Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, A Bright Shining Lie, tells the story of the nuclear arms race that changed history and the visionary American Air Force officer, Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. He details Schriever's quest to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War was named "one of the 10 best books of 2009" by Publishers Weekly.

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Alexandra Natapoff, professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, is an award-winning scholar and a nationally recognized expert on snitching in the criminal justice system.

In her book, she discusses the widespread use of criminal informants, the legal, cultural and political consequences, from street to drug crime to Hip Hop music, the FBI, and terrorism.

Natapoff served as assistant federal public defender in Baltimore from 1998 to 2003.

Recorded On: Sunday, February 21, 2010

In 2007, David Beckham left the comfort and securiity of European soccer and embarked on a new and risky adventure in the U.S. with the L.A. Galaxy. Sports writer Grant Wahl spent two years following Beckham and the Galaxy. In The Beckham Experiment, he provides the behind-the-scenes drama of Beckham's time on the road in one of sports' most fascinating gambles. 

In 12 years at Sports Illustrated, Grant Wahl has written 31 cover stories and covered five World Cups, three Olympics, and 12 NCAA basketball tournaments.

Recorded On: Wednesday, February 17, 2010

This annual Cave Canem poetry reading at the Pratt features three dynamic young voices: Samiya Bashir, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.

Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was the 2001 Cave Canem Prize winner; her new collection is Open Interval, a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Poetry. Ronaldo Wilson received the 2007 Cave Canem Prize for Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man.

Recorded On: Sunday, December 6, 2009

Recorded On: Sunday, November 22, 2009

Why is race still an uncomfortable subject to talk about in the United States? Join us for this conversation with Rich Benjamin, author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, and Tim Wise, author of Between Barack & A Hard Place: Racism & White Denial in the Age of Obama. Benjamin and Wise will discuss white America's struggle to talk about race. Rich Benjamin is a Demos Senior Fellow.

Part of the year-long speaker series, "Talking About Race," presented in partnership with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. Cosponsor: Demos

Recorded On: Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Are you leading an "unwealthy" lifestyle? What's your worst bad habit when it comes to your finances?

Financial lifestyle coach Deborah Owens answers your questions and show you how to develp the seven "wealthy" habits.

Recorded On: Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Recorded On: Monday, November 9, 2009

Ariel Sabar's father Yona was born in a tiny village in the Kurdiish region of Iraq, in a Jewish enclave so isolated that the residents still spoke Aramaic. Yona Sabar and thousands of other Iraqi Jews were resettled in Israel in the 1950s. From there, he went to Yale University and became a professor of Near Eastern languages at UCLA, dedicated to preserving the unique heritage of the Jews of Kurdistan.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar wanted nothing to do with his father's strange immigrant heritage -- until he had a son of his own. In My Father's Paradise, Ariel Sabar retells his father's story and finds his own.

Ariel Sabar covered the 22008 U.S. presidential campaigns for The Christian Science Monitor. He is an award-winning former staff writer for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. My Father's Paradise won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award for autobiography.

Recorded On: Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Josh Weil's The New Valley, published last year, was honored with a "5 Under 35" National Book Award and was a New York Times Editors Choice selection. It recently was honored with the 2010 New Writers Award in Fiction from the Great Lakes Colleges Association.

Set in the hardscrabble hill country between West Virginia and Virginia, the three linked novellas open up the private worlds of three very different men as they confront love, loss, and their own personal demons.

Weil's fiction has been published in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train. He has written nonfiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets and Writers. Since earing his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Writer's Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' conferences. As the 2009 Tickner Fellow, Josh Weil is the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in Baltimore.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 27, 2010