Inspired by an all-night session of the video game "Guitar Hero," Gary Marcus devotes himself to mastering the actual guitar. Guitar Zero chronicles Marcus' journey from Suzuki classes to meeting with scientific and musical experts as he investigates the most effective ways to train your brain and body to learn to play an instrument.Now an expert guitarist who has played in concert and on a studio album, Gary Marcus evokes the complex dance between the brain, the body, and musicality. For all those who have ever set out to learn a musical instrument, Guitar Zero is a fascinating look at music, learning, and the pursuit of a well-lived life.Gary Marcus is professor of psychology at New York University and the director of the NYU Center for Child Language. He serves as editor of The Norton Psychology Reader and is the author of three books on the origins and development of the mind and the brain.  

On April 19, 1861, the first blood of the Civil War was spilled in the streets of Baltimore. En route to Camden Station, Union forces were confronted by angry Southern sympathizers. At Pratt Street the crowd rushed the troops, who responded with lethal volleys. Four soldiers and twelve Baltimoreans were left dead. Marylanders unsuccessfully attempted to further cut ties with the North by sabotaging roads, bridges and telegraph lines. In response to the "Battle of Baltimore," President Lincoln declared martial law and withheld habeas corpus in much of the state. Author Harry Ezratty skillfully narrates the events of that day and their impact on the rest of the war, when Baltimore became a city occupied. 

In his new book, Dr. King-Meadows finds that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is much weaker than previously thought and that it often enables rather than prevents the disenfranchisement of minorities. The book challenges the executive-centered model of leadership and proffers a Congress-centered approach to protecting voting rights. Drawing from government enforcement data, legislative history, Supreme Court rulings, the 2006 reauthorization debate, and the 2007 scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys under the Bush administration, Dr. King-Meadows examines when, why, and how executive and judicial discretion facilitates violation of voting rights. Dr. King-Meadows is associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

Donna Britt has always been surrounded by men -- her father, three brothers, two husbands, three sons, countless male friends. She learned to give to them at an early age. After her beloved brother Darrell's senseless killing by police 30 years ago, she began giving more, unconsciously seeking to help other men the way she couldn't help Darrell.Brothers (and Me) navigates Britt's life through her relationships with men, resulting in a tender, funny, and heartbreaking exploration of universal issues of gender and race. Donna Britt is an award-winning former syndicated columnist for the Washington Post. 

 In Berlin after World War I, fascination with the occult was everywhere as people struggled to escape the grim reality of their lives. In the early 1930s, the most famous mentalist in the German capital was Erik Jan Hanussen, a Jewish mind reader. Originally from Vienna, Hanussen became so popular in Berlin that he rubbed elbows with high ranking Nazis, became close with top Storm Troopers, and even advised Hitler.Arthur Magida is writer-in-residence at the University of Baltimore, a journalism professor at Georgetown University, and recipient of multiple awards in journalism and the humanities. His books include The Rabbi and The Hit Man; Prophet of Rage: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and His Nation; and Opening the Doors of Wonder. 

During a dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meets actor Gregory Gibson Kenney at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King shares four speeches, how he wishes to be remembered, and how fear is no longer a factor in his survival. Mr. Kenney portrays both Dr. King and the narrator.A professionally trained actor, Gregory Kenney studied at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in association with Point Park College. He has performed in numerous feature films, theatrical productions, and commercials. In 1998 Kenney was awarded the YWCA Racial Justice Award. He serves on the Education Advisory Board of the National Basebal Hall of Fame.Photos courtesy of Gregory Gibson Kenney and Educate Us Productions, www.educateus.org 

The man widely hailed as "the dean of moderators" looks at more than 40 years of televised political debate in the United States. Drawing on his own moderating experience, in-depth interviews with the candidates and his fellow moderators, and transcripts of key exchanges, Lehrer sheds light on all the critical turning points, major moments, and rhetorical faux pas that helped determine the outcome of America's presidential elections.Jim Lehrer is the author of 20 novels, two memoirs, and three plays, and for years has been the executive editor and anchor of the PBS News Hour.Presented in partnership with Maryland Public Television.  

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus, and moved to the United States in 2005. She is the author of Factory of Tears and Collected Body. Most recently, she has received the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. She teaches at the University of Baltimore. The Irish Times has called her a "risen star of the international poetry world."Read a poem by Valzhyna Mort.Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. His first collection, Far District: Poems, won the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and was hailed by the poet Yusef Komunyakaa as "a marvellous book of generous, giving poems." He has also won an Academy of American Poets’ Levis Award and has taught at the University of Baltimore. Read a poem by Ishion Hutchinson. Explicit language advisory!

Singer, songwriter, and arranger Adam Kolbe Jones is active in the Baltimore, Washington, and Minneapolis/St. Paul areas. His largely acoustic folk rock debut album, “Ladies and Gentleplums,” was released in early 2011, and features songs in a joyful and gentle Americana-inspired style.  

Learn all about the French secrets to joie de vivre. Jamie Cat Callan traveled all over France, interviewing hundreds of women to find their secrets to living a well-balanced life, enjoying more with less, and keeping stylish and sexy through middle age and beyond. Here are few of those secrets: cultivate a secret garden; walk everywhere; consume less and enjoy more; flirt a la francaise; and wear beautiful lingerie everyday. Jamie Cat Callan is the author of French Women Don't Sleep Alone which has been translated into ten languages.  

As part of the Pratt Library's Mencken Day, author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens presented the 2006 Mencken Memorial Lecture at the Central Library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The British-American writer Christopher Hitchens, the masterful rhetorician, intellectual and atheist, died Thursday December 15, 2011 at the age of 62.

An ambassador and special envoy on Afghanistan (1989 - 1992), Peter Tomsen developed close relationships with Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai and Ahmad Shah Masood, and has dealt with senior Taliban, warlords, and religious leaders involved in the region's conflicts over the last two decades. Drawing on his experiences and knowledge of the region, plus a rich trove of never-before-published material, Tomsen sheds new light on the American involvement in the long and continuing Afghan war.  

Talking About Race, an ongoing series co-sponsored by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the Pratt Library Touré's newest provocative book, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "one of the most acutely observed accounts of what it is like to be young, black and middle-class in contemporary America." Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, calls the book "a fascinating conversation among some of America's most brilliant and insightful Black thinkers candidly exploring Black identity in America today. Touré powerfully captures the pain and dissonance of Black Americans' far too often unrequited love for our great nation."Touré is a cultural critic for MSNBC, as well as the host of a couple of shows on Fuse-TV: "Hip Hop Shop" and "On the Record." A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, his articles appear regularly in publications ranging from the New York Times to the Village Voice to the New Yorker.Michael Eric Dyson, University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, wrote the foreward to Toure's book. 

Prize-winning concert pianist, and Baltimore native, Solomon Eichner is rapidly emerging as a versatile young artist, equally at home with solo repertoire and chamber music. A 2011 graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, he now pursues a Master’s degree at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, studying with renowned pianist Alexander Shtarkman. 

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of Spit Back A Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Elizabeth Alexander. Pollock teaches English at Chestnut Hill Academy.(www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/spit_back) Derrick Weston Brown is the author of Wisdom Teeth (2011).He serves as poet-in-residence at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. (www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=DerrickWestonBrown) Khadijah Queen is the author of two poetry collections, Conduit and Black Peculiar, which won the 2010 Noemi Book Award for Poetry.(http://khadijahqueen.com//home.html) Evie Shockley is the author of two books of poetry, the new black (2011)and a half-red sea.  She teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.(www.redroom.com/author/evie-shockley) 

Harriet Lynn, local theater and sports activist, will moderate a discussion with African-American tennis pioneers, Leon Bowser, Joseph Parham, Sr. and Jean Powell. This discussion follows the documentary, Tennis, Everyone!  based on oral history interviews with tennis pioneers conducted by Ms. Lynn and sponsored by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. The panelists will share their experiences about the integration and advancement of the sport at Druid Hill Park.    

Ella's Umbrella pairs the mesmerizing voice of jazz singer and songwriter, Nita Paul, with the joyful music-making of guitarist and singer, Paul Iwancio. With original songs on topics like hope, acceptance, joy, love, and gender issues, their live shows are heartfelt, upbeat, energetic fun events, contrasting sweet ballads with rhythmic smart-hook rockers.   

Jeremiah Baker uses saxophone to bridge the gap between the worlds of popular and classical music. Already the winner of numerous prizes and competitions, he is now a doctoral candidate at the Peabody Conservatory. When finished, he will be the first saxophonist to ever earn this degree from Peabody.   

 American Emperor traces Burr from the threshold of the presidency in the contested election of 1800, through his duel with Alexander Hamilton, and then across the American West. A daring and perhaps deluded figure whose political career was in tatters following his indictment for Hamilton's murder, Burr conceived and plotted an insurrection in New Orleans and an invasion of the Spanish colonies of Mexico and Florida.Thomas Jefferson finally had Burr arrested and charged him with treason. Burr led his own legal defense in an historic treason trial before Chief Justice John Marshall, winning an acquittal and freedom. David O. Stewart is the author of The Summer of 1787. He has practiced law in Washington, D.C., for more than a quarter century. He served as law clerk to Justice Lewis Powell of the U.S. Supreme Court and has argued appeals before the Supreme Court.The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the book for sale at the program.  

Between its founding in 1966 and its formal end in 1980, the Black Panther Party blazed a distinctive trail in American political culture. In Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson chronicles the Black Panther Party's health activism. Its nework of free health clinics, its campaign to raise awareness about genetic disease, and its challenges to medical discrimination, all were an expression of its founding political philosophy.Alondra Nelson is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is coeditor of Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life and Genetics and Unsettled Past: The Collison of DNA, Race, and History.Barnes & Noble will have copies of the book for sale at the program. 

Mamie "Peanut" Johnson joins author Michelle Green for this special program. "She looks the batter in the eye, stretches her 5'2" frame and pops a surefire, windup pitch smack dab over the plate -- one that lets the batter know that this 'peanut of a girl' means business. Fueled by her passion for the game and buoyed by the inspiration of Jackie Robinson, Mamie Johnson was determined to be a professional baseball pitcher. From the time she tried out for the all-male, all-white Police Athletic League team until she became one of only three women to play in the Negro Leagues, Mamie Johnson showed that courage -- and a fierce curveball -- could make a dream come true.Michelle Green, author of A Strong Right Arm, is a graduate of the University of Maryland College of Journalism and the Johns Hopkins University Masters Program in Writing. She is the author of an award-winning children's book series, Willie Pearl. 

After sifting through hundreds of documents including articles from the leading black weeklies, the papers of pivotal figures such as Effa Manley, Branch Rickey, and Jackie Robinson, and interviews with Negro League players and their fans, Bob Luke tells the story of Negro League baseball in the context of the Jim Crow society in which it thrived. He shows the inner workings of the leagues and their teams, the conflicts between players and owners, the uplifting impact the games had on African Americans, and the tireless contributions to the game of  Effa Manley, the only woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame.Sociologist Bob Luke had a 40 year career in human resource development before authoring The Baltimore Elite Giants and The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues. 

Larry Doyle is one funny guy. Deliriously Happy is his new collection of short humor writing covering everything from childhood to evil genius, pets to parenthood, Mark Twain to Twitter. A former writer for The Simpsons, Doyle works in showbiz and writes funny pieces for The New Yorker. He is the author of I Love You, Beth Cooper, which won the 2008 Thurber Prize for American Humor and was made into a major motion picture, and Go, Mutants! 

