Free Library Podcast

Watch the video here.

Lauded for bringing the Middle Eastern, North African, Mediterranean, and Eastern European influences from Solomonov's titular Philadelphia restaurant to readers' home kitchens, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook's Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking won the 2016 James Beard Book of the Year and Best International Cookbook award. Solomonov won the 2011 James Beard Award for ''Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic,'' and his restaurants have been recognized by Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and Travel + Leisure. At once a madcap bio of their donut mini-empire, canticle to American passion, and collection of cult-favorite recipes, Solomonov and Cook's new book tells the ''hole'' story of all things ''Fednuts.''

In conversation with Tom Henneman, Bob Logue, and Felicia D'Ambrosio

Moderated by culinary expert, food writer, and permanent judge on BRAVO's Emmy-winning series Top Chef, Gail Simmons. She also makes frequent television appearances on TODAY and Good Morning America, and is the author of the 2012 memoir Talking With My Mouth Full and the forthcoming cookbook Bringing It Home: Favorite Recipes from a Life of Adventurous Eating. She was named the #1 Reality TV Judge in America by the New York Post. 

(recorded 9/25/2017)

Watch the video here.

Chris Hayes is the titular host of MSNBC's news and opinion show All In with Chris Hayes. Formerly a frequent fill-in for Rachel Maddow and the host of the weekend morning show Up with Chris Hayes, in 2013 he became the youngest primetime cable news show host in the United States. An editor-at-large at The Nation, he is the author of Twilight of the Elites, ''one of the most compelling assessments of how soaring inequality is changing America'' (The Economist). In A Colony in a Nation, Hayes argues that racial parity hasn't improved in this country since the late 1960s. 

Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Endowed Lecture (recorded 3/23/2017)

Watch the video here.

Dennis Lehane's ''raw, harrowing, and unsentimental'' (Washington Post Book World) bestselling crime novels include Mystic River; Shutter Island; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Live by Night, all of which have been adapted into critically acclaimed films by Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Ben Affleck. His other writing includes the story collection Coronado, several episodes of the television shows The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, and the screenplay for the film adaptation of his book The Drop. Lehane's latest novel tells the story of a shut-in, former television journalist who finds her sanity tested as she slips into a violent conspiracy.

(recorded 5/18/2017)

Watch the video here.

Blending dramatic historical narrative with critical interpretation in order to make surprising connections to contemporary political and cultural struggles, William Hogeland's three books on founding American history include The Whiskey Rebellion, Founding Finance, and Declaration. He has also contributed articles and essays about history, music, and politics to a slew of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and Salon, and has appeared on PBS's History Detectives, Book TV, and Good Morning America. In Autumn of the Black Snake, Hogeland tells the story of the creation of the U.S. Army and how its first victory against the indigenous people of the Ohio Valley opened the way to western settlement.

(recorded 5/23/2017)

Watch the video here.

In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org

A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower, a ''wrenchingly intimate and boldly sweeping'' (The New York Times) narrative that explains the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the intelligence mistakes that led to the 9/11 attacks. His other nonfiction books include In the New World, Thirteen Days in September, and Remembering Satan. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians, Wright has written and performed two one-man plays, co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Going Clear, and is currently producing a television series based on The Looming Tower. In 10 watershed pieces first published in The New Yorker, his new book charts the course of Middle East terrorism since the 1990s.

(recorded 7/27/2017)

Watch the video here.

With a career spanning four decades, 26 studio albums, and untold scores of concerts, Loudon Wainwright III is one of the world's most loved singer-songwriters. A prolific actor in a variety of television and film roles, he can also boast of being the father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche, three musical luminaries in their own right. In his new memoir, the folk patriarch and son of a celebrated Life magazine columnist reflects on the ups and downs of his career, the inspirations for his art, and the familial relationships that have marked him the most. 

''A kick-ass counter-cultural icon'' (The New Yorker), Eileen Myles is the celebrated author of nearly two dozen books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, and performance pieces, including Chelsea Girls, I Must Be Living Twice, and The Irony of the Leash. Her lengthy list of honors includes a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing, and an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant. Afterglow is a multi-genre examination of the pet/pet-owner relationship told through the prism of Myles's 16-year relationship with her beloved pit bull Rosie. (recorded 9/12/2017)

Watch the video here.

William Taubman won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, a portrait of the Soviet leader ''unlikely to be surpassed any time soon in either richness or complexity'' (New York Times Book Review). The Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College, he is the author of several other works detailing 20th-century Russian politics. Drawing from international archival documents, interviews with foreign leaders, Kremlin contemporaries, and Gorbachev himself, Taubman's new biography is a nuanced look at the transformational leader.

Yuri Slezkine is best known as the author of The Jewish Century, a boldly interpretive treatise about Jews' role in modernity. Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley and a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, he is also the author of several other books about the Soviet state, including In the Shadow of Revolution, Arctic Mirrors, and Between Heaven and Hell. In House of Government, Slezkine tells the epic of the massive apartment building occupied by high-ranking Communists until their annihilation during Stalin's purges.

(recorded 9/26/2017)

Watch the video here.

Roxane Gay's ''commanding debut'' (The New Yorker) novel An Untamed State, the tale of a willful Haitian kidnap victim, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of the acclaimed essay collection Bad Feminist and the forthcoming memoir Hunger, and her other writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and McSweeney's. Gay is also the founder of Tiny Hardcore Press and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective. A story collection of the privileged and impoverished, the loved and forsaken, Difficult Women portrays a beautiful, haunting cross-section of modern America. (recorded 3/24/2017)

Watch the video here.

A lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Kory Stamper discusses the subtleties of the English language in the venerable volume's popular ''Ask the Editor'' video series. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian, among other periodicals. A medievalist by training, Stamper knows a number of dead languages, has lectured on lexicography around the world, and was notably responsible for explaining Merriam-Webster's recent addition of the term ''F-Bomb'' to the dictionary. In Word by Word, she opens up the complicated, obsessive, and fun world of dictionaries and the quirky people who shape the way we communicate.

(recorded 3/27/2017)

Watch the video here.

Blending liberalism with old values, David Callahan's many nonfiction books include Fortunes of Change, The Moral Center, and The Cheating Culture, a ''meticulously researched, thoughtful and damning look at our broken moral compass'' (Philadelphia Inquirer). He is founder of the website Inside Philanthropy and co-founder of the think-tank Demos, a frequent media commentator, and has contributed articles to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. In The Givers, Callahan delves into the secretive realm of elite philanthropists and the ways they shape governmental policy.

Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture (recorded 4/27/2017)