Free Library Podcast

''Master storyteller'' (Christian Science Monitor) H. W. Brands was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin (The First American) and Franklin Roosevelt (Traitor to His Class). Exploring such diverse subjects as Aaron Burr, Ronald Reagan, the California gold rush, Andrew Jackson, the Vietnam War, and Bill Gates, his more than two dozen books ''weave together keen political history with anecdote and marvelous sense of place'' (The Boston Globe). Brands returns with the story of the early 19th--century political giants who took up the daunting challenge of completing the constitutional work begun by the Founding Fathers.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/13/2018)

Exploring the nature of family and loss through the derring-do of a Czechoslovakian war hero, Daniel Torday's novel The Last Flight of Poxl West won the National Jewish Book Award, as did his debut novella The Sensualist. The Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, Torday's work has appeared in Esquire, Tin House, The New York Times, and other publications. His new novel pits a disaffected and desperate 30-something with no job prospects against his Baby Boomer mother and successful punk bassist ex-girlfriend.

Praised by writer's writer George Saunders as ''strange, crazed, urgent and funny,'' Nana Kwamei Adjei-Brenyah's explosive debut fiction collection, Friday Black, situates characters in extraordinarily surreal, Twilight Zone-esque, yet all-too-familiar positions of oppression within our criminal justice, consumerist, and pop cultural institutions. Adjei-Brenyah's work has been published in some of the country's most prestigious publications, including Guernica, Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, and The Breakwater Review, where he was selected as the winner of the 2nd Annual Breakwater Review Fiction Contest.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/14/2018)

Exploring the nature of family and loss through the derring-do of a Czechoslovakian war hero, Daniel Torday's novel The Last Flight of Poxl West won the National Jewish Book Award, as did his debut novella The Sensualist. The Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, Torday's work has appeared in Esquire, Tin House, The New York Times, and other publications. His new novel pits a disaffected and desperate 30-something with no job prospects against his Baby Boomer mother and successful punk bassist ex-girlfriend.

Praised by writer's writer George Saunders as ''strange, crazed, urgent and funny,'' Nana Kwamei Adjei-Brenyah's explosive debut fiction collection, Friday Black, situates characters in extraordinarily surreal, Twilight Zone-esque, yet all-too-familiar positions of oppression within our criminal justice, consumerist, and pop cultural institutions. Adjei-Brenyah's work has been published in some of the country's most prestigious publications, including Guernica, Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, and The Breakwater Review, where he was selected as the winner of the 2nd Annual Breakwater Review Fiction Contest.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/14/2018)

In conversation with Talia Schlanger, host of World Cafe on WXPN

Jeff Tweedy is the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Grammy Award-winning rock band Wilco, declared ''one of the most respected bands on the planet'' and lauded as ''paragons of good taste, masters of genre-bridging craftsmanship and chill independence'' (Rolling Stone). Their many studio albums include Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Sky Blue Sky. Tweedy was also one of the founders of the trailblazing alt-country group Uncle Tupelo, and has recorded a solo album, a record with his son Spencer, and has collaborated with a score of other musicians. In Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), Tweedy tells the story of his Midwestern upbringing and current life as a husband and father, the early Chicago indie-rock scene that launched his career, and his musical process and perspective.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/15/2018)

In conversation with Talia Schlanger, host of World Cafe on WXPN

Jeff Tweedy is the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Grammy Award-winning rock band Wilco, declared ''one of the most respected bands on the planet'' and lauded as ''paragons of good taste, masters of genre-bridging craftsmanship and chill independence'' (Rolling Stone). Their many studio albums include Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Sky Blue Sky. Tweedy was also one of the founders of the trailblazing alt-country group Uncle Tupelo, and has recorded a solo album, a record with his son Spencer, and has collaborated with a score of other musicians. In Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), Tweedy tells the story of his Midwestern upbringing and current life as a husband and father, the early Chicago indie-rock scene that launched his career, and his musical process and perspective.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/15/2018)

David W. Blight's many books of history include American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and two annotated editions of Frederick Douglass's first two autobiographies. Blight is a professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He received the Bancroft Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and is a former president of the Society of American Historians. Drawing on newly discovered archival information, Blight's new book is a definitive portrait of the most important African American orator and politician of the 19th century.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/19/2018)

David W. Blight's many books of history include American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and two annotated editions of Frederick Douglass's first two autobiographies. Blight is a professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He received the Bancroft Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and is a former president of the Society of American Historians. Drawing on newly discovered archival information, Blight's new book is a definitive portrait of the most important African American orator and politician of the 19th century.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/19/2018)

Editor-in-chief of The Crisis magazine, the NAACP's flagship periodical, and a former editor and syndicated columnist at the The Washington Post, Jabari Asim is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His  many books include The N Word; What Obama Means...For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future; A Taste of Honey: Stories; and the debut novel Only the Strong, ''a heartfelt, polyphonic ode to 1970s black America'' (Wall Street Journal). He is also a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning poet, playwright, and acclaimed children's book author. We Can't Breathe is a collection of eight essays that disrupt the conventional narrative of black history in America.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/20/2018)

Editor-in-chief of The Crisis magazine, the NAACP's flagship periodical, and a former editor and syndicated columnist at the The Washington Post, Jabari Asim is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His  many books include The N Word; What Obama Means...For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future; A Taste of Honey: Stories; and the debut novel Only the Strong, ''a heartfelt, polyphonic ode to 1970s black America'' (Wall Street Journal). He is also a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning poet, playwright, and acclaimed children's book author. We Can't Breathe is a collection of eight essays that disrupt the conventional narrative of black history in America.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/20/2018)

''America's best social critic'' (Time), Andrew Delbanco is the author of numerous books that explore American history, character, and ideals, including The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, The Puritan Ordeal, and Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter. His essays on history and culture are frequently featured in The New York Review of Books. President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2012. The War Before the War tells the antebellum story of how two Americas-one enslaved and the other free-created an inexorable path toward the Civil War.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/27/2018)