Lesa Cline-Ransome's spirited, folksy narrative tells the story of the colorful life of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, and her husband James Ransome illustrates the text with boldly colored paintings. After just one year in the semi-pros, Satchel Paige was playing in the Negro major leagues. He went on to become the first African American to pitch in a major league World Series, and the first black to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For ages 4 - 8 and their parents 

Neil Lanctot teaches modern American history at the University of Delaware. Recipient of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research, he is the author of Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution. His new book, Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, is the first biography of the Dodger great in decades and the most authoritative ever published. Campanella played eight years in the Negro Leagues with the Washington (later Baltimore) Elite Giants. When he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, he became the first African-American catcher in the 20th century in the major leagues. Campy was a mainstay of the great Dodger teams of the late 1940s and 1950s and was a three-time MVP. Following an automobile accident in 1958 which left him paralyzed below the neck, Roy Campanella became another sort of pioneer, learning new physical therapy techniques and becoming an inspiration to other athletes and physically handicapped people.Award-winning historian Rob Ruck teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh andThe Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic. His documentary work includes the Emmy Award-winning Kings on the Hill: Baseball's Forgotten Men. In his new book, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latino Game, Ruck shows how the colliding histories of black and Latin ballplayers ran the gamut from early collaboration in civil rights protests to simmering intraracial tensions. Integration of the major leagues was painful: it gutted the once vibrant Negro Leagues and often subjected Latin players to Jim Crow racism. From 27% of all major leaguers in 1975, African Americcans now make up less than one-tenth; the number of Latin Americans by contrast has grown to more than a quarter of all major leaguers. Ruck's research reveals a stunning truth: baseball has never been stronger as a business. never weaker as a game. 

Hear tales from an American storyteller.  Larry McMurty is the 2011 Pratt Lifetime Literacy Achievement Award Recipient.

Lucia Greenhouse grew up in an affluent and loving family, but her parents never took her to a doctor or hospital, not even when she got chicken pox or was knocked unconscious in a bicycle accident. As Christian Scientists, they believed that there were no such things as germs or diseases and that you could not get sick because you were perfect. fathermothergod is Greenhouse's memoir about growing up in the Christian Science faith and the painful consequences the family faced when her mother grew terribly ill.   

Across the history of black baseball, ball players and musicians played off each other in a lifetime mutual admiration and inspiration society. They were constantly meeting on their travels, crossing paths as they moved across the country. They enjoyed, indeed loved, what each other did, and they enjoyed each other's company. Larry Hogan and Bob Cvornyek explore the many-pronged connection between black music and black baseball found in the history of both genres.Dr. Lawrence Hogan is Senior Professor of History at Union County College. Dr. Robert Cvornyek is Professor of History at Rhode Island College. 

Through extensive research and hundreds of interviews with Negro Leaguers, Major Leaguers, family and friends. Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about Satchel Paige, the majestic and enigmatic pitcher. Through Paige's hardscrabble years in Jim Crow Alabama to his time with the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the powerhouses of the Negro Leagues, Tye dissects his mastery of pitching, his accuracy, power and velocity, and his signature pitch, the sizzler. He reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of 42 to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series.Larry Tye was a prize-winning journalist at The Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. An avid baseball fan, he now runs a Boston-based training progrm for medical journalists. He is th author of The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails. 

A growing number of black activists and artists claim that rap and hip-hop are the basis of an influential new urban social movement. Simultaneously, black citizens express concern with the effect that rap and hip-hop culture exerts on African American communities. According to a recent Pew survey, 71% of blacks think that rap is a bad influence.In his new book, Stare in the Darkness, Lester Spence finds that rap does in fact influence black political attitudes. However, rap also reproduces rather than critiques neoliberal ideology. Black activists seeking to create an innovative model of hip-hop politics are hamstrung by their reliance on outmoded forms of organizing. In a clear and practical manner, Stare in the Darkness reveals the political consequences of rap culture for black politics.Lester K. Spence is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been published in both academic journals and the popular press, and he appears regularly on NPR. In 2009, he received Johns Hopkins' prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award. 

Grant Wood: A Life tells the often heartbreaking story of the man who became "America's Painter." From the moment his now-iconic American Gothic caught the nation's attention in 1930, Grant Wood and his work have served as a blank canvas for American audiences, who see what they will in his dreamy landscapes, quirky history paintings, and forbidding portraits.The first biography of the artist to appear in almost 70 years, and the only one to explore Wood's closeted sexuality, Evans' book draws upon extensive research and important archival discoveries.Since 1997, Tripp Evans has been an assistant professor of art and art history at Wheaton College. He is the author of Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 1820-1915. His biography of Grant Wood won the 2010 Marfield Prize, National Award for Arts Writing. 

Jesse Billauer was surfing at Zuma Beach in Californis in 1996 and was pushed headfirst into a shallow sandbar, leaving him a quadriplegic. Jesse left the hospital knowing two things: he had to surf again; and he had to help others be inspired to follow their passions. As founder and ambassador of the Life Rolls On Foundation, Jesse brings people together and changes lives one day, one program, and one person at a time. Jesse Billauer is a professional surfer and Nike athlete. Featured in the surf epic, Step Into Liquid, Jesse's life has also been made into a feature film, Jesse's Story. 

With black males graduating at a declining rate -- only 50% will graduate from high school according to the Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement -- educators, parents and families must make a commitment to reverse this trend.  Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, associate professor at Howard University,and Dr. Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, will talk about what educators, parents and families can do to ensure that these young men succeed. Shawn Dove, campaign manager for the Open Socity Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement, will serve as moderator.Dr. Toldson serves as senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education, the country's oldest black continuous academic publication. He is the author of the "Breaking Barriers" series which analyzes academic success indicators from national surveys that together give voice to nearly 10,000 black male pupils from schools across the country.Dr. Winbush is the author of The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys. He has lectured around the world on the challenges faced by African men and the struggle for reparations.   

As she approached her 70th year, Dorothy Bailey decided to find women born in or before 1940, listen to their stories, and use their wisdom as a guide to the silver years of her life. In a Different Light illuminates a moment in the lives of 90 beautiful, well-lived women, all of whom live in Maryland or have strong ties to the state. "Their stories inspire us, make us laugh, make us think, and impart a special joy to our lives," says Bailey.Dorothy Bailey has been recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the area's most powerful women. As an elected official, she represented the citizens of Prince George's County on the County Council for eight years. She is a graduate of North Carolina Central University and has done postgraduate work at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Maryland.  

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is indisputably one of the "great American novels," yet its length and esoteric subject matter often keep readers at bay. With his trademark enthusiasm, Nathaniel Philbrick skillfully navigates Melville's world and illuminates the book's humor and unforgettable characters, finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time, and to all times.A great guide for those who've thought about reading Moby-Dick but never have, or for those who can read it multiple times and find something new with each reading, Why Read Moby-Dick? will start conversations, inspire arguments, and bring new readers to a classic tale. Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of numerous bestsellers about American history, including In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award, and Mayflower, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the founding director of the Egan Maritime Institute on Nantucket Island and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.www.nathanielphilbrick.com 

An annual seminar sponsored by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings.  For parents and teens: sessions include information on various financial assistance programs and scholarship opportunities, the college admissions process, and preparation for the SAT and other assessment tests.

1861: The Civil War Awakening chronicles courage and heroism beyond the battlefields and introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes. Adam Goodheart takes us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the mouth of the Chesapeake to the Nevada deserts, from Boston Commons to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at this moment of ultimate crisis and decision.Adam Goodheart is a historian, essayist, and journalist. He is a regular columnist for the New York Times'  acclaimed Civil War series, "Disunion." He serves as director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. 

The Johns Hopkins Center to Reduce Cancer Disparities hosts a symposium, including a panel discussion featuring Augustus A. White, III, M.D. and leaders from Johns Hopkins Disparities Centers. The panel discussion is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between community members and academic faculty on how to improve cultural competence in health care and eliminate health disparities.Dr. Augustus A. White, III, is the author of Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care. He is Professor of Medical Education and Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the first African American department chief at Harvard's teaching hospitals. 

It's time for all of us to consider how we are individually and collectively hindering the achievement of young girls and women. Miss Representation shows how mainstream media outlets contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media's limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, making it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions.Miss Representation includes stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics. It offers startling facts and statistics that will leave audiences shaken and armed with a new perspective.Panelists include: Rhonda English, My Sister's Place; Lorna Hanley, Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women; Byron Hurt, award-winning filmmaker and anti-sexist activist; Molly McGrath Tierney, Baltimore City Dept. of Social Services; Paula Monopoli, University of Maryland School of Law, Women, Leadership, and Equality Program; Caprice Martin Smith, SharperMinds Consultants; Dr. Mary Washington, Maryland House of Delegates, 43rd District. Moderator: April Yvonne Garrett, Civic Frame. 

In July 1942, American prisoners of war were performing Julius Caesar on a makeshift stage in Burma at the same time that the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra played the Hippodrome Theatre on Eutaw Street. In June 1944, more than 3,000 U.S. Marines died capturing the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean while fans back in Baltimore were cheering the International League Orioles in their successful bid for a championship.These are just two of the startling juxtapositions that Gilbert Sandler writes about in his account of life on the home front in Baltimore during World War II. Rarely seen photographs from the Baltimore Sun, the News-American, and the Afro-American bring to life the rich, personal anecdotes of wartime Baltimoreans and transport readers back to an indelible era of Baltimore history.Born and raised in Baltimore, and a service member in the Navy during WWII, Gilbert Sandler is author of Jewish Baltimore: A Family Album and the award-winning Small Town Baltimore: An Album of Memories. Sandler hosts the popular "Baltimore Stories" series on WYPR-FM. 

In The Lion of Judah in the New World, Ted Vestal relates how Emperor Haile Selassie helped shape America's image of Africa and how that image continues to evolve in the United States today. Haile Selassie was the first African head of state to be honored with a tickertape parade in New York City and the first to spend the night at the White House. What was it about this charismatic emperor that so captivated Americans and how did he become a symbol of all Africa?Theodore Vestal is professor emeritus of political science at Oklahomas State University, the American university with the longest continual relationship with Ethiopia. He went to Ethiopia as a Peace Corps executive in 1964 and has maintained a scholarly interest in the country and its people ever since. Vestal is the author of International Education: Its History and Promise for Today; Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State; and The Eisenhower Court and Civil Liberties. 

 A few years ago, journalist McKay Jenkins had surgery for a baseball-sized tumor in his abdomen. Before the operation, researchers asked him about his exposure to toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, weed killers, glues, dry cleaning fluids, and plastic meat wraps. He realized he had no idea what he was inadvertently absorbing every day and set out to find out.In What's Gotten Into Us?, Jenkins looks at the dangers of the chemicals present in our daily lives, the way everyday things may be making us sick, and how we can protect ourselves by making wiser, healthier choices.McKay Jenkins is the Tilgman Professor of English and Director of Journalism at the University of Delaware. His previous books include: The Last Ridge, The White Death, and Bloody Falls of the Coppermine. 

