Free Library Podcast

''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)

Margaret George's fictional biographies of towering world figures-brimming ''with lust, violence, cruelty and lively conversation'' (Detroit Free Press) while adhering as closely as possible to the factual historical record-include Helen of Troy, The Memoirs of Cleopatra, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, and Mary, Called Magdalene, among many others. All have been international bestsellers. The sequel to The Confessions of Young Nero, George's latest novel finds the titular tyrant earning his place in history as Rome's most notorious ruler.

Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles, the ''fast, true and incredibly rewarding'' (USA Today) Orange Prize-winning reimagining of Homer's The Iliad and its doomed champion. An Ivy League-educated classicist, for the last decade she has taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students. Miller's latest novel, the New York Times number-one bestselling Circe, is a subversive revision of the story of the daughter of Helios, a witch, lover, and humanist who draws the ire of both gods and mortals.

Watch the video here.

Carole Phillilps Memorial Lecture

(recorded 11/28/2018)

Margaret George's fictional biographies of towering world figures-brimming ''with lust, violence, cruelty and lively conversation'' (Detroit Free Press) while adhering as closely as possible to the factual historical record-include Helen of Troy, The Memoirs of Cleopatra, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, and Mary, Called Magdalene, among many others. All have been international bestsellers. The sequel to The Confessions of Young Nero, George's latest novel finds the titular tyrant earning his place in history as Rome's most notorious ruler.

Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles, the ''fast, true and incredibly rewarding'' (USA Today) Orange Prize-winning reimagining of Homer's The Iliad and its doomed champion. An Ivy League-educated classicist, for the last decade she has taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students. Miller's latest novel, the New York Times number-one bestselling Circe, is a subversive revision of the story of the daughter of Helios, a witch, lover, and humanist who draws the ire of both gods and mortals.

Watch the video here.

Carole Phillilps Memorial Lecture

(recorded 11/28/2018)

In conversation with award-winning journalist, Tracey Matisak

One of the most esteemed religious scholars of our time, Elaine Pagels is the author of Revelations, Beyond Belief, and The Gnostic Gospels. Her many honors include Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships. Her new book draws upon the perspectives of science, history, and her own research, as well as the insight she gleaned from the shocking loss of both her son and husband in the same year. Lauded by Joyce Carol Oates as ''an extraordinary memoir of loss, spiritual struggle, illumination and insight,'' Why Religion? contemplates some of the modern world's most important questions about why so many still believe and how we reconcile faith with contemporary ideas of sex and culture.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/29/2018)

In conversation with award-winning journalist, Tracey Matisak

One of the most esteemed religious scholars of our time, Elaine Pagels is the author of Revelations, Beyond Belief, and The Gnostic Gospels. Her many honors include Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships. Her new book draws upon the perspectives of science, history, and her own research, as well as the insight she gleaned from the shocking loss of both her son and husband in the same year. Lauded by Joyce Carol Oates as ''an extraordinary memoir of loss, spiritual struggle, illumination and insight,'' Why Religion? contemplates some of the modern world's most important questions about why so many still believe and how we reconcile faith with contemporary ideas of sex and culture.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 11/29/2018)

Gary Giddins is the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Visions of Jazz: The First Century, ''a grand, brilliant history" (The New York Times Book Review). Jazz columnist at The Village Voice for 30 years, his other books include Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century, Faces in the Crowd, and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Giddins teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center and was prominently featured on Ken Burns's landmark Jazz documentary series. Drawing on scores of interviews and unprecedented archival access, his latest book is the second installment of his multi-part biography of America's quintessential crooner. 

Watch the video here.

(recorded 12/4/2018)

Gary Giddins is the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Visions of Jazz: The First Century, ''a grand, brilliant history" (The New York Times Book Review). Jazz columnist at The Village Voice for 30 years, his other books include Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century, Faces in the Crowd, and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Giddins teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center and was prominently featured on Ken Burns's landmark Jazz documentary series. Drawing on scores of interviews and unprecedented archival access, his latest book is the second installment of his multi-part biography of America's quintessential crooner. 

Watch the video here.

(recorded 12/4/2018)

In conversation with Sabrina Vourvoulias, journalist, short story author and novelist

Introduced by Henry Cisneros

A 1972 Temple University Law School graduate, Nelson Díaz was the first Puerto Rican lawyer admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar Association and became the state's first Latino judge and partner in a top-100 law firm. He was later appointed to a White House Fellowship by Jimmy Carter and as General Counsel to the Department of Housing and Urban Development by Bill Clinton. His honors include the Philadelphia Bar Association's Justice Sonia Sotomayor Diversity Award. From his childhood in a New York tenement to advocacy for human rights, housing reform, and neighborhood economic development, Not from Here, Not from There is a chronicle of Díaz's remarkable path toward the American Dream.

(recorded 10/9/2018)

In conversation with Sabrina Vourvoulias, journalist, short story author and novelist

Introduced by Henry Cisneros

A 1972 Temple University Law School graduate, Nelson Díaz was the first Puerto Rican lawyer admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar Association and became the state's first Latino judge and partner in a top-100 law firm. He was later appointed to a White House Fellowship by Jimmy Carter and as General Counsel to the Department of Housing and Urban Development by Bill Clinton. His honors include the Philadelphia Bar Association's Justice Sonia Sotomayor Diversity Award. From his childhood in a New York tenement to advocacy for human rights, housing reform, and neighborhood economic development, Not from Here, Not from There is a chronicle of Díaz's remarkable path toward the American Dream.

(recorded 10/9/2018)

An historian whose ''discipline is worthy of a first-class detective'' (New York Review of Books), Jill Lepore is the author of the National Book Award finalist Book of Ages, the story of Benjamin Franklin's beloved but often-overlooked sister Jane; New York Burning, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and The Secret History of Wonder Woman, a revelatory feminist origin story of one of the most popular superheroes of all time. Her new book is an ambitious biography of the United States, as told through the intersection of politics, technology, journalism, and sketches of greater- and lesser-known leaders, mischief makers, and visionaries.

Watch the video here.

(recorded 9/20/2018)