Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Writing for Jet and Ebony for 53 years, longer than any other journalist, Washington bureau chief Simeon Booker was on the front lines of virtually every major event of the civil r4ights movement. In Shocking the Conscience, Booker tracks the freedom struggle not from the usual ignition points but starts with a massive voting rights rally in Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1955. He vowed that lynchings would not be ignored beyond the black press, and his coverage of Emmett Till's death galvanized the movement. This is the story of the century that changed everything about journalism, politics, and more in America, as only the dean of the black press could tell it.Simeon Booker was the first full-time African American reporter for the Washington Post. "The dean of black journalists," he retired after  53 years at Jet and Ebony in 2007 at the age of 88. Booker was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2013. Shocking the Conscience was written with Carol McCabe Booker.Recorded O

Daniel James Brown tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. Brown happened on this little-known piece of history while visiting his dying neighbor Joe Rantz, one of the crew members. Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream The Boys in the Boat is about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times.Daniel James Brown is the author of two previous nonfiction books, including Under a Flaming Sky. He has taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford. (www.danieljamesbrown.com) Recorded On: Wednesday, July 17, 2013

In 2013, in a nationally televised contest, 14-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson is asked to use the word "niggardly" in a sentence. He has a meltdown and storms off, and the video of his outburst goes viral. City is sent to stay with his grandmother in Melahatchie, Mississippi where a girl named Baize Shepard has recently disappeared. City is distracted by a strange novel written by an unknown author, titled Long Division and narrated by a boy named City Coldson living in Melahatchie in 1985. Laymon weaves together the two stories in a tragi-comic exploration of race, adolescence, Southern history, authorship, and technology spanning the years from the 1960s through the '80s to the present day.Kiese Laymon was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned an MFA from Indiana University. He is a contributing editor at Gawker.com and has written for numerous publications, including Esquire and ESPN.com. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Vassar

Jessica Anya Blau's new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, tells the story of 20-year-old Allie Dodgson who's working part-time in a dress shop which turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business. Out of her element, Allie finds herself stealing a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine and going on the lam. Jessica Blau is the author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home.Sarah Pekkanen is the author of three previous novels: The Opposite of Me, Skipping a Beat, and These Girls. In The Best of Us, she puts four married couples in a luxury villa in Jamaica, adds one nasty storm, and lets the sparks fly. All four women are desperate not just for a reunion, but for an escape from the reality of their family lives. As a powerful hurricane bears down on the island, turmoil swirls inside the villa, forcing each of the women to reevaluate everything they know about their friends -- and themselves. Recorded On: Wednesday, June 26, 2013

"When my son came out to me, I was deeply fearful that he could never be happy, and I felt profound sorrow."Thus began one woman's extraordinary, silence-breaking journey. Catherine Tuerk set out to educate herself and others about gay people. She became a leader in PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), wrote articles for various publications, and appeared on television and radio. Mom Knows is a collection of her writings over the past two decades. A psychotherapist in private practice, Catherine Tuerk is a senior consultant to the Gender and Sexuality Advocacy and Education Program at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington. Recorded On: Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Rick Atkinson is the reigning chronicler of World War II. More than 15 years ago he set out to write the "Liberation Trilogy," the most comprehensive story of the Allied Forces in Europe and North Africa. An Arm at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first in the series, won a Pulitzer Prize for history and was a New York Times bestseller, as was the second book, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.The Guns at Last Light tells the story of the final year of the European war, from Normandy and the invasion of southern France through all the monumental struggles leading to the Third Reich's surrender on May 8, 1945. The book includes 80 black and white photographs, some of which have never been seen before, plus 29 original maps drawn by master cartographer Gene Thorp.Rick Atkinson is a former staff writer and editor at the Washington Post. His many awards include a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, the George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. Recorded

Join us for a conversation with two leading experts on race and community-police partnerships. Baltimore's own Lieutenant Colonel Melvin Russell and national scholar Dr. Phillip Goff will address some provocative issues: What are the underlying causes of racial differences in arrests? What role does implicit bias play? Is it possible for communities and police to work together in a meaningful way?Joe Jones, executive director of the Center for Urban Families and OSI-Baltimore board member, will serve as moderator.Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a 30-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, serves as the chief of its Community Partnerships Division. He previously served as the commanding officer of Baltimore's Eastern District.Dr. Phillip A. Goff is the executive director of research for the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity and assistant professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a leader in psychological research on race, gender, and policing.  Recorded On: M

Passager Journal, based in Baltimore, has been publishing writing by older authors for over two decades. Editors Mary Azrael and Kendra Kopelke host an evening of readings by poets whose work they’ve recently published, and talk about Passager Journal and Passager Books.The featured poet at this event was Moira Egan, who was introduced by Clarinda Harriss.Other poets who read from their work includeShirley BrewerSteve MatanleMarianna BuschingJim SmithElisavietta RitchieRossme TaylorCarol PeckMatthew PettyPantea Amin TofangchiMiMi ZanninoJenny Keith CiatteiSylvia Fischbach-BradenArt CohenLenett Nef'faahtitiPat ValdataEllen HartleyAnn KolakowskiJoe HannDeborah ArnoldKathy ManganChristine HigginsClarinda HarrissLearn more about Passager.Recorded On: Wednesday, June 12, 2013

