Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Are you interested in learning how to save money without ruining your lifestyle? What about putting extra money aside for the holidays? If so, then join us for the Budgeting Basics program, featuring InvestEd, a local organization dedicated to spreading financial literacy.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Are you interested in the publishing world? Do you want tips and tricks on how to become a published author or how to self-publish? Have you considered marketing strategies and business plans? Then join us for a panel discussion and Q&A featuring local authors and editors.Panelists include:Sarah Pinsker, winner of the 2016 Nebula Award for her novelette Our Lady of the Open RoadKenneth Rogers, Jr., author of seven books, including Thoughts in Italics and Raped Black MaleBen Anderson, self-published author of The McGunnegal ChroniclesChristine Stewart, Editor-in-Chief of Del Sol Press, recipient of an Individual Artist Award in fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and writing teacher in the Johns Hopkins Odyssey programGregg Wilhelm, the co-founder of Woodholme Publishers, founder of the non-profit literary arts organization CityLit Project, and publisher of the CityLit Press imprint.Recorded On: Saturday, November 18, 2017

Written by Dr. Lydia Kang, a practicing internal medicine physician, and Nate Pedersen, a librarian and historian, Quackery offers 67 tales of outlandish treatments complete with vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements of everything from the equipment needed for Tobacco Smoke Enemas (used to save drowning victims in the Thames River) to an ad for the morphine-laced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for children.Looking back with fascination, horror, and dark humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments” -- conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil) -- that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and distur

Hilary S. Jacqmin's first book of poems, Missing Persons, was published by Waywiser Press in spring 2017. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University, her MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate production editor at Johns Hopkins University Press. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, FIELD, and elsewhere.Greg Williamson is the author of four volumes of poetry: The Silent Partner, Errors in the Script, A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck, and The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Nicholas Roerich Prize, an NEA Grant in Poetry, and others. His poetry has been published in more than 50 periodicals and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Poetry. He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins Univ

Richard Theodore Greener (1844-1922) was a renowned black activist and scholar. He was the first black graduate of Harvard College, the first black faculty member at a southern white college, and the first black U.S. diplomat to a white country, serving in Vladivostok, Russia. Yet he died in obscurity, his name barely remembered.Because he was light-skinned and at ease among whites, Grenner's black friends and colleagues sometimes wrongfully accused him of trying to "pass." While he was overseas on a diplomatic mission, Greener's wife and five children did just that. They stayed in New York City, changed their names, and vanished into white society. Greener never saw them again.Katherine Reynolds Chaddock's Uncompromising Activist is a long overdue biography about a man, fascinating in his own right, who also exemplified America's discomfiting perspectives on race.Katherine Reynolds Chaddock is distinguished professor emerita of education at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of The Multi-Tal

Did American troops fight in Vietnam with one hand tied behind their backs? Was the draft system fair? Did antiwar protests turn U.S. policy around?Arnold R. Isaacs , who covered the war's last three years for the Baltimore Sun and left Saigon in the final U.S. evacuation the day before South Vietnam's surrender, discusses these and other issues that have been overlooked or distorted in the continuing American debate about Vietnam. Isaacs is the author of Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia and Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy.Recorded On: Thursday, November 9, 2017

After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led.The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destro

In Crashback, journalist Michael Fabey describes the "warm war" in the Pacific Ocean, a shoving match between the United States and China. The Chinese regard the Pacific, especially the South China Sea, as their ocean, and the United States insists on asserting freedom of navigation. The immediate danger is that the five trillion dollars in international trade that passes through the area will grind to a standstill. The ultimate danger: the U.S. and China will be drawn into all-out war.Michael Fabey has had unprecedented access to the Navy’s most exotic aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft, and submarines, as well as those who command them. He was among the only journalists allowed to board a Chinese war vessel and observe its operations.In sobering detail, Crashback recounts the increasingly tense and sometimes fatal interactions between the superpowers—ones in which lifesaving decisions have to be made at every turn, and where the consequences of a wrong step can be devastating. But it also ill

