Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Bruce Weber, former obituary writer for the New York Times and author of the books As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires and Life is A Wheel: Memoirs of a Bike-Riding Obituarist.

Janny Scott, a 15-year reporter for The New York Times, was part of a team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She is also the author of the ''meticulous'' (Washington Post) biography A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. She is the scion of a wealthy investment banker forebear who built the imposing 800-acre Androssan estate on Philadelphia's Main Line. In her new book, she tells the multi-generational story of the ways in which financial and genetic inheritance affected members of her family, including her grandmother, Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story.

(recorded 4/22/2019)

In conversation with State Representative Christopher M. Raab

Emily Bazelon is the author of Sticks and Stones, ''a humane and closely reported exploration'' (Wall Street Journal) of school bullying and the empathetic steps students, parents, and teachers can take to mitigate this cruel phenomenon. A staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a former senior editor at Slate, she is a lecturer at Yale Law School, where she is also the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law. In her new book, Bazelon proffers a major critique of the American criminal justice system, arguing that prosecutors have vast and unchecked power over defendants' charges and sentences.

(recorded 4/18/2019)

''The world's best green journalist'' (Time), Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about global warming with his 1989 book The End of Nature. His many other bestselling books about the environment include Deep Economy, Eaarth, and Oil and Honey; as well as a novel, Radio Free Vermont, which imagines a band of Vermont patriots who decide to secede from the United States. Recipient of the 2013 Gandhi Peace Award, McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In Falter, he offers a dire warning about the shrinking space in which civilization can exist.

(recorded 4/16/2019)

''A rollicking adventure into the origins of the apostrophe, the proliferation of profanity in American culture, and everything in between'' (San Francisco Chronicle), Mary Norris's bestselling Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen was a raucous, cheery memoir about grammar, usage, and practical life advice gleaned from her three decades in The New Yorker's venerable and notoriously fastidious copy department. Her latest book is another paean to language and expression. In Greek to Me, Norris celebrates all things Greek-words, gods, wine, and waiters-as she offers a hot take on the distant but oddly familiar language that helped beget our own.

(recorded 4/15/2019)

A 30-year contributor to The New Yorker, Patricia Marx is the author of several books including Starting From Happy and Him Her Him Again the End of Him, both of which were Thurber Prize finalists. A former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats, she has taught screenwriting and humor at a number of universities, and is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her new book, illustrated by Roz Chast, is a collection of bon mots passed down from her mother. Chast has published more than 800 cartoons in The New Yorker since 1978. She has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including several collected volumes of her published cartoons, an illustrated love note to Manhattan titled Going into Town, and the memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a National Book Award Finalist.

Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture

(recorded 4/11/2019)

In conversation with Chef Elijah Milligan

A former Top Chef star, the executive chef at Washington D.C.'s popular Kith and Kin, and a Forbes and Zagat's 30 Under 30 honoree, Kwame Onwuachi  is one of America's most acclaimed young culinary personalities. Raised in the Bronx and Nigeria, he started a catering company with money he made selling candy on the subway, eventually training at the Culinary Institute of America and in the kitchens of some of the country's best restaurants. A memoir about food, celebrity, and race, Notes from a Young Black Chef serves up lessons about following your star even when it takes a wrong turn.

(recorded 4/10/2019)

Richard Blanco made history four times at Barack Obama's second presidential inauguration: He was the first immigrant, the first Latino, the youngest person, and the first openly gay person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. Exploring heritage and identity, his poetry collections include City of a Hundred Fires, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and Looking for the Gulf Motel. He is also the author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos, a memoir that delves into his upbringing as the child of Cuban exiles, and his artistic, sexual, and cultural identities as an American. Through seemingly disparate historical events and motifs, his new poetry collection asks, ''How do we love this country?''

(recorded 4/9/2019)

A 30-year writer at the Miami Herald whose column was syndicated in more than 500 newspapers, humorist Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. His more than 30 New York Times bestselling books include I'll Mature When I'm Dead, Insane City, You Can Date When You're 40, and Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. Two of Barry's books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom Dave's World. Drawn from daily life's deeply personal but universally experienced humiliations, absurdities, and moments of grace, Lessons from Lucy urges us to find the joy in our lives.

(recorded 4/8/2019)

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

Standing at ''the summit of American historical writing'' (Washington Post), Robert Caro is the author of biographies of New York power-brokering urban planner Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, the latter of which is part of a multi-volume series on the complicated ex-President. He has earned an astounding two Pulitzer Prizes, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two National Book Awards, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters, and in 2010 President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. In Working, Caro reflects on lessons gleaned from researching and writing his watershed books, as well as what it felt like to interview many of the people central to these works.

(recorded 4/8/2019)

A longtime foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, Michael Dobbs reported on some of the most important events of our time. His many books include Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America, and One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. His latest book details the story of the isolationist United States's handling of the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 40s, as seen through the desperate attempts of German Jews to acquire U.S. visas.

The Unwanted complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC  

(recorded 4/4/2019)