Free Library Podcast

Watch the video here.

Dubbed the ''anti-Tiger Mom,'' contrarian economist Bryan Caplan is the author of the ''wickedly subversive'' (Wall Street Journal) parenting manifesto Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, which argues that parenting has needlessly been turned into a tedious chore; and The Myth of the Rational Voter, which questions fundamental assumptions about why Americans vote as they do. In his latest book, Caplan argues that we need to stop wasting public money on education, explains why graduate degrees are little more than conformity signals, and advocates for major policy changes at levels of the academy. Read Caplan's essay The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone in the current issue of The Atlantic.

(recorded 1/25/2018)

Watch the video here.

Matt de la Peña was awarded the Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor for Last Stop on Market Street, a children's book that highlighted volunteerism, income inequality, and other topics not often addressed by the genre. The author of six acclaimed YA novels and the popular picture book A Nation's Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis, he has taught creative writing throughout the U.S. The author and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Otis series of books, Loren Long also illustrated Barack Obama's mega-popular Of Thee I Sing and re-illustrated the children's classic The Little Engine That Could. In Love, de la Peña and Long depict the myriad wondrous ways we experience that most universal of bonds throughout our years.

(recorded 1/27/2018)

Watch the video here.

Referred to as one of the ''world's leading authorities on armed conflict'' by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, military historian and foreign-policy analyst Max Boot is the author of The Savage Wars of Peace, War Made New, and the New York Times bestselling Invisible Armies, a centuries-spanning look at guerilla warfare. He serves as the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Echoing current-day entanglements and unlearned lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken tells the story of a legendary CIA operative and his visionary but ignored ''hearts and minds'' roadmap to an American victory in the Vietnam War. 

(recorded 2/1/2018)

Watch the video here.

The most widely read female writer in Turkey, Elif Shafak has penned more than a dozen ''vibrant, lush and lively'' (Washington Post) books that have been translated into more than 40 languages. This work includes the bestselling novels The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and The Architect's Apprentice; the memoir Black Milk, which explores the conflicts between creativity and motherhood; and scores of articles in Turkish and English for periodicals around the world, including the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and La Repubblica, among others. Her writing has been nominated for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Three Daughters of Eve explores the East and West's roiling class, wealth, and religious differences.

Acclaimed for exploring questions of identity and perception, Siri Hustvedt's many novels include the international bestsellers The Blazing World, What I Loved, and The Summer Without Men. She has published scores of essays and papers in academic journals, especially fitting because many of these works examine the broadening interdisciplinary relationship between art and science. Her many honors include the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women is a three-part essay collection that employs feminism, psychology, neuroscience, and a host of other pursuits to bridge the gaps between the sciences and humanities.

(recorded 1/31/2018)

Watch the video here.

''Absorbing and darkly funny'' (San Francisco Chronicle), James McBride is the author of the National Book Award winner The Good Lord Bird, in which a young boy born into slavery joins abolitionist John Brown's doomed mission. His nonfiction books include the New York Times bestselling memoir The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother and Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul. His other novels are Miracle at St. Anna, which he adapted for Spike Lee's film, and Song Yet Sung. Also an award-winning composer, screenwriter, and saxophonist, McBride received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2016. Five-Carat Soul is a short-story collection that examines history, race, and identity in unpredictably poignant ways.  (recorded 10/11/2017)

Watch the video here.

Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Her other books of fiction include the National Book Award Finalist Look at Me, the bestselling The Keep, and The Invisible Circus, which was adapted into a movie starring Cameron Diaz. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and McSweeney's, among an array of other publications. Manhattan Beach is a historical novel about the transformative moments before and after the Great Depression.

The Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, Carmen Maria Machado has published work in Granta, in The New Yorker, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the Calvino Prize. She has received residencies and fellowships from the University of Iowa and the Elizabeth George Foundation, among others, and is the author of the forthcoming memoir House in Indiana. In Machado's debut collection Her Body and Other Stories, narratives ''build and build until they surround and ensnare and at the end you're always glad to be all tangled up'' (NPR). (recorded 10/3/2017)

Watch the video here.

The governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of its Monetary Policy Committee from 2003 to 2013, Lord Mervyn King steered the U.K.'s central banking institution through the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing recession. Currently a professor at NYU and the London School of Economics, he was named Baron King of Lothbury in 2013 and a Knight of the Garter in 2014, and he is a Fellow of the British Academy. In The End of Alchemy, ''an outstandingly lucid account of postwar economic policymaking and the dilemmas we now face'' (Financial Times), King interprets the strengths and weaknesses of our world banking system in order to ensure a prosperous and stable future. In his talk he will discuss both his book and the implications of Brexit for the world economy.

(recorded 10/4/2017)

Watch the video here.

''Lyrical and portentous'' (The New York Times), Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex; The Virgin Suicides, which was adapted into a feature film by Sofia Coppola; and The Marriage Plot, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist that explored love and idealism in the early 1980s. A professor of creative writing at Princeton University, he is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Whiting Award for fiction. Fresh Complaint, his first story collection, follows an embezzling poet, a foundering clavichordist, an immigrant high school student, and a host of other characters questing for self-discovery and understanding. 

(recorded 10/5/2017)

Watch the video here.

In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY News

E.J. Dionne Jr. is a syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Washington Post and nearly 100 other newspapers, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. A regular commentator on National Public Radio and on other radio and television programs, his New York Times bestselling books include Why the Right Went Wrong and the National Book Award-nominated Why Americans Hate Politics. Norman J. Ornstein is a former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and an editor and columnist for National Journal and The Atlantic. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling book It's Even Worse Than It Looks. In One Nation After Trump, Dionne and Ornstein lay bare the specific dangers of the Trump administration and argue for a populist alternative to the current president's divisive rhetoric and policies. 

Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture

(recorded 10/10/2017)

Watch the video here.

A CNN political contributor and host of a popular recurring primetime special bearing his name, Van Jones was a green-jobs advisor to the Obama administration, overseeing billions in environmental recovery spending. His two bestselling books are The Green Collar Economy and Rebuild the Dream. One of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World, he is the founding president of Rebuild the Dream, an initiative to restore economic opportunity, as well as the cofounder of Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color for Change, and Green for All. A passionate manifesto that exposes hypocrisy on both sides of the political divide, Jones's latest book draws a blueprint for converting our collective angst and enmity into real change.

(recorded 10/12/2017)