In 1826, visionary leader John H. B. Latrobe founded the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts to help meet pressing skilled labor demands of the Industrial Revolution and to provide a cultural center featuring scientific and fine arts exhibitions and Lyceum lectures for Baltimore, the nation's fastest growing urban center at that time. Making History/Making Art: MICA chronicles the people, the events and the turning points in the evolution of this new experiment in education into a premiere college of art internationally and an invaluable community and cultural resource known today simply as MICA.A graduate of Trinity College (CT), Doug Frost joined the senior administration of Maryland Institute College of Art in 1966 after obtaining an MA in HIstory from Yale. When he became Vice President for Development, Emeritus in 2006, he began researching and writing the College's history.Presented in partnership with the Maryland Historical Society.   

Dr. Michelle Gourdine, physician and author of Reclaiming Our Health: A Guide to African American Wellness, and Dr. Thomas LaVeist, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Disparities Solutions, discuss the inequities that exist in our current medical care system and offer solutions for change.Dr. Gourdine is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and senior associate faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.Dr. LaVeist is the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy and Director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

The 2011 Mencken Memorial Lecture,  "The Literary Journalist in the Era of H. L. Mencken: Vincent Starrett, Christopher Morley, and Clifton Fadiman," is presented by Michael Dirda, book columnist for the Washington Post.Michael Dirda received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. A graduate of Oberlin College, he received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University. Dirda is the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book and Classics for Pleasure. His latest book, On Conan Doyle, will be published this fall by Princeton University Press. 

Barack Obama, father of the American president, was part of Africa's "independence generation." In 1959 it seemed his star would shine brightly: he came to the U.S. from Kenya on a university scholarship. In Hawaii, he met Ann Dunham and his son Barack was born. He left his young family to study for a Master's degree from Harvard.Obama was a brilliant economist, yet never held the coveted government job he felt should have been his. He was a polygamist, an alcoholic, and an ardent African nationalist unafraid to tell truth to power at a time when that could get you killed. Father of eight, nurturer of none, he was an unlikely person to father the first African American president of the United States. Yet he was, like that son, a man moved by the dream of a better world. Through dozens of exclusive new interviews, prodigious research, and determined investigation, Sally Jacobs tells his story.Sally Jacobs has been a reporter for more than three decades, most recently with The Boston Globe.  

As part of the Mencken Society annual meeting, Peter Mallios, associate professor of English and American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, presents "H. L. Mencken, 'Foreign' Literature, and the Invention of Free Speech in Modern America."   He is the author of Our Conrad: Constituting American Modernity. 

Emerging from the funky blue-collar Baltimore that gave rise to Edgar Allan Poe, H. L. Mencken, Frank Zappa, and John Waters, Gus Russo nurtured an endless curiosity by inserting himself into the worlds of music, tennis, politics, and filmmaking. Boomer Days chronicles his memories of  the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, the golden ages of tennis and music, and the rise of the counterculture. Gus Russo is a veteran investigative reporter, musician, and author. He has written six books, including Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder (coauthor: Stephen Molton), which won the 2008 History Prize at the New York Book Festival. 

Now in his 11th season in the NFL, Dhani Jones has had an unusually long career for a football player. Just a few years ago, however, Dhani thought his playing days were over. Cut by the Eagles and the Saints, he was at a professional crossroads. When the Bengals called, though, he was more than ready and in the best shape of his life. And for that, he credits his off-season.The Sportsman follows Dhani's discovery that the parts of his life that, to many, seemed to be distractions -- including an off-season TV show that sent him around the world to learn and compete in other sports -- actually served to cross-train him in ways he'd never imagined. It made him more grounded, globally aware and, most surprisingly, a much better football player. Part travelogue, part workout guide, The Sportsman is an invigorating account of Dhani's global sporting adventures and the lessons he has learned along the way. From dragon boat racing in Singapore to carrying 300-pound rocks in Iceland to biking in Italy, Dhani's adventures taught him to be tougher, smarter, and stronger than ever.   

Thad Roberts, a fellow in NASA's prestigious Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, had a romantic, albeit crazy, idea: he wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Roberts convinced his girlfriend, also a NASA fellow, and another female accomplice to break into an impregnable lab at NASA's headquarters and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.To get to the lunar vault, Thad and his accomplices would have to go through the high-security entrance of Building 31, the most protected structure at the Johnson Space Center, wind their way past a half dozen additional checkpoints until they came to an electronically-locked steel door with cipher security codes and monitored by a camera-lined hallway. The safe where the moon rocks were stored was labeled "Trash" and was something out of a Swiss bank: three-feet thick made out of steel with an enormous combination wheel that took at least two people to turn.Against all odds, the team made a clean get-away (at 5 mph no less, the compound's inflexible speed limit). But what does one do with an item so valuable that it's illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts -- undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a potential astronaut -- really what he seemed?Ben Mezrich has created his own highly addictive genre of nonfiction, chronicling the amazing stories of young geniuses making tons of money on the edge of impossibility, ethics, and morality. Mezrich has authored 12 books, including Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the movie, The Social Network.www.benmezrich.com  

After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War.Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before.Red Summer is the first narrative history written about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings -- including those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Omaha and Knoxville -- Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society 40 years later.Cameron McWhirter is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He was awarded a Nieman Foundation Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard in 2007. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. 

In 2008, Elizabeth Warren took leave from her job teaching bankruptcy at Harvard Law School to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banks. In 2010 Congress passed legislation to overhaul how the financial industry is regulated, and President Obama named Warren to a special position helping set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Professor Warren has most recently served as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard. She was the Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission and was appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist as the first academic member of the Federal Judicial Education Committee. She has served as a member of the Commission on Economic Inclusion established by the FDIC. She served as Vice-President of the American Law Institute and has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Warren has written nine books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Her latest two popular books, The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth, were both on national bestseller lists.Elizabeth Warren has been principal investigator on empirical studies funded by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and more than a dozen other foundations. She has testified several times before House and Senate committees on financial issues.Time Magazine has twice named Elizabeth Warren one of the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World; the Globe named her Bostonian of the Year; and the National Law Journal named her one of the Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade. She has been recognized for her work by several other publications and professional groups, including Forbes, GQ and Smart Money.  

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon 's two families -- the public one and the secret one. When the two teenage daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered.Tayari Jones is the author of two award-winning novels, Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling. She holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. She is on the MFA faculty at Rutgers.www.tayarijones.com 

Following his award-winning work on inner-city violence, Code of the Street, sociologist Elijah Anderson introduces the concept of the "cosmopolitan canopy" -- the urban island of civility that exists amidst the ghettos, suburbs, and ethnic enclaves where segregation is the norm. Under the cosmopolitan canopy, diverse peoples come together, and for the most part practice getting along. Anderson's study of this setting provides a new understanding of the complexities of present-day race relations and reveals the unique opportunities here for cross-cultural interaction.With compelling, meticulous descriptions of public spaces in Philadelphia -- 30th Street Station, Reading Terminal Market, Rittenhouse Square -- and quasi-public places like the modern-day workplace, Anderson provides a rich narrative account of how blacks and whites relate and redefine the color line in everyday public life.Elijah Anderson holds the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professorship in Sociology at Yale University, where he teaches and directs the Urban Ethnography Project. 

In A Chance to Make History, Wendy Kopp shares what she has learned in her 20 years at the center of a growing movement to end educational inequity in America.Kopp shows that we can provide children in low income urban and rural communities with an education that transforms their life prospects, if we engage in the hard work required to achieve extraordinary outcomes in any endeavor -- establishing ambitious visions for success; developing capable teams to pursue the vision; building strong cultures of achievement and management systems that foster continuous improvement; and above all, doing whatever it takes to achieve the desired outcomes.Offering insights and recommendations that may surprise Teach For America's champions and critics alike, A Chance to Make History sets forth what it will take to "scale up" the growing number of examples of education trumping poverty.Presented in partnership with Teach For America Baltimore. All author proceeds from the book will support Teach For America corps members in urban and rural communities. 

Nothing could be more important than the health of our children, and no one is better suited to examine the threats against it than Sandra Steingraber. Once called "a poet with a knife," she blends precise science with lyrical memoir. In Living Downstream, she spoke as a biologist and cancer survivor; in Having Faith, she spoke as an ecologist and expectant mother, viewing her own body as a habitat. Now she speaks as the scientist mother of two young children, enjoying and celebrating their lives while searching for ways to protect them from the toxic, climate-threatened world they inhabit.Each chapter of Raising Elijah focuses on one inevitable ingredient of childhood -- everything from pizza to laundry to homework to the "Big Talk" -- and explores the underlying social, political, and ecological forces behind it. Through these everyday moments, Steingraber demonstrates how closely the private, intimate world of parenting connects to the public world of policymaking and how the ongoing environmental crisis is, fundamentally, a crisis of family life.

Citizens of London is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and a reluctant American public to support the British at a critical time. Murrow, Harriman, and Winant formed close ties with Winston Churchill and were drawn into Churchill's official and personal circles.Lynne Olson, a former Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press and White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of Troublesome Young Men and Freedom's Daughters. She co-authored, with her husband Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor and The Murrow Boys.

Beating the Odds is the improbable, inspiring autobiography of financial guru, Eddie C. Brown, one of the nation's top stock pickers and money managers. It details how Brown skillfully kept Brown Capital Management afloat through the dot-com bust, 9/11, and the Great Recession. Born to a 13-year-old unwed mother in the rural South, this African American investment whiz created a Baltimore-based financial firm that amassed more than $6 billion under management.Brown writes about the profound heartbreak and disorientation upon the death of his grandmother who was his surrogate mother. He describes how his moonshine-running Uncle Jake subsequently became the dominant adult figure in his life. Brown details how intellectual curiosity, abiding self-belief, hard work, and divine providence helped him earn an electrical engineering degree, become an Army officer, and later a civilian IBM engineer. He left IBM to earn an MBA, followed by investment jobs that prepared him to start his own money management company in 1983.

Experts from the University of Maryland Medical Center, Morgan State University School of Community Health & Policy, and the Baltimore City Health Department answer questions and provide resources for families about childhood obesity.Speakers include: Dr. Peter Gaskin, pediatric cardiologist, University of Maryland Hospital for Children; Dr. Yvonne Bronner, Professor of Behavioral Health Sciences, Morgan State University; Dr. Jacquelyn Duval-Harvey, Deputy Director, Baltimore City Health Department; Congressman Elijah E. Cummings; and Chauncey Whitehead, fitness activist. Moderator: Marc Steiner, WEAA radio host.Presented in partnership with the Center for Emerging Media, University of Maryland Medical Center, and Morgan State University School of Community Health & Policy.

On April 1, Columbia University professor and scholar of African American history Manning Marable died, just days before his landmark work Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention was published.The Pratt Library pays tribute to Marable with a panel of  scholars discussing his life and work. Panelists include Melissa Harris-Perry, Princeton University; Sherrilyn Ifill, University of Maryland Law School, and Lester Spence, Johns Hopkins University. Moderator: Marc Steiner.

Ralph Nader appeared at the Central Library to launch the paperback edition of his "work of imagination."Nader calls it a major "speculative work of practical utopia" in which he answers the question: What if a cadre of superrich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? Written by the author who knows the most about citizen action, this extraordinary story returns us to the literature of American social movements -- to Edward Bellamy, Upton Sinclair, and John Steinbeck -- and reminds us that changing the body politic of America starts with imagination.For the past 45 years, Ralph Nader has challenged corporations, government agencies, and institutions to be more accountable to the public. In 1965, Unsafe at Any Speed changed the face of the automobile industry, gave cars more safety features, and made Ralph Nader a household name. His lobbying and writing on the food industry insured that the food we buy is required to pass strict guidelines before reaching the consumer. One of his greatest achievements was the 1974 amendment to the Freedom of Information Act that gave increased public access to government documents. Ralph Nader has co-founded numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert, and the Center for Study of Responsive Law.

