Free Library Podcast

Acclaimed for creating cuisine that seamlessly blends Western ingredients with those of his native Japan, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto is one of the culinary world's brightest stars. After working his way up to the position of head chef of the elite New York eatery Nobu, Morimoto opened his namesake establishment in Philadelphia in 2001. He has since opened restaurants in New York, Mumbai, Napa, and Waikiki, among other many other far-flung locations. In Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking, Morimoto demystifies his country's cuisine through easily accessible and adaptable recipes built on common ingredients mixed with, of course, his signature irreverent twists. 

(recorded 11/9/2016)

The debut novel, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris was translated into 24 different languages, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award. Written in the stylistically challenging first-person plural, the novel captured the desperation of office workers as they faced downturns and layoffs in their company. In his new novel The Unnamed, Ferris follows a man who had the perfect job and the perfect family, until his undiagnosable disease, which forces him to drop what he is doing at any given moment and walk aimlessly for days on end, threatens to destroy them both.

Jonathan Dee is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, and the former senior editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of four previous novels, including Palladio. From advertising's corrosive impact on society to the frenzy caused by media and celebrity, Dee ''is the kind of writer who thinks hard about contemporary realities and then builds sturdy, stately novels of ideas around them'' (New York Times). Of The Privileges, Dee's new novel, author Jonathan Franzen writes, ''Mr. Dee has given us a cunning, seductive novel about the people we thought we'd all agreed to hate. His case study of American mega-wealth is delicious.'' (recorded 1/28/2010)

Candice Millard's bestselling The River of Doubt, the story of Theodore Roosevelt's near-fatal exploration of the Amazon, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many other periodicals. A former National Geographic writer and editor, she charted the life and death of President James A. Garfield in her second book, Destiny of the Republic. It won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book and was named to several best-of-the-year lists. In her latest offering, Millard chronicles Winston Churchill's extraordinary Boer War exploits.

Blanche Wiesen Cook is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt, a ''spirited and absorbing ... impassioned and sensitive'' (New York Times) multi-volume Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning biography of the quintessential American First Lady. The Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College, she has also written The Declassified Eisenhower and Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution. From a world at war to FDR's death to the founding of the U.N., the final volume in Cook's biography examines the visionary former First Lady's most trying and influential years.

Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture

(recorded 11/7/2016)

Dava Sobel is one of the most prominent, critically acclaimed, bestselling narrative nonfiction writers working today.  A former science reporter for the New York Times, she is the recipient of the National Science Board's prestigious Individual Public Service Award, the Boston Museum of Science's Bradford Washburn Award, and many others. She has served as the editor for The Best American Science Writing, and even had an asteroid (#30935) named for her. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker, Audubon, Discover, Life, Omni, and Harvard Magazine. Sobel is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets.

Renowned for her work in deciphering the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the India Abroad Foundation's ''Face of the Future'' Award, and fellowships from Harvard and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. A member of the Royal Astronomical Society and the American Physical Society, she also serves on the scientific advisory board of PBS's NOVA scienceNOW. Exploring everything from the big bang to the possibility of other universes, Mapping the Heavens is a greatest-hits tour of the cosmological findings that have changed our modern understanding of the universe.

Please allow extra time to get to Parkway Central, due to extensive road work in the area.

 

(recorded 12/13/2016)

Candice Millard's bestselling The River of Doubt, the story of Theodore Roosevelt's near-fatal exploration of the Amazon, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many other periodicals. A former National Geographic writer and editor, she charted the life and death of President James A. Garfield in her second book, Destiny of the Republic. It won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book and was named to several best-of-the-year lists. In her latest offering, Millard chronicles Winston Churchill's extraordinary Boer War exploits.

Blanche Wiesen Cook is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt, a ''spirited and absorbing ... impassioned and sensitive'' (New York Times) multi-volume Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning biography of the quintessential American First Lady. The Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College, she has also written The Declassified Eisenhower and Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution. From a world at war to FDR's death to the founding of the U.N., the final volume in Cook's biography examines the visionary former First Lady's most trying and influential years.

Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture

(recorded 11/7/2016)

Dava Sobel is one of the most prominent, critically acclaimed, bestselling narrative nonfiction writers working today.  A former science reporter for the New York Times, she is the recipient of the National Science Board's prestigious Individual Public Service Award, the Boston Museum of Science's Bradford Washburn Award, and many others. She has served as the editor for The Best American Science Writing, and even had an asteroid (#30935) named for her. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker, Audubon, Discover, Life, Omni, and Harvard Magazine. Sobel is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets.

Renowned for her work in deciphering the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the India Abroad Foundation's ''Face of the Future'' Award, and fellowships from Harvard and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. A member of the Royal Astronomical Society and the American Physical Society, she also serves on the scientific advisory board of PBS's NOVA scienceNOW. Exploring everything from the big bang to the possibility of other universes, Mapping the Heavens is a greatest-hits tour of the cosmological findings that have changed our modern understanding of the universe.

Please allow extra time to get to Parkway Central, due to extensive road work in the area.

 

(recorded 12/13/2016)

In conversation with Jason Freeman

Cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz is the author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. Owing to its insight and plain-spoken lightness, the book pawed its way to no. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for more than 60 weeks. In addition to teaching psychology, canine cognition, and creative nonfiction at Barnard College, Horowitz was a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, served on the staff of The New Yorker, is the author of several other scientific works, and has studied the cognition of rhinos, bonobos, and that most bizarre animal, humans. Her new book explains the ways dogs comprehend the world through their most acute and profound sense.  (recorded 12/6/2016)

In conversation with Jason Freeman

Cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz is the author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. Owing to its insight and plain-spoken lightness, the book pawed its way to no. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for more than 60 weeks. In addition to teaching psychology, canine cognition, and creative nonfiction at Barnard College, Horowitz was a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, served on the staff of The New Yorker, is the author of several other scientific works, and has studied the cognition of rhinos, bonobos, and that most bizarre animal, humans. Her new book explains the ways dogs comprehend the world through their most acute and profound sense.  (recorded 12/6/2016)

''One of America's premier writers of fiction (New York Times), John Edgar Wideman was the first two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, for his novels Sent for You Yesterday and Philadelphia Fire. His more than 20 other works of fiction and nonfiction include the story collection God's Gym, the memoir Brothers and Keepers, and the novel Fanon. He is a professor at Brown University whose other honors include a National Book Award nomination, an O. Henry Award, and a MacArthur Genius Grant. Writing to Save a Life examines the U.S. Army's execution of the father of tragically iconic civil rights martyr Emmett Till.

(recorded 11/17/2016)

''With a fiction writer's feel for character'' (Philadelphia Inquirer), Ross King is the author of several nonfiction works that situate art within the context of the history in which it was born, including the New York Times bestsellers Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, The Judgment of Paris, and Leonardo and the Last Supper-an examination of Da Vinci's transcendence of political, religious, and inner turmoil to create the masterpiece that would forever define him. In Mad Enchantment, King paints a portrait of the artistic struggles and personal torments churning below the pre-eminent Impressionist's tranquil creations.

Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture (recorded 11/22/2016)