Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Ian Zolitor, host of The Folk Show on WXPN

Introduced by Cynthia Schemmer

Legendary English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg's more than 40-year musical career melds facets of folk, punk, and protest music with political and romantic themes. Some of his most famous works include Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, Don't Try This at Home, and Tooth & Nail. A longtime left-wing activist, he has testified before a commission that debated reforming the House of Lords and founded an organization that gives musical instruments to prisoners. His recent book Roots, Radicals and Rockers tells the story of the music genre skiffle. In The Three Dimensions of Freedom, Bragg prescribes liberty, equality, and accountability as the antidotes to rising global authoritarianism.

(recorded 9/23/2019)

In conversation with Glory Edim, author and founder of Well-Read Black Girl

In ''fiercely beautiful'' novels, memoirs, and essay collections brimming with ''enchantments and surprises'' (Los Angeles Times), Edwidge Danticat bears witness to the complexities of Haitian life in stories of courage, brutality, family, and rebellion. These books include Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work; the National Book Award finalist Krik? Krak!; and Brother, I'm Dying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The MacArthur Fellowship recipient and Pushcart Prize winner's latest story collection explores the tidal forces of community that ebb and flow within us all.

(recorded 9/19/2019)

In conversation with Sara Nović, author of Girl at War and America is Immigrants

The Tiger's Wife, Téa Obreht's bestselling debut novel, won the 2011 Orange Prize and was a National Book Award finalist. A ''graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend'' (Washington Post), it follows a young doctor's investigation into her grandfather's death in a Balkan country healing from war. One of the New Yorker's 20 best American fiction writers under 40, Obreht has published work in the Guardian, Harper's, and the Atlantic, and her short stories have been widely anthologized. In her second novel, a frontierswoman awaiting her family's return crosses paths with a world-weary former outlaw in the drought-baked barrens of 1890s Arizona.

(recorded 9/18/2019)

Renowned for placing ''his reader's hand on the heart of human experience'' (Philadelphia Inquirer), Jonathan Safran Foer is the bestselling author of the frenetically irreverent, emotionally urgent novels Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Here I Am. Also the nonfiction author of Eating Animals, a philosophical investigation into the carnivorous human condition, Foer is the recipient of many literary honors, including the Guardian First Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award. In We Are the Weather, he issues an urgent call to sacrifice current relative comfort for the sake of humanity's future, one that begins with what we collectively eat and don't eat at breakfast.

(recorded 9/17/2019)

In conversation with Action News anchor, Jim Gardner

Dr. Amy Gutmann is President of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also a professor of political science and communications. Formerly the provost at Princeton, she is the author of 16 books, which focus on topics ranging from higher education and healthcare access to ethics. Fellow Penn academic Jonathan D. Moreno is a professor of medical ethics and health policy, history and sociology of science, and philosophy. A member of President Obama's transition team and bioethics commission, his work has been published in scores of academic and popular journals. In their new book, Gutmann and Moreno examine the last 60 years of American healthcare to demonstrate the tough moral choices that accompany great leaps in medical progress.

(recorded 9/16/2019)

Paul Tough is the author of the bestselling How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, a ''persuasive wake-up call'' (People) to the deprivations of knowledge suffered by American kids from both extremes of the economic spectrum. His other books include Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America and Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why. His work has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and GQ, among other periodicals. In his latest book, Tough challenges conventional wisdom about higher education and explains what works and what doesn't in the American university.

(recorded 9/12/2019)

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo is acclaimed for capturing the ''foolishness of this lonely world, but also the humor, friendship and love that abide'' (San Francisco Chronicle). His novel Nobody's Fool, starring the world-worn protagonist Sully and the irresistible residents of North Bath, New York, was adapted into a popular film starring Paul Newman and spawned a popular follow-up, Everybody's Fool. In Chances Are . . ., three 66-year-old men convene on Martha's Vineyard to reminisce about their college days and solve a mystery that has haunted them for decades.

''Among the strongest voices in American fiction'' (Los Angeles Times), writer's writer Amy Hempel is the author of the acclaimed short-story collections Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, she teaches in the creative writing programs at Bennington College and Stony Brook Southampton. In Sing to It, Hempel employs her singular style of prose to reveal characters in search of connection, compassion, and reckoning.

(recorded 8/6/2019)

In conversation with award-winning journalist, Tracey Matisak.

The Democratic governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018, Terry McAuliffe ''won praise even from Republicans for his tireless salesmanship'' (Washington Post) of the Old Dominion. A former chair of the National Governors Association, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and co-chair of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, he is also the author of the New York Times bestseller What a Party! My Life Among Democrats, Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals. In Beyond Charlottesville, McAuliffe offers a behind-the-scenes account and cautionary tale of the destructive Unite the Right rally that ultimately claimed a life and bared the ugliest facets of American racism.

(recorded 8/5/2019)

In conversation with Michael A Smerconish

Veteran counterterrorism czar and one of the world's leading experts on cyberspace security, Richard A. Clarke worked for seven presidents and devoted three decades of his professional life to combating threats to the United States. He is the author of four novels and four nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestseller Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. From 2011 to 2015, Robert K. Knake served in the Obama administration as director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council. A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and senior research scientist at Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute, he is also a security advisor for a wide swath of businesses. In The Fifth Domain-the Pentagon's name for cyberspace-Clarke and Knake detail cyberattacks, web warriors and weapons fighting on the front lines of these incursions, and the ways that governments, businesses, and citizens can confront these threats.

Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author.

(recorded 7/18/2019)

Exploring an astonishing range of genres and subject matter, Julie Salamon is the author of a score of novels, children's books, and nonfiction books. Initially a longtime banking reporter and film critic for the Wall Street Journal, then a TV critic and arts reporter at the New York Times, she has also written hundreds of articles for such magazines as the New Yorker, the New Republic, and Vanity Fair. In An Innocent Bystander, Salamon tells the long-reverberating story of the 1985 slaying of disabled Jewish New Yorker Leon Klinghoffer at the hands of Palestinian terrorists aboard a luxury liner in the Mediterranean.

(recorded 7/16/2019)