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by a would-be assassin. For years, few people knew the truth about how close the president came to dying. In his new book, Rawhide Down, Del Quentin Wilber provides a minute-by-minute account of that harrowing day. Wilber interviewed more than 125 people, many of them for the first time.With cinematic clarity, we see the Secret Service agent whose fast reflexes save the president's life; the brillian surgeons who operated on Reagan as he was losing half his blood; and the small group of White House officials trying to determine whether the country was under attack.Del Quentin Wilber is an award-winning reporter for the Washington Post. He has spent most of his career covering law enforcement and sensitive security issues, and his work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wilber will be joined by Dr. Paul Colombani and Dr. David Gens, who were young surgical residents at George Washington University Hospital who helped treat Reagan. Dan Rodricks of the Baltimore Sun and WYPR-FM will moderate the discussion.Dr. Paul Colombani has been the Children's Surgeon-in-Charge at the Johns Hopkins Hospital since 1991. He is the Robert Garrett Professor of Pediatric Surgery and Professor of Surgery, Oncology, and Pediatrics. He also directs the Pediatric Transplant Program at Hopkins.Dr. David Gens is Associate Professor of Surgery and the top attending surgeon at the Shock Trauma Center, University of Maryland Medical Center.

From one of the biggest names in rap during the golden era of hip-hop, Prodigy, one half of the group Mobb Deep (currently signed to G-Unit/50cents label), reveals a hidden side of today's biggest rappers and industry executives. He also provides shocking allegations of police misconduct in the New York City Police Department and talks about his ongoing battle with sickle cell anemia. (Prodigy is a Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation national advocate with "The No Pain Campaign.")In his memoir, My Infamous Life, Prodigy speaks for the first time about growing up in an illustrious family, his struggles with drugs, and his life-long battle with sickle cell anemia and unremitting hospitalizations. Through Prodigy's eyes we watch the birth of today's most influential musical genres and subcultures. He delivers an unblinking account of his wild life with Mobb Deep who, alongside New York rappers Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan, changed the musical landscape with their unapologetic street stories.

Andrei Codrescu is an award-winning poet, novelist, essayist and NPR commentator. He edits the online journal Exquisite Corpse and taught literature and creative writing at Louisiana State University for 25 years before retiring in 2009 as the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English. His recent work includes The Poetry Lesson, The Posthuman Dada Guide, and Jealous Witness: Poems. ( www.codrescu.com) Part of a day-long celebration of literature presented at the 8th annual CityLit Festival.

On July 16, 2009, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a renowned Harvard University professor acclaimed for his work on racial justice, was arrested by a Cambridge police sergeant. The reasons for his arrest would come under scrutiny, raise questions about racial profiling, and set off a firestorm in the media, finally culminating in the "beer summit" at the White House. Charles Ogletree, one of the country's foremost experts on civil rights, puts the now infamous event in the context of the complicated history that exists at the intersection of race,, class, and crime in America.Charles Ogletree is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at the law school. He has received numerous awards and honors, including being named one of the 100+ Most Influential Black Americans by Ebony Magazine. He is the author of All Deliberate Speed.

Danielle Evans, author of the new story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, has seen her short fiction and reviews published in The Paris Review, American Book Review, Phoebe, Black Renaissance Noire, and The L Magazine. Her work has been included in Best American Short Stories 2008 and 2010 and has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Part of a day-long celebration of literature presented at the 8th annual CityLit Festival.

Jaimy Gordon, a Baltimore native, won the 2010 National Book Award for fiction for Lord of Misrule. She is the author of three previous novels: Shamp of the City-Solo, She Drove Without Stopping, and Bogeywoman. Gordon has been a Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Bunting (now Radcliffe) Institute at Harvard. She teaches at Western Michigan University and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers.Part of a day-long celebration of literature presented at the 8th annual CityLit Festival.

In 1991, Mark Osteen and his wife, Leslie, were struggling to understand why their son, Cameron, was so different from other kids. In a powerful, deeply personal narrative, Osteen recounts the struggles he and Leslie endured in diagnosing, treating, and understanding Cam's disability -- autism. He chronicles the experience of raising Cam, whose autism causes him aggression, insomnia, compulsions, and physical sickness. One of Us is not a book about a child who overcomes autism; rather, it's the story of the triumph of love over tremendous adversity.Since 1988 Mark Osteen has taught at Loyola University Maryland, where he is Professor of English and Director of Film Studies. He has written or edited eight books, including American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture. A professional musician, Osteen performs regularly in the Baltimore-Washington area with Cold Spring Jazz Quartet. He also serves as president of the Baltimore Jazz Alliance.

In the new book, Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women -- northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina -- share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.Betty Garman Robinson, one of the contributors to the book, is a community organizer in Baltimore. She and other contributors -- Judy Richardson, Dorothy Zellner, and Jean Smith Young -- talk about their experiences working for SNCC. The Charm City Labor Chorus, a project of the Labor Heritage Foundation, perform several civil rights songs during the event.

A Town Hall Meeting hostedy by Congressman Elijah Cummings covering such economic topics asHow to access health care servicesLearn about foreclosureLearn about financial literacyLearn about free tax preparationLearn about Department of Social Services programs, i.e. cash assistance, food stamps, housing and energy assistance

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J (James Earl Ray) escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Using the alias Eric Galt,  Ray drifted through the American South, into Mexico, and then to Los Angeles. The following year Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers. Hampton Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, until the crushing moment at the Loraine Motel. His riveting narrative follows the assassin's flight and the 65-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England.Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this nonfiction thriller illuminates one of the darkest hours in American life. Hampton Sides is the author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder. He is editor-at-large for Outside Magazine and has written for National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Preservation and Men's Journal. His magazine work has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing.

The wives of Woodrow Wilson were strikingly different from each other. Ellen Axson Wilson, quiet and intellectual, died after just a year and a half in the White House and is thought to have had little impact on history. Edith Bolling Wilson was flamboyant and confident but left a legacy of controversy. Kristie Miller presents a rich and complex portrait of Wilson's wives and shows clearly how both women influenced Woodrow Wilson's life and career.Kristie Miller is a research associate at the Southwest Center, University of Arizona, and author of Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman and Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880-1944.

Most of the 18 stories in this collection were written before the devastating earthquake last January. Madison Smartt Bell and Katia D. Ulysse, two contributors to the anthology, will read selections from Haiti Noir. Katia Ulysse was born in Haiti. She holds a Master's degree in education from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Madison Smartt Bell is the author of 12 novels and two story collections. He teaches at Goucher College.

A panel of four women writers from across the globe discusses the intersection of place, time and culture in literature and in the lives of women. The conversation will be moderated by Linda A. Duggins, Hachette Book Group.Victoria Brown was born in Trinidad and came to the U.S. when she was 16. She attended the University of Warwick in the UK where she wrote Minding Ben, a novel based on her true-life story. This debut novel will be released in April.Jasmin Darzik was born in Tehran to an Iranian mother and European father. Her new book, The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life, was a finalist for this year's Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Darzik received her doctorate in English from Princeton University and is a professor at Washington and Lee University. Sarita Mandanna is from Coorg India. She worked as an investment banker in India and Hong Kong before moving to the U.S. She received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business. Her new book is Tiger Hills, a novel about a beautiful young Indian girl and the two men who love her.Tanya Wright, actress, writer and director, is the author of Butterfly Rising, a debut novel inspired by her own experience with personal tragedy and transformation. Wright has a recurring role on HBO's True Blood and has appeared in 24, NYPD Blue, and ER. 

In The Invisible Line, Daniel Sharfstein follows three families, from the Revolutionary Era up to the Civil Rights movement, as they straddle the color line and change their racial identification from black to white. While previous stories of "passing" have focused on individuals' struggles to redefine themselves, Sharfstein's subjects managed to defy the legal definitions of race within their own communities. For members of the Gibson, Spencer, and Wall families, what mattered most was the ways that their neighbors treated them in spite of their racial differences.Daniel Sharfstein teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School, focusing on the legal history of race in the United States. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

Senator Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. Senate, talks about "Women of the Senate: Making History, Changing History."

The Greater Baltimore Metropolitan Community celebrates the 100th anniversary of one of the nation's greatest public servants and fellow citizens, Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. As director of the NAACP Washington Bureau from 1950 to 1978, Mitchell led the struggle for passage of the civil rights laws.Professor Denton L. Watson, author of Lion in the Lobby: Clarence Mitchell, Jr.'s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Laws, is the featured speaker. Professor Watson is a historical documentary editor and member of the American Studies faculty at SUNY College at Old Westbury on Long Island, New York. He is editing a seven-volume edition of The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr. and of the NAACP Washington Bureau. 

From street parades to nightclubs, from church houses to dance halls, music is key to New Orleans' uniqueness. Robert Cataliotti, producer of the new recording, Classic Sounds of New Orleans, talks about the music of New Orleans.Drawn from the Smithsonian Folkways repository of classic New Orleans sounds, this collection features groups such as the Eureka Brass Band, Lonnie Johnson, Snooks Eaglin, Champion Jack Dupree, Baby Dodds, and the Mardi Gras Indians. Dr. Cataliotti teaches in the Department of Humanities at Coppin State University.

Four great migrations defined the history of black people in America: the Middle Passage, the violent removal of Africans to the east coast of North America; the relocation of one million slaves to the interior of the antebellum South; the movement of more than six million blacks to the industrial cities of the north and west a century later; and since the late 1960s, the arrival of black immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. Ira Berlin's account of these passages evokes both the terrible price and the moving triumphs of a people forcibly and then willingly migrating to America.Ira Berlin is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland. His many books include Slaves Without Masters, Generation of Captivity, and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

As part of Black History Month, Paul Coates and Natalie Stokes-Peters talk about the rich history of Black Classic Press and the future for black writers, readers and books.

The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. Writers such as Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin rose to prominence during this period, but little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works.Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples.Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.Lawrence P. Jackson is professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius and a forthcoming biography of Chester Himes. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds graduate degrees from Ohio State University and Stanford University.

No other question is more important to city-loving parents than where to send their child to school. For years, the prevailing wisdom was that you had to leave the city to get a good education for your children.Jacqueline Edelberg and a group of like-minded moms in the East Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago refused to accept that wisdom. Instead, they worked in partnership with the principal of their local public school to create community partnerships, facility improvements, curriculum enhancements, and marketing activities that turned their neighborhood public school into an asset that anchored families in the community.Jacqueline will share her experiences in Chicago and reflections on the progress Baltimore is making to ensure that all children have a great school to walk to.

The infamous Reverend Curtis Black's sordid past is no secret. But when his long-time mistress and mother of his illegitimate two-year-old daughter dies, Black and his wife Charlotte have no choice but to raise the child together. Charlotte resents Curtina and takes her emotions out on the young girl. When confronted about her behavior, Charlotte starts spending time away from home, getting closer to her ex-boyfriend. Fans of faith-based series will love the sinful shenanigans that ensue.Kimberla Lawson Roby has published 14 novels, including Be Careful What You Pray For, A Deep Dark Secret, and The Best of Everything. Love, Honor, and Betray is the seventh in the Reverend Curtis Black series.www.kimroby.com/bookshelf.php

Rev. John Arthur Nunes, president and CEO of Lutheran World Relief, delivers the King Commemorative Lecture. Rev. Nunes speaks on "Justice, Dignity and Peace: How Martin Luther King's Legacy Informs International Development." He received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Rev. Nunes is the author of Voices from the City: Issues and Image of Urban Preaching. 