He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us over and over again). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century's greatest radicals and most compelling figures. At his funeral in 2016, eulogists said Ali had transcended race and united the country, but they got it wrong. Race was the theme of Ali's life. He insisted that America come to grips with a black man who wasn't afraid to speak out or break the rules.Ali went from being one of the most despised men in the country to one of the most beloved. In Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig breaks new ground and radically reshapes our understanding of Muhammad Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali's life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He also had access to thousands of pages of new FBI and Justice Department files, as well as dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s.Revealing Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on hi

Melvin A. Goodman's long career as a respected intelligence analyst at the CIA, specializing in US/Soviet relations, ended abruptly. In 1990, after twenty-four years of service, Goodman resigned when he could no longer tolerate the corruption he witnessed at the highest levels of the agency. In 1991 he went public, blowing the whistle on top-level officials and leading the opposition against the appointment of Robert Gates as CIA director. In the widely covered Senate hearings, Goodman charged that Gates and others had subverted "the process and the ethics of intelligence" by deliberately misinforming the White House about major world events and covert operations.In Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider's Account of the Politics of Intelligence, Goodman tells the whole story. Retracing his career with the Central Intelligence Agency, he presents a rare insider's account of the inner workings of America's intelligence community, and the corruption, intimidation, and misinformation that lead to disastrous foreig

Shirley J. Brewer graduated from careers in palm-reading, bartending, and speech therapy. She serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Baltimore. Recent poems appear in Barrow Street, Comstock Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Slant, and other journals. Shirley’s poetry chapbooks include A Little Breast Music (2008, Passager Books) and After Words (2013, Apprentice House). New from Main Street Rag in 2017 is Shirley’s first full-length collection of poems, Bistro in Another Realm.Originally from New England, Sarah Merrow pulled up roots six years ago and made Baltimore her home. Her chapbook, Unpacking the China, was the winner of the QuillsEdge Press 2015-2016 chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, and she has published essays in The Flutist Quarterly, a trade magazine. In addition to writing poetry, she rebuilds and repairs concert flutes for professional flutists.Jadi Z. Omowale was born and bred in Baltimore, Maryland, where she began writing poe

Real American by Julie Lythcott-Haims, bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, is a deeply personal account of her life growing up as a biracial black woman in America. The only child of an African American father and a white British mother, she shows how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life. Real American also expresses, through Lythcott-Haims' path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."Julie-Lythcott-Haims served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. She holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.The program will be introduced with a performance by Mohamed Tall. Mohamed Tall is Baltimore City's curre

Rising Tides sounds an urgent wakeup call to the growing crisis of climate refugees, and offers an essential, continent-by-continent look at these dangers. Over the next few decades, as sea levels rise, storms intensify, and drought and desertification run rampant, hundreds of millions of civilians will abandon their homes, cities, and even entire countries. What will happen to these massive numbers of environmental refugees? Where will they go, what rights will they have, and who will take care of them? Detailing a number of solutions, John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins argue that no nation can tackle this universal problem alone. The crisis of climate refugees requires global, concerted solutions beyond the strategic, fiscal, and legal capability of a single country or agency.John R. Wennersten is an environmental affairs writer and author of Global Thirst: Water and Society in the 21st Century. The Maryland Humanities Commission recently selected him as a Maryland Millennial Scholar.Communications Direc