When Walter Mosley burst onto the literary scene in 1990 with his first Easy Rawlins mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress, he captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of readers. Eleven books later, Easy Rawlins is one of the few private eyes in contemporary crime fiction who can be called iconic and immortal. In the incendiary and fast-paced Little Green, he returns from the brink of death to investigate the dark side of L.A.'s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip.Walter Mosley is the author of more than 40 books. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.Presented in partnership with Black Classic Press.  Recorded On: Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Freeman takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Sam, a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army, decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and sets out on foot for the war-torn South in search of his wife Tilda. Meanwhile Sam's wife is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and other slaves from Mississippi to Arkansas. A third character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home to start a school for former slaves in Mississippi.Leonard Pitts, Jr. won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his twice-weekly syndicated column which appears in more than 200 newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of the novel Before I Forget and the memoir Becoming Dad.  Recorded On: Tuesday, June 4, 2013

John Shea and Piper Watson from the Station North Tool Library talk about their experience developing the Tool Library over the course of a year - the doors now having been open for two months.  They also share how they garnered support from the community, area organizations, and other lending libraries to set up this lending model to be a success and moving towards self-sustainability.Mary Murphy from the Center for a New American Dream introduces people to New Dream's how-to guides and webinars that support collaborative consumption and the local economy.  Her goal is to build New Dream teams of people who are actively engaged in sharing ventures and supporting local business throughout Maryland.Keynote speaker Corey Fleisher, “The Maker Revolution”Corey Fleischeris a senior mechanical engineer with almost ten years of practical, hands on experience, who's most recent list of accomplishments includes being chosen as a contestant on the Discovery Channel’s The Big Brain Theory:  Pure Genius and taking a lead

In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than 50 aerial drones; ten years later, it had nearly 7,500. Drones are already a $5 billion business in the U.S. alone; the U.S. Air Force now trains more drone "pilots" than bomber and fighter pilots combined.Medea Benjamin provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who pilots these unmanned planes, and what are the legal and moral implications. She also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons. Benjamin argues that the assassinations we are carrying out from the air will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing -- to us.Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. A former economist with the United Nations and World Health Organization, she is the author and editor of eight books.  Recorded On: Wednesday, May 22, 2013

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Marian House, a traveling exhibition profiles Marian House alumnae and their remarkable journeys from dependence to independence.Accompanying Community Dialogue: The Disease of Addiction: Treatment Not Incarceration. Recorded On: Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The ensemble plays an original arrangement by Peabody faculty member Phillip Kolker of the Quartet in d minor by Georg Phillipp Telemann. Also on the program are several arrangements of music by  the “Bubonic Bassoon Quartet” including “I Was a Teenage Bassoon Player” and “Entrance and Polka of the Bassoon Players.”  Recorded On: Saturday, May 11, 2013

When the U.S. inaugurated its first African American president in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a post-racial society. In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham argues that we're far from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Using history as a road map, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow's ghosts, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization.F, Michael Higginbotham is the Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is the author of Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions. Recorded On: Tuesday, May 7, 2013

On the program are the quintet for winds Op. 43 by Carl Nielson and Samuel Barber's "Summer Music"  woodwind quintet. Recorded On: Saturday, May 4, 2013

Judges of the Poetry Contest join the finalists for this poetry reading, hosted by Laura Shovan, editor of Little Patuxent Review, and by Pratt librarians.Lori Powell is our 2013 Contest winner. Steven Leyva, Rachel Brown, Jared Fischer, and Alex Vidiani are finalists. Linda Joy Burke, Gerry LaFemina (pictured), Laura Shovan (pictured), and Patricia Jakovich VanAmburg were judges. Learn more about the Poetry Contest and its winner. Recorded On: Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Baltimore native and Peabody graduate student Solomon Eichner performs a program of piano music by Beethoven, Liszt and Prokofiev. Recorded On: Sunday, April 28, 2013

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion -- a crisis that encompasses shortages of oil and coal, copper and cobalt, water and arable land. With all the earth's accessible areas already being exploited, the desperate hunt for supplies has now reached the final frontiers. The Race for What's Left takes us from the Arctic to war zones to deep ocean floors, from a Russian submarine planting the country's flag under the North Pole to the large-scale buying up of African farmland by Saudi Arabia and other food-scarce nations. With resource extraction growing more difficult, the environmental risks are becoming increasingly severe -- and the intense search for dwindling supplies is igniting new conflicts and territorial disputes. The only way out, argues Michael Klare, is to alter our consumption patterns altogether, a crucial task that will be the greatest challenge of the coming century.Michael T. Klare is the author of 14 books, including Resource Wars and Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.

The Old Songs group has been translating archaic Greek poetry and putting it to old-time American folk and blues music since 2002. They have released CDs of versions of the poetry of Sappho, Archilochus, Hipponax, Alcman, and many other poets. Old Songs members are Liz Downing (voice, banjo, and percussion), Mark Jickling (voice, banjo, mandolin, and guitar), and Chris Mason (acoustic bass guitar).Listen to Old Songs here. Recorded On: Wednesday, April 24, 2013