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson chronicles the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West through the stories of three individuals and their families. Over a decade in the writing and research, and drawing on archival materials and more than 1,200 interviews, Wilkerson traces the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster, from their difficult beginnings in the South, to their critical decisions to leave and look for a better life in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for her feature writing in The New York Times, making her the first African American woman to receive a journalism Pulitzer. She has also won a George S. Polk Award, a Guggenheim Fellowhip, and a Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She is Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University.

Shiori was born in Tokyo, Japan, six years after the end of World War II. She describes herself as hapa, half-American, half-Japanese. In her first collection of poetry, she weaves memoir and historical record into a lyrical and moving portrait of post-war immigration to the United States.Shiori's work has appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Frogpond, Hawai'i Review, and other publications. Her awards include the Washington Square Review, James Still and Thomas Merton poetry prizes. A contributing editor for the Baltimore Review, she teaches creative writing and journalism at Coppin State University.

Glass House of Dreams celebrates Baltimore's landmark Victorian glass palace, the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in historic Druid Hill Park. An extensive collection of original lithographic postcards illustrate the history of this 1888 botanical conservatory, the second oldest glass house in America. Photographs by David Simpson capture the elegance of this architectural gem and the beauty of its individual plants and flowers.Margaret "Peggy" Stansbury is founder of the non-profit Baltimore Conservatory Association that worked with the City to bring this Victorian jewel back to life. The original Palm House featuring 175 glass windows, many of them curved, is once again packed with exotic flora from around the world.

This historic novel is a compelling story about the complex and courageous lives of three young African American women who leave behind the racism and oppression of the South for a new life in Harlem. They work long hours at dangerous jobs in war plants and encounter war time espionage, death and betrayal.Frances Beckles, editor, journalist, and retired college professor, grew up in Harlem. Hop the A Train is based on her family's vivid accounts of how their lives were indelibly changed by the events of World War II. Beckles is the author of Twenty Black Women: Profiles of African American Maryland Women.

This annual Cave Canem poetry reading at the Pratt features Thomas Sayers Ellis reading from his new collection, Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems. Ellis is known in the poetry community as a literary activist and innovator, one whose poems "resist limitations and rigorously embrace wholeness." His first full-length collection, The Maverick Room, won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. Ellis teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Lesley University low-residency MFA program, and he is a faculty member of Cave Canem.Other Cave Canem poets who will be reading with Ellis:R. Dwayne Betts, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Bettina Judd, Kateema Lee, Robin Coste Lewis, Carlo Paul, Kamau Rucker, and Lamar Wilson.Hosted by Reginald Harris of Poets House. 

Set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era, Glorious blends fact and faction in telling the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer. Her tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.Bernice McFadden is the author of six novels, including Sugar and Nowhere is a Place, which was a Washington Post Best Fiction title for 2006. She is a two time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist for fiction, as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. 

Susan Fales-Hill's new novel takes us on a comedic romp through the boardrooms, bedrooms and ballrooms of Manhattan and Paris. India, Abby, Esme, and Monique have been friends since their days at Manhattan's Sibley School for Girls. From the outside, these four women seem to be living ideal lives, yet each finds herself suddenly craving more.Susan Fales-Hill graduated from Harvard, wrote for The Cosby Show, and A Different World, and was co-creator and executive producer for the series Linc's. She is the author of the memoir, Always Wear Joy.

Jimmy Heath, an NEA Jazz Master, is widely recognized as one of the greats in jazz. A saxophonist, composer, arranger, and educator, Heath has known and played with many jazz giants  throughout his career: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few. In his autobiography, written with Joseph McLaren, Heath creates an extraordinary "dialogue" with musicians and family members, including his equally legendary brothers, Percy and Albert (Tootie). Heath directed the Jazz Studies master's degree program in performance at Queens College (CUNY).

In Under Their Thumb, Bill German discusses his ups and downs with the "world's greatest rock and roll band." He chronicles how he befriended the Stones (while just a teenager) and how he became the band's official historian for almost two decades.He traveled the world with them, stayed at their homes, and witnessed their concerts, recording sessions, and in-fights. German will share some of his humorous Stones anecdotes, as well as some never-before-seen photos.Bill German co-authored The Works with guitarist Ron Wood and wrote about the Stones for Rolling Stone and Spin.

An annual seminar sponsored by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings.  For parents and teens: sessions include information on various financial assistance programs and scholarship opportunities, the college admissions process, and preparation for the SAT and other assessment tests.

Pratt presents Pat Conroy, the recipient of the 2010 Pratt Lifetime Literary Achievement Award.  The author discusses his most recent book, My Reading Life.

A Community Comes to Grips with its Past  A tragedy occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 3, 1979, resulting in the deaths of five anti-Klan demonstrators, and the grave wounding of ten others. Over 25 years later, the community still had not resolved the pain that resulted from this event. Thus was born the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with a mandate that stated, "There comes a time in the life of every community when it must look humbly and seriously into its past in order to provide the best possible foundation for moving into a future based on healing and hope." Listen to Commissioner Rev. Mark Sills and Rev. Nelson Johnson and his wife Joyce Johnson as they discuss the lessons learned from this unique process in healing. The conversation was moderated by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Andre Davis. Presented in partnership with Open Society Institute - Baltimore.

Bookish and retiring, Garry Wills has been an outsider in the academy, in journalism, even in his church. With his journalist's eye for detail, he brings history to life, from the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests to the presidential campaigns of Nixon, Carter, and Clinton.Professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University, Garry Wills has written many bestselling works, including Lincoln at Gettysburg, What Jesus Meant, and Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. 

With his first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu made one of the most impressive literary debuts of recent years. Translated into more than a dozen languages, it garnered awards from around the world, including a "5 Under 35" award from the National Book Foundation.In How To Read the Air, Mengestu tells an even richer, more complex story of two generations of an African immigrant family and the America which they seek to make their home. Mengestu has drawn on his own background as an Ethiopian immigrant, as well as that of his family, to produce this compelling, multi-layered tale of identity, love, family, revolution, and reconciliation.Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa in 1978 and came with his mother and sister two years later to join his father in Peoria, Illinois. He graduated from Georgetown University and received an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. He is the receipient of a Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.An excerpt from How to Read the Air appeared in the July 12, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, after Mengestu was selected as one of their "20 under 40" writers of 2010.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national daily independent award-winning news program airing on over 800 TV and radio stations in North America. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' for "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."Goodman is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her latest book is Breaking the Sound Barrier. 

In the vastly white, Southern world of NASCAR, black drivers are rare and black-owned teams nearly nonexistent. During his decade and a half owning and running Miller Racing, Leonard T. Miller made it his goal to win NASCAR races and create opportunities for black drivers. His new book, Racing While Black, chronicles the travails of selling marketing plans to skeptics and scraping by on the thinnest of budgets, as well as the triumphs of speeding to victory and changing the way racing fans view skin color.Leond T. Miller spent 21 years as a commercial airline pilot. He and his father, Leonard W. Miller, own Miller Racing Group and were the first African-Americans to win a track championship in NASCAR history.

Sandra Evans Falconer's new book of poems is a first person account of her 2003 battle with breast cancer. A recipient of an Individual Artist Award in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council in 1999, Falconer is also a dancer and performer. Her poems have been published in national and international journals, and her work has also been adapted for the stage at the Washington, D.C. Playwrights Festival.

Eugene Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his insightful commentary on race, President Obama, and the 2008 election. He has reported for the Washington Post for over 25 years and writes a twice-weekly column.In his new book, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, Robinson argues that, over decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of "Black America" has shattered, and America's agenda for racial progress has fundamentally changed. Now instead of one "Black America," there are four distinct groups: a mainstream middle-class majority; a large abandoned minority with less hope than ever of escaping poverty; a small transcendent elite with enormous wealth and power; and newly emmergent groups of mixed-race individuals and recent black immigrants who question what "black" even means.

The stories of Ocean State roll over the reader like a wave. Family pleasures, marriage, the essential moments and mysteries of a seemingly ordinary world that break into magical territory before we can brace ourselves -- Jean McGarry puts us in life's rough seas with what the New York Times has called a "deft, comic, and devastatingly precise" hand.From Kirkus Reviews: "McGarry's prose is fresh, her plots unpredictable, her dialogue wry."Jean McGarry teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Ocean State is her eighth book of fiction.

In Fierce Angels, Dr. Sheri Parks explores the mythology of the "strong black woman" in both black and mainstream cultures and the ways in which it both empowers and burdens women today. In real life and fictionalized entertainment, black women are expected to embrace the dichotomy of the selfless caregiver and unstoppable crusader while neglecting their own needs.Dr. Parks is an award-winning teacher and public speaker. She is associate professor and co-director of graduate studies of the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland College Park.

The bestselling author of Bringing Down the House tells the story of the accidental creation of Facebook and the amazing tale of what followed. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends, brilliant at math but awkward with the opposite sex. Their quest for admission to one of Harvard's elite clubs led them on a real life adventure and ruined their friendship.A graduate of Harvard, Ben Mezrich has written 11 books, both fiction and nonfiction.

David Plouffe served as the manager for Barack Obama's historic presidential campaign and will play a key strategy role for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. Plouffe explains the secrets to winning elections in contemporary politics and shows how Democrats can build on the historic campaign of 2008. This paperback edition features a new chapter on the challenges of 2010.

In Half Empty, a collection of witty, wise and poignant essays, David Rakoff examines the realities of our sunny contemporary culture and finds that the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won't come true. Ranging from the personal to the universal, the stories come from Rakoff's reporting and his own experiences.David Rakoff is the author of Don't Get Too Comfortable and Fraud. He writes for GQ, New York Times Magazine, and other publications and is a regular contributor to Public Radio International's "This American Life."

Paul Reyes' father, a Cuban immigrant, made his living in Tampa's poorer neighborhoods by "trashing-out" foreclosed homes. In between jobs, cities, and writing gigs, Reyes worked alongside his father and his crew cleaning out the foreclosed properties and sometimes interviewing the former tenants. His new book, Exiles in Eden, takes us far from the machinations of Wall Street to the sun-baked side streets where the true costs of the national foreclosure crisis can be seen.

In her bestselling novel, Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan introduced us to Bernadine, Savannah, Gloria, and Robin. Getting to Happy finds the four, 15 years later, still living in Phoenix, and still grappling to find professional fulfillment, personal contentment, and the love of a good man.Terry McMillan's bestselling novels include Disappearing Acts, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and A Day Late and A Dollar Short. She has received an NAACP Image Award and the Essence Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature.

Maryland CASH is a local organization providing financial literacy and assistance.  Shani Gibson introduces this organization and describes what it does.

Baltimore CASH is a local organization providing financial literacy and assistance.  Monica Copeland introduces this organization and describes what it does.