In this definitive biography of Chester B. Himes, the African American author who had an extraordinary influence on black writers globally, Lawrence P. Jackson explores Himes' middle-class origins and his eight years in prison. He also recounts Himes' painful odyssey as a black World War II-era artist and his escape to Europe, where he became internationally famous for his Harlem detective series. Enhanced by friendships with Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Carl Van Vechten, Himes published twenty literary works over a long career, including the bestsellers If He Hollers, Let Him Go and Cotton Comes to Harlem.Lawrence P. Jackson is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Indignant Generation and other works.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.Recorded On: Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Grace Cavalieri's forthcoming book is Other Voices, Other Lives (Oct 2017.) She's the founder/producer of Public Radio’s “The Poet and the Poem” now from the Library of Congress.  She celebrates 40 years on-air and is a CPB silver medalist. She co-founded Pacifica’s newest station, WPFW-FM, in 1977. Then was Asst. Director of Children’s Programming for PBS; and after, headed Children’s Programming for NEH. In 2015 Grace received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Independent Review of Books, where she’s monthly columnist and poetry reviewer. She holds the Association Writing Program’s “George Garrett Award” for Service to Literature.  She’s twice the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award and, holds the Bordighera Poetry Prize, a Paterson Poetry Award, The Columbia Award, and “The National Commission on Working Women.” A recent poetry book Water on the Sun, is on the Pen American Center's "Best Books" list. Her latest play is “Calico and Lennie” (Theater for the New City, NYC, 2017.)

Stoney is the true story of an African American groom of horse racing and his life as one of the sport's most respected of grooms. Walker "Stoney" Stone was one of the best-known grooms who ever put a rub-rag and comb and brush on a racehorse in America. He loved his craft and helped to prepare horses to run their best and arrive in the winners circle. Stoney was a large part of Maryland horse-racing history for over 50 years, and he displayed his craft throughout the United States.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.Recorded On: Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Honoring the Memory, Career and Bequest of Henry Louis MenckenThe 2017 Mencken Memorial Lecture: "When America Was Great and Baltimore Knew Better" presented by Darryl G. Hart, author of Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken. D. G. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and has written several books on the history of Christianity, including Calvinism: A History and From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism.Recorded On: Saturday, September 9, 2017

From September 11, 2001 to May 2, 2011, Osama Bin Laden evaded intelligence services and special forces units, drones and hunter killer squads. The Exile tells the extraordinary inside story of that decade through the eyes of those who witnessed it: bin Laden's four wives and many children, his deputies and military strategists, his spiritual advisor, the CIA, Pakistan's ISI, and many others who have never before told their stories. While we think we know what happened in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, we know little about the wilderness years that led to that shocking event.Investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy gained unique access to Osama bin Laden's inner circle, and they recount the flight of Al Qaeda's forces and bin Laden's innocent family members, the gradual formation of ISIS by bin Laden's lieutenants, and bin Laden's rising paranoia and eroding control over his organization. They also reveal that the Bush White House knew the whereabouts of bin Laden's family and Al Qaeda's milita

Join us for a game-changing conversation that might transform your life.The Pratt Library and the Maryland Educational Opportunity Center present a panel of career-changers who will share their experiences on how a career change had a profound impact on their lives.Career-changers include: Kevin Hatcher, from program administrator at Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene to massage therapist; Leslie Howard, from steelworker to lawyer; Dr. Akunna Iheanacho, from teacher to biomedical scientist; Brenda Lake, from sales associate to sales coordinator/assistant to the district director at Cricket Wireless to Sherwin Williams part-time district coordinator to assistant manager to human resources as recruitment coordinator; Maryland Delegate Mary Washington, statistician, professor, and state delegate.Recorded On: Thursday, May 18, 2017

In Red Line: American Foreign Policy in a Time of Fractured Politics and Failing States, former Deputy Secretary of State P. J. Crowley, one of America’s most insightful national security commentators, unpacks the legacy of American triumphs and failures in Iraq.Over the past quarter century, four consecutive American presidents—two Democrat, two Republican—have spent more time, diplomatic capital, and military resources on Iraq than any other country in the world. Much as the Vietnam syndrome cast a long shadow over American security policy in the decades after the end of the Vietnam War, Iraq provides the commanding narrative for this generation of American leaders. Crowley argues that presidents have fallen victim to the Iraq Syndrome—the disconnect between politics, policy, strategy, and narrative—that has hampered America’s foreign policy in the Middle East and hotspots throughout the world.P. J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State and Spokesman for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State