann, the author of Rise of the Vulcans, offers a definitive, even-handed account of the messier realities they've faced in implementing their policies.

In The Obamians, Mann takes readers inside the back rooms of the White House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA to reveal the interplay of events, ideas, personalities and conflicts that drive America's foreign policy at the highest levels. At the heart of the struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies are the generational conflicts between the Democratic establishment (Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden) and Obama and his inner circle of largely unknown, remarkably youthful advisers who came of age after the Cold War had ended.

A former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent, and columnist, James Mann is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to the bestselling Rise of the Vulcans, he has written three books about America's relationship with China. He was awarded the Edward Weintal Prize in 1999 for distinguished coverage of foreign policy, and he was also a two-time winner of the Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic reporting.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Tom Wilber has spent years interviewing key players and local residents on all sides of the Marcellus Shale issue. Running from southern West Virginia through eastern Ohio, across central and northeast Pennsylvania and into New York, the Marcellus Shale formation underlies a sparsely populated region that features striking landscapes, critical watersheds, and a struggling economic base. It also contains one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible until recently. Technological developments that combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing -- "fracking" -- have removed physical and economic barriers to extracting gas from bedrock deep below the Appalachian basin. Under the Surface is the first book-length journalistic overview of shale gas development and the controversies surrounding it.

Tom Wilber has been in the newspaper business for more than 20 years and has written for the Central New York Business Journal and the Watertown Daily Times. For 17 years he worked for the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, covering business, health, and environement beats. From 1992 through 2005, he taught various journalism courses at Broome Community College and Binghamton University.

Presented in partnership with Baltimore GreenWorks as part of the "Sustainable Speaker Series."

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Syndicated columnist and political cartoonist Ted Rall revisits the rapid rise and dizzying fall of Barack Obama, and the emergence of the Tea Party and Occupy movements, and draws a startling conclusion: We the People weren't lied to. We lied to ourselves, both about Obama and the two-party system. We voted when we ought to have revolted.

Ted Rall is the winner of numerous awards and honors, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged (twice) and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 16 books, including Revenge of the Latchkey Kids, The Anti-American Manifesto, and To Afghanistan and Back. Outspoken and often controversial, Ted Rall is a frequent guest on Fox News, Al Jazeera, and Russia Today TV.

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Nikki Giovanni and Afaa Michael Weaver head a star-studded lineup of poets and writers reading and remembering Lucille Clifton on the 75th anniversary of her birth; readers include Melvin Brown, Sarah Browning, Linda Joy Burke, Hayes Davis, Teri Cross Davis, Joanne Gabbin, Reginald Harris, Bruce Jacobs and Jadi Omowale. Michael Glaser, Maryland Poet Laureate 2004-2009, will serve as emcee.

Program Notes:

Recorded On: Thursday, June 14, 2012