In 2004 when she knows she's dying, Sydney Stringfellow finally reveals to her son what happened long ago during World War II. At the 1936 Olympics, Sydney had fallen in love with a handsome young German. After returning home, she married Jimmy, a kind young Marine who was shipped out to the Pacific theater. Horst, the German, showed up in America, a defector from the Nazis, creating a major dilemma that Sydney would face the rest of her life.Frank Deford is senior contributing writer for Sports Illustrated, commentator for National Public Radio, and correspondent for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. He is the author of 16 books, including the bestseller Alex: The Life of a Child. Deford is a member of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame and a six-time winner of the Sportswriter of the Year Award. He has won a Peabody, an Emmy, and countless other awards. Frank Deford served as chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for 16 years and remains chairman emeritus. Born in Baltimore, he now lives in Connecticut. 

Meet food writer and cookbook author Lucie Snodgrass during Baltimore's Summer Restaurant Week. Her book, Dishing Up Maryland, focuses on the rich diversity of Maryland's native foods and food producers and includes 150 recipes, as well as food lore, advice on where to visit, and profiles of local food producers, chefs, and restaurants. The sweet and classic fresh taste of crab cakes may be Maryland's signature flavor, but it's only a part of what the Old Line State has to offer. Lucie Snodgrass live, writes, and cooks on her farm in northeastern Maryland. 

Baltimore native Joe Gans captured the world lightweight title in 1902, becoming the first black American world title holder in any sport. Gans was a master strategist and tactician and one of the earliest practitioners of "scientific" boxing. During his championship reign, he was said to be more famous than Booker T. Washington; yet his legacy to sport and culture is all but forgotten today. Four years after winning the longest bout in gloved boxing history -- a 42-round death match in a Nevada mining town -- Gans died of tuberculosis on August 10, 1910.Colleen Aycock of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of a professional fighter, wrote this biography of Joe Gans with coauthor Mark Scott.

Since drawing her first Sylvia strip in 1979, the nationally syndicated cartoonist Nicole Hollander has channeled her ascerbic wit and razor-sharp sensibilities through the incomparable and irascible Sylvia, a Chicago original whose hilarious commentary on American life has won over millions of readers. Charting 30 years of fashion, food, sexual mores, and political hypocrisy, The Sylvia Chronicles is nothing less than a jaded history of our times.Nicole Hollander has published 16 collections of Sylvia strips, as well as Female Problems and My Cat's Not Fat, He's Just Big-Boned.

Poet Lucille Clifton was a mentor, friend, and teacher to scores of writers in Maryland and around the country. Clifton served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and was Distinguished Professor of Humantities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She received the National Book Award for her poetry collection, Blessing the Boats (2000). Clifton wrote more than 16 books for children. She served as trustee of the Enoch Pratt Free Library from 1975 to 1984.Join us for this celebration of the life of Lucille Clifton. Poets from Baltimore and around the state will raise their voices to honor the memory of Clifton's life and works. We invite you to bring your favorite Lucille Clifton poem to share.

Join us for a morning of dynamic speakers, and stimulating conversation with experts, educators and service providers committed to eradicating intergenerational illiteracy, addressing the learning differences that challenge low literacy adults and promoting lifelong reading and learning.The Moderator was Marcy Kolodny leading a panel including: Ulysses D. Archie Jr., Kalman R. Hettleman and   Ben Shifrin.Why Can't Grandma Read: Intergenerational Illiteracy in Baltimore was a conference presented by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Reads, Inc., and the Dyslexia Tutoring Program.

Food writer Novella Carpenter tells how she turned a vacant lot in one of the worst parts of Oakland, California, into a working mini-farm, complete with vegetables, herbs, chickens, ducks and bees. Her success led to raising rabbits and pigs as well, plus a month-long plan to eat from her own garden. Carpenter's farm is now 10 years old, and her neighbors still think she's crazy!Novella Carpenter grew up in Idaho and Washington, graduated from the University of Washington, and studied with Michael Pollan at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, Saveur.com, sfgate.com, and Mother Jones.

The never-say-die actress/singer/icon opens up and lets the world into her life to witness her triumphs, failures, challenges, and loves -- which include the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Freddie Prinze, Sr., and Richard Pryor. She also talks in detail about a couple of well-heeled mystery suitors. This saga of one of the world's most beautiful women, and the overcoming every hurdle that gets in her way, will bring tears and cheers as she survives everything, even a bout with cancer.Pam Grier began her acting career and achieved fame in the early 1970s when she starred in a number of popular films including Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba Baby. In the 1980s, she worked alongside Paul Newman in Fort Apache: The Bronx, starred in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and earned an NAACP Image Award for Best Actress in a play, Fool for Love by Sam Shepard. In the 1990s her performance as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown earned her nominations for Best Actress from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild, and the NAACP Image Award in 1997. 

Dr. Hubert G. Locke will discuss the Holocaust and Jewish-Christian relations. Dr. Locke is Provost Emeritus for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Evan School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, Seattle, and member of the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.Dr. Locke's appearance in Baltimore is sponsored by the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies and the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.Partners include: Associated Black Charities; THE ASSOCIATED: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore; Baltimore Community Foundation; and Open Society Institute-Baltimore.  

Two boys from Baltimore with the same name -- one becomes the first African American Rhodes Scholar ever from Johns Hopkins University while the other boy serves a life sentence in prison. Violence, drugs, single mothers, uninformed choices, all played critical roles in their development, but they have radically different futures.Wes Moore wrote to the other Wes Moore in prison, the beginning of a deepening relationship consisting of letters and visits. Wes Moore served as an Army Officer in Afghanistan and worked as a special assistant to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He works as an investment professional in New York.

Since January, 2000, the online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly has showcased the richness and diversity of authors who live or work in the Washington, DC area. Beltway has published academic, spoken word, and experimental authors, as well as poets whose work defies categorization.Joining editor Kim Roberts will be poets Holly Bass, Grace Cavalieri, Tina Darragh, Joel Dias-Porter, Daniel Gutstein, and Merrill Leffler. Hosted by Reginald Harris, poet and author of 10 Tongues.

In the first comprehensive, single-volume biography since David Herbert Donald's in 1996, Ronald White offers a fresh definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life. Using newly available resources such as the Lincoln Legal Papers and recently discovered letters and photographs, White shows Lincoln's personal, political and moral evolution.Ronald C. White, Jr. is the author of two bestselling books on Abraham Lincoln: The Eloquent President and Lincoln's Greatest Speech, a New York Times Notable Book. White earned his Ph.D. at Princeton and has lectured on Lincoln at hundreds of universities and organizations, at Gettysburg and the White House. He is a Fellow at the Huntington Library and a visiting professor of history at UCLA.www.ronaldcwhitejr.com

Against the backdrop of today's increasingly multicultural society, are America's elite colleges admitting and succeessfully educating a diverse student body?Thomas Espenshade, professor of sociology at Princeton University, pulls back the curtain on the selective college experience and takes a rigorous and comprehensive look at how race and social class impact application and admission, enrollment, and student life on campus. Based on data provided by the National Survey of College Experience and more than 9,000 student interviews, Espenshade and coauthor Alexandria Walton Radford discover that students from different racial and social classes do not mix as one might expect.

Immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Baltimore's liberal school board voted to desegregate and adopted a free choice policy that made integration voluntary. Baltimore's school desegregation proceeded peacefully, without the resistance or violence that occurred elsewhere. However, few whites chose to attend school with blacks, and after a few years of modest desegregation, schools resegregated and became increasingly segregated. The school board never changed its policy. Black leaders had urged the board to adopt free choice, and, despite the limited desegregation, continued to support the policy and never sued the board to do anything else.Howell S. Baum is professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland. He is the author most recently of Community Action for School Reform and The Organization of Hope: Communities Planning.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and professor at New York University School of Law, and Renee Hutchins, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, will discuss how race affects attitudes and outcomes in the criminal justice system.Part of "Talking About Race," a year-long speaker series, presented in partnership with Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Stanley Plumly has written six collections of poetry, including The Marriage in the Trees and Out-of-the-Body Travel (1977) which won the William Carlos Williams Award and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book is Argument & Song: Sources & Silences in Poetry. Plumly edited the Ohio Review (1970-75) and the Iowa Review (1976-78). He has taught at Louisiana State University, Ohio University, Princeton, Columbia, and the Universities of Iowa, Michigan and Houston, as well as at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill Foundation Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Plumly is professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Masha Hamilton is the author of four novels, most recently 31 Hours (2009), a Washington Post selection for one of the best novels of the year and an Indie Choice pick by independent booksellers. Her previous novels include Staircase of a Thousand Steps, The Distance Between Us, and The Camel Bookmobile. A former foreign correspondent, Hamilton is the founder of two world literacy programs: the Camel Book Drive, begun in 2007, and the Afghan Women's Writing Project, begin in 2009 to foster creative and intellectual exchange between Afghan women writers and American women authors and teachers. She teaches for Gotham Writers' Workshop and has taught at the 92nd Street Y in New York City and at other writers' workshops around the country.Thrity Umrigar's most recent novel is The Weight of Heaven, published in 2009. She is the author of three other novels -- The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time -- and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. A journalist for 17 years, Umrigar is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and a 2006 finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. She is an associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Reginald Harris serves as host for readings by these poets:Ron Egatz, Beneath Stars Long Extinct (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE3DE103CF933A15750C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all);John Murillo, Up Jump the Boogie (http://www.myspace.com/johnmurillo);Paul Nelson, A Time Before Slaughter (http://www.americansentences.com/paul-nelson.html);January G. O'Neil, Underlife (http://poetmom.blogspot.com/); andShelley Puhak, Stalin in Aruba (www.shelleypuhak.com) 

Nearly half of all young black men in America are behind bars, on parole or probation. Legal scholars Michelle Alexander and Paul Butler argue that the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a system of racial control, targeting black men and decimating communities of color.In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans -- employment and housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote and educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion of jury service.Paul Butler's book, Let's Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice, offers a powerful new vision of justice. Americans live in a society fueled by fear and fettered by the lock-'em-up culture that dominates our criminal justice system; we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, yet our streets are no safer. Part memoir, part manifesto, Let's Get Free takes a fresh investigative look at the dysfunctional politics of our broken justice system and proposes a series of controversial solutions.A longtime civil rights advocate and litigator, Michelle Alexander was a 2005 Soros Justice Fellow. She served for several years as director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. She clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court, directed the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, and appeared as a commentator on CNN and MSNBC. She is currently a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.Paul Butler is a former federal prosecutor and the country's leading expert on jury nullification. He regularly provides commentary for CNN, NPR, and Fox News. He has been featured on 60 Minutes and profiled and published in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and The Progressive. Butler is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. An award-winning law professor, he now teaches in the areas of criminal law, civil rights, and jurisprudence at George Washington University.

Baltimore is the setting for this examination of bigotry and residential segregation. Antero Pietila shows how continued discrimination practices toward African Americans and Jews has shaped the cities in which we live.Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century. The Federal Housing Administration continued discriminatory housing policies even into the 1960s, long after civil rights legislation. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of "white flight" after World War II and into the first decade of the 21st century. Pietila's narrative centers on the human side of residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending.Antero Pietila spent 35 years as a reporter with the Baltimore Sun, most of it covering the city's neighborhoods, politics, and government. A native of Finland, he became a student of racial change during his first visit to the United States in 1964.

Through a series of fictional episodes about a small Midwestern town, Jabari Asim brings into focus how the tumultuous events of 1968 affected real people's lives. The 16 connected stories are set in one of the most turbulent years in modern history, 1968, in the fictional town of South Gateway, where second-generation offspring of the Great Migrators have pieced together a thriving if uneasy existence. Centered on the lives of a diverse cast of well-drawn characters, the stories evoke a uniquely American epoch. With police brutality on the rise, the civil rights movement gaining momentum, and wars raging at home and abroad, the community Asim has conjured stands on edge.Jabari Asim is the author of What Obama Means, The N Word, and several books for children. He is a scholar-in-residence at the University of Illinois and editor-in-chief of The Crisis. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Essence, Ebony, and other publications. He recently was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Young urban black men are overwhelmingly the victims and perpetrators of violent crime in the U.S. Troubled by this tragedy -- and his medical colleagues apparent numbness in the face of it -- Dr. Rich, a black man who grew up in relative comfort, reached out to many of these young patients to learn why they lived in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and how it affected them.Dr. John A. Rich is the chair of and a professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health, where he is also the director of the Center of Academic Public Health Practice. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2006 and is the former medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission and the Young Men's Health Clinic in Boston.Joining Dr. Rich at this program: Roy Martin, a senior youth development specialist in the Youth Development Network, Boston Public Health Commission. He helps connect young men with health and social services they desperately need. Previously Martin worked as a network manager and constituent services manager in the office of Senator John Kerry. Martin combines his wisdom from the streets with his passion for social justice to help young men survive and heal from the trauma of their lives.

Five women writers from various regions of the globe discuss the voice and role of women past, present and future, on the page and living life as only women can. The conversation will be moderated by Linda A. Duggins, Hachette Book Group (pictured.) Authors include:Connie May Fowler, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly (Grand Central Publishing)Iris Gomez, Try to Remember (Grand Central Publishing)Elizabeth Nunez, Anna-In-Between (Akashic Press)Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Wench (Amistad/HarperCollins)Tiphanie Yanique, How to Escape From a Leper Colony (Graywolf Press) Connie May Fowler is an award-wining novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is the author of seven books, including her new novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, which will be released in April. Her books have received the Chautauqua South Literary Award, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and the Francis Buck Award; three of her novels have been Dublin International Literary Award nominees. (www.conniemayfowler.com) Iris Gomez is the author of two poetry collections, Housicwhissick Blue and When Comets Rained, which earned a prestigious national poetry prize from the University of California. Originally from Colombia, she is a public interest immigration lawyer and law school lecturer. Her novel, Try to Remember, will be released in May. (www.irisgomez.com)  Elizabeth Nunez is the author of seven novels, inlcuding Prospero's Daughter (New York Times Editors' Choice) and Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award). She is coeditor, with Jennifer Sparrow, of the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad. (http://aalbc.com/authors/elizabet.htm)  Dolen Perkins-Valdez's fiction and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, African American Review, and other publications. A former George McCandlish Fellow in American Literature at George Washington University, Dolen was a finalist for the 2009 Robert Olen Butler Short Fiction prize. Wench is her first novel. (www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com)  Tiphanie Yanique is from the Hospital Ground neighborhood of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing and Caribbean Literature at Drew University and an associate editor with Post-No-Ills. (http://tiphanieyanique.blogspot.com/) Program partners: 

Ted Venetoulis' novel turns the Washington scene upside down when the First Lady kicks her unfaithful husband out of of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Full of twists and turns and a White House filled with cronies and chicanery, this far-fetched spoof boasts an ending unlike any in the long annals of the affiars of state.Former Baltimore County executive, Ted Venetoulis currently serves as chairman and CEO of Corridor Media, Inc., a regional business and political news magazine serving the Baltimore Washington corridor. He has taught courses on politics and the media at Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College. Venetoulis has been the leader of efforts to return the Baltimore Sun to local ownership and is recognized nationally for his knowledge of the various approaches to restructuring and salvaging the newspaper industry. 

Born to parents of modest means but middle-class values and aspirations, Jerald Walker spent his early years in a Chicago housing project. Drawn to the streets like so many African American boys, he dropped out of school and by his early teens was well on the road to self-destruction. And then came the blast of gunfire that changed everything: his coke dealer friend Greg was shot to death, less than an hour after Walker had scored a gram from him. Walker tells the story of his descent and rebirth in alternating time frames. It is a classic coming-of-age story and an eloquent account of how the past shadows, but need not determine, the present.Jerald Walker is an associate professor of English at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a teaching/writing fellow and James A. Michener Fellow. His work has appeared in Mother Jones, Best African American Essays: 2009, and Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry. 

When Elisa New held her great-grandfather Jacob Levy's cane in her hands for the first time in 1997, she realized that her family's story was not the standard coming-to-America tale she had long assumed.In the mid-1880s, Levy landed not at Ellis Island, but at Baltimore where he soon became a successful businessman and prominent socialist leader. New and her daughter Yael set out to research their family history, from Lithuania to Baltimore to London, and in the process unlocked family mysteries and explained the etching on Jacob Levy's cane.Elisa New is professor of English and American literature at Harvard University and the author of The Line's Eye and The Regenerate Lyric.

When gold rush fever gripped the globe in 1849, thousands of Chinese immigrants came through San Francisco on their way to seek their fortunes. In The Poker Bride, Christopher Corbett looks at this Chinese experience through a little-known legend from Idaho lore, the story of Polly, a young Chinese concubine, won by a white gambler in a poker game in Idaho.Corbett is the author of Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express and Vacationland. He writes the popular "Back Page" column for Style magazine and teaches at UMBC.

Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, A Bright Shining Lie, tells the story of the nuclear arms race that changed history and the visionary American Air Force officer, Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. He details Schriever's quest to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.A Fiery Peace in a Cold War was named "one of the 10 best books of 2009" by Publishers Weekly.

Alexandra Natapoff, professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, is an award-winning scholar and a nationally recognized expert on snitching in the criminal justice system.In her book, she discusses the widespread use of criminal informants, the legal, cultural and political consequences, from street to drug crime to Hip Hop music, the FBI, and terrorism.Natapoff served as assistant federal public defender in Baltimore from 1998 to 2003.

In 2007, David Beckham left the comfort and securiity of European soccer and embarked on a new and risky adventure in the U.S. with the L.A. Galaxy. Sports writer Grant Wahl spent two years following Beckham and the Galaxy. In The Beckham Experiment, he provides the behind-the-scenes drama of Beckham's time on the road in one of sports' most fascinating gambles. In 12 years at Sports Illustrated, Grant Wahl has written 31 cover stories and covered five World Cups, three Olympics, and 12 NCAA basketball tournaments.

This annual Cave Canem poetry reading at the Pratt features three dynamic young voices: Samiya Bashir, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was the 2001 Cave Canem Prize winner; her new collection is Open Interval, a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Poetry. Ronaldo Wilson received the 2007 Cave Canem Prize for Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man.

Folklorist and writer Alison Kahn and photographer Peggy Fox have collaborated to produce a collection of oral history narratives, essays, and photographs that profile the lives of longtime residents of five historic Patapsco Valley villages: Ellicott City, Oella, Elkridge, Relay, and Daniels. The love of place shines through in this volume, which chronicles experiences that span nearly a century. An ode to the valley's vanishing communities, it reveals the connections between people and place and culture in the face of rapid change.

Why is race still an uncomfortable subject to talk about in the United States? Join us for this conversation with Rich Benjamin, author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, and Tim Wise, author of Between Barack & A Hard Place: Racism & White Denial in the Age of Obama. Benjamin and Wise will discuss white America's struggle to talk about race. Rich Benjamin is a Demos Senior Fellow.Part of the year-long speaker series, "Talking About Race," presented in partnership with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. Cosponsor: Demos 

Are you leading an "unwealthy" lifestyle? What's your worst bad habit when it comes to your finances?Financial lifestyle coach Deborah Owens answers your questions and show you how to develp the seven "wealthy" habits.

Admissions representatives and scholarship organizations discuss information on various financial assistance programs and scholarship opportunities, the college admissions process, and preparation for the SAT and other assessment tests.

Ariel Sabar's father Yona was born in a tiny village in the Kurdiish region of Iraq, in a Jewish enclave so isolated that the residents still spoke Aramaic. Yona Sabar and thousands of other Iraqi Jews were resettled in Israel in the 1950s. From there, he went to Yale University and became a professor of Near Eastern languages at UCLA, dedicated to preserving the unique heritage of the Jews of Kurdistan.Growing up in Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar wanted nothing to do with his father's strange immigrant heritage -- until he had a son of his own. In My Father's Paradise, Ariel Sabar retells his father's story and finds his own.Ariel Sabar covered the 22008 U.S. presidential campaigns for The Christian Science Monitor. He is an award-winning former staff writer for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. My Father's Paradise won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award for autobiography. 

Josh Weil's The New Valley, published last year, was honored with a "5 Under 35" National Book Award and was a New York Times Editors Choice selection. It recently was honored with the 2010 New Writers Award in Fiction from the Great Lakes Colleges Association.Set in the hardscrabble hill country between West Virginia and Virginia, the three linked novellas open up the private worlds of three very different men as they confront love, loss, and their own personal demons.Weil's fiction has been published in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train. He has written nonfiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets and Writers. Since earing his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Writer's Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' conferences. As the 2009 Tickner Fellow, Josh Weil is the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in Baltimore.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee was first elected to represent California's ninth Congressional District in 1998. In addition to being one of Congress' most vocal opponents to the war in Iraq, she has been a leader in promoting policies that foster international peace, security and human rights.Congresswoman Lee is a graduate of Mills College and UC/Berkeley. Prior to being elected to Congress, she served in the California legislature for eight years. Congresswoman Lee is currently serving as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Kalman Hettleman's book presents a bold, unconventional plan to rescue our nation's schoolchildren from a failing public education system. The plan reflects the author's rare fusion of on-the-ground experience as a school board member, public administrator, and political activist and exhaustive policy research.The causes of failure, Hettleman shows, lie in obsolete ideas and false certainties that are ingrained in a trinity of dominant misbeliefs: 1) that educators can be entrusted on their own to do what it takes to reform our schools; 2) that we need to retreat from the landmark federal No Child Left Behind Act and restore more local control; and 3) that politics must be kept out of public education.Kalman Hettleman has had a notable career on the frontlines of urban policy and politics, including service in Baltimore as a member of the school board and deputy mayor for education and other social programs, and as a nationally acclaimed education policy analyst. He has also served as Maryland cabinet secretary for social welfare programs, taught at universities, been a public interest attorney, and managed state and local political campaigns. 

Science is more than observation of what exists in nature: science is adventure of the mind. It took many creative leaps of the mind to produce science as sophisticated as modern physics and genetic biology.In his new book, Our Quest for Effective Living: How We Cope in Social Space; A Window to a New Science, Fred Katz offers creative leaps about the social space in which we humans live our lives. Katz taught sociology at various universities, including the State University of New York/Buffalo and Tel Aviv University. 

In June, 2003, Rear Admiral Barry C. Black was elected the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate. Prior to going to Capitol Hill, Chaplain Black served in the U.S. Navy for more than 27 years, ending his career as the Chief of Navy Chaplains.A native of Baltimore, Chaplain Black is an alumnus of Oakwood College, Andrews University, North Carolina Central University, Eastern Baptist Seminary, Salve Regina University, and United States International University. He holds a Doctorate degree in ministry and a Ph.D. in psychology and has received numerous awards and service medals. He is the author of From the Hood to the Hill: A Story of Overcoming.

WJZ-TV anchor Vic Carter tells the compelling story of Ozell Sutton, a civil rights pioneer who risked his life to ensure the rights of others. From rural Arkansas, Dr. Sutton conducted voter registration in the South and helped select and train "The Little Rock Nine." He later worked for the Department of Justice as a conciliator and forced rural police departments to offer adequate protection to marchers.At age 23, Vic Carter received broadcasting's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award. He was named Journalist of the Year by the University of Georgia's School of Journalism and was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.

Over a seven-year period Bill Clinton talked intimately to Taylor Branch about what it's like to be president, revealing what he thought and felt and could not say in public. Branch includes his own reactions to the content of these conversations, as well as observations on Clinton's demeanor, moods and puzzlements. The Clinton Tapes provides a unique look at the presidency and Bill Clinton's place in the ranks of our chief executives.Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor Branch is the author of three books on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge.+

Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of Spelman College and author of Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation, which discusses how American schools are experiencing increasing and underreported resegregation, will talk with David Hornbeck, former Philadelphia superintendent of schools. Hornbeck is the author of Choosing Excellence in Public Schools: Where There's a Will, There's a Way, about how race plays out in our classrooms.Part of the year-long speaker series, "Talking About Race," presented in partnership with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

L. T. (Larry) Woody grew up in Baltimore's Harlem Park neighborhood. At age 13 he received an academic scholarship to attend St. Paul's Episcopal School in Concord, NH. In Black In White is his coming-of-age story, an intimate glimpse into two very different worlds. Woody's journey from the tough streets of West Baltimore to the ivy-covered halls of his New England boarding school serve as a survival guide for young people seeking something better.Larry Woody received a degree in therapeutic recreation from Temple University in 1976. He lives in Philadelphia where he works with Focus on Fathers.

The 2009 Mencken Memorial Lecture - "Bryan Debates Mencken: The Confrontation We Missed," by Dr. Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University and author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.Dr. Kazin is an expert in U.S. politics and social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. He has taught at American University, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Stanford University. His academic honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, fellowships from Georgetown University, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

With the election of President Obama, some say race is no longer an obstacle to success and that the "American Dream" is more reality than not. Ben Jealous, executive director of the NAACP, and Gerald Torres, professor at the University of Texas Law School and co-author of The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy, will grapple with this erroneous supposition.Part of the year-long speaker series, "Talking About Race," presented in partnership with the Open Society Institute - Baltimore.

Byron Pitts talks about his new book, Step Out on Nothing: How Family and Faith Helped Me Conquer Life's Challenges.The speaker overcame a tough childhood and a debilitating stutter through faith and a few key people who "stepped out on nothing" to make a diffrence in his life. Pitts is chief national correspondent for CBS News and a contributing correspondent for 60 Minutes. He has received national and regional Emmy Awards and was named NABJ Journalist of the Year in 2002 for his coverage of the 9/11 attacks. From his challenged youth in Baltimore to his award-winning work as a journalist, Pitts' story will resonate with those who struggle with any sort of disability.

 How to Build Success Without Forgetting the StruggleJournalist Gwen Ifill of Washington Week and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and author of The Breakthrough: Politics & Race in the Age of Obama, and Sherrilyn A. Ifill, civil rights lawyer and law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and author of On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century, will discuss this pivotal moment in American history -- what has brought us to this moment, why our history is important, and how we can make this a new beginning for equity and social justice.This was the first program in a new speaker series, How We Talk About Race, presented in partnership with Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Leonard Pitts reads from his new novel, Before I Forget.In this novel from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Mo Johnson, a faded soul star of the '70s with early-onset Alzheimer's, takes his 19-year-old son on a cross-country road trip to visit his estranged father. This in-depth anatomy of black fatherhood is a brilliantly plotted multigenerational road story spanning rural Mississippi in the '40s, South Central L.A. in the '50s, the '70s soul music scene, and present-day L.A., Vegas, and Baltimore.Leonard Pitts writes for the Miami Herald. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.

Felicia Pearson, who plays Snoop on the HBO hit series The Wire, was a born a three-pound, cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. In Grace After Midnight, she tells about her life as the runt of the ghetto, a baby gangsta who landed in the Jessup state penitentiary at 14 after killing a woman in self defense. Now a student at the Baltimore School for the Arts, she's currently shooting two feature films and working with kids at risk.

Robert Egger is the Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen, where unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while foods donated by restaurants, hotels and caterers are converted into balanced meals. Since opening in 1989, the Kitchen has distributed over 20 million meals and helped over 700 men and women gain full-time employment. While Robert still maintains a day to day presence at the Kitchen, he devotes much of his time nationally, as the Director of the V3 Campaign (www.v3campaign.org), which is working to get the voice, value and votes of the nonprofit sector recognized in every election in America.

What does it mean for your organization?Learn about the stimulus/recovery act that has been signed into law and about the many different funding flows that are related to it.  This session will give you a basic understanding of how your organization can utilize the funding coming from the stimulus package in order to best serve your customers.Neil Bergsman from the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations speaks about the state's budget and how nonprofits will be affected. Representatives from Maryland Governor's Grants Office, Volunteer Maryland, Department of Labor Licensing and Regulation, Department of Housing and Community Development, Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, and the Maryland Energy Administration were also present to speak about funding through their agencies.Download the Presentation Slides.

Michael Pollan talks about his most recent book, In Defense of Food.Michael Pollan's last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating. Now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

 Steve Luxenberg talks about his new book, Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret.Every family has a secret. Washington Post senior editor Steve Luxenberg discovered that his late mother, who had always claimed to be an only child, erased nearly every trace of a sister named Annie who lived in the family home until she was committed to a mental hospital at the age of 21. In his new book, Annie's Ghosts, he explores the personal motives and cultural forces that influenced his mother's decision to create and harbor the secret.Steve Luxenberg has worked at the Washington Post for more than 20 years. Raised in Detroit, the primary setting for Annie's Ghosts, he now lives in Baltimore.

Chuck Palahniuk's 10th novel, Pygmy, is a cultural satire featuring a gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state to infiltrate America. Posing as foreign exchange students, Pygmy and his cohorts are planning something big, something truly awful, that will bring the country to its knees.Palahniuk's bestselling books include The Fight Club, Snuff, and Choke. Aaron Henkin of WYPR will moderate the conversation with Chuck Palahniuk.

Jill Jonnes talks about her new book, Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count.Built in 1889 as the centerpiece of the World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower has been an iconic image of modern times, as much a beacon of technological progress as an enduring symbol of Paris and French culture. But as engineer Gustave Eiffel built the now-famous landmark, he stirred up a storm of vitriol from Parisian tastemakers, lawsuits, and predictions of certain structural calamity.  Historian Jill Jonnes presents a compelling account of the tower's creation and Belle Epoque France: Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley transfixed Parisian audiences in sold-out shows at the tower's opening, Edison took stock of European technology, and Gaugin, van Gogh and Whistler mingled under the gaze of Gustave Eiffel and his tower.Jill Jonnes is the author of Conquering Gotham, Empires of Light, and South Bronx Rising. She was named a National Endowmennt for the Humanities scholar and has received several grants from the Ford Foundation.

Born in Pakistan, Qaisra Shahraz has lived in Manchester, England since she was nine years old. She is an award-winning author and scriptwriter and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Society of Literature. Shahraz has written numerous short stories and screen plays, as well as two novels, The Holy Woman and Typhoon. She has also worked as an education consultant and teacher trainer and has taught workshops and seminars in creative writing.

Junot Díaz reads from his 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  The Pulitzer Prize winning author appeared as part of the annual CITYLIT FESTIVAL, Celebrating the Literary Arts in Baltimore!Explicit language advisory!

In this collection of stories, poems and essays edited by Marita Golden, African American writers celebrate the complexity, power, danger, and glory of love in all its many forms. Two of the writers featured in the collection -- Reginald Dwayne Betts and Felicia Pride -- will join Marita Golden for this reading.Marita Golden is the founder of the Hurston-Wright Foundation and the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning novel After.

Two new novels by Achy Obejas (Ruins) and Robert Arellano (Havana Lunar) are set in Cuba.In Ruins, a true believer is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution. Obejas is the author of the novel Days of Awe; she translated into Spanish Junot Diaz' award-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. She is currently Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago.In Robert Arellano's hypnotic noir novel, a young doctor, the teenage prostitute he befriends, and her pimp and his bodyguards are caught in a violent chain reaction that plunges them into the catacombs of Havana's criminal underworld. Robert Arellano is the author of two other novels, Fast Eddie: King of the Bees and Don Dimaio of La Plata.

Walt Whitman worked as a nurse with wounded Civil War soldiers; his brother George served with the 51st New York Volunteers. Drawing on letters that Walt, George, their mother Louisa, and their other brothers wrote to each other, Robert Roper chronicles the experiences of this famous family enduring its long crisis alongside the anguish of the nation.Robert Roper is a professor at Johns Hopkins University where he teaches writing. He is the author of several award-winning works of fiction and nonfiction, including Fatal Mountaineer.

Peter Schechter reads from his new book, Pipeline: A Novel of Suspense.Pipeline is a riveting international thriller of oil, greed, and power. Three strangers from Washington, Frankfurt, and Lima are thrown together in a maelstrom of danger and intrigue, with the fate of America and the world resting in their hands.Peter Schechter's first novel, Point of Entry, was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a "frighteningly believable look at a possible near-future scenario." Schechter is a seasoned political and communications consultant based in Washington, DC.

In 1973 when the Boston Red Sox played the Orioles in Memorial Stadium, Don Newbery recorded his conversations with Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski.  They talked about Carl, and his opinion concerning Youth Hitting.  Yastrzemski is now a guest in the Orioles' series of Baseball Verbal Clinics recorded by Don Newbery.

In 1973 when the Boston Red Sox played the Orioles in Memorial Stadium, Don Newbery recorded his conversations with Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski.  They talked about Carl, and his opinion concerning Youth Hitting.  Yastrzemski is now a guest in the Orioles' series of Baseball Verbal Clinics recorded by Don Newbery.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing….. Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing….. Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

In 1973 and 1974 (The Championship Years) Don Newbery recorded his talks with Oriole players about playing the game of baseball, and playing their positions. They talked in the Orioles’ dugout at the Memorial Stadium just before the games. You will hear all the stadium background noise, as it was at that time --- the fans shouting, the organ playing…..Don Newbery is a former Athletic Director and Baseball & Basketball Coach at the University of Baltimore. His is also a former Baseball & Basketball Coach at the New York University, and a former sportscaster in Washington DC. Don was inducted into the Elisabeth New Jersey Athletic Hall of Fame May 4, 2006.

A child's mysterious death, a young woman's romantic obsession, and a father's long-hidden secret converge in the gripping plot of Life Sentences, Laura Lippman's new novel. In this blazing tale of twisting suspense, Lippman raises difficult, illuminating questions about the nature of memory and truth.Laura Lippman is the author of 10 Tess Monaghan novels, plus four other suspense novels, a collection of short stories, and a mystery anthology. This "book launch" celebration is cosponsored with Mystery Loves Company bookstore.

Bishop Bryant has earned a reputation as one of black America's most charismatic and committed religious leaders. Born in Baltimore, he graduated from Morgan State University and Boston University School of Theology. He earned a doctorate in theology at the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Dr. Bryant served as pastor of Bethel AME Church in Baltimore from 1975 to 1988 when he was named Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 2008, he became the Senior Bishop of the AME Church and Presiding Prelate of the Fourth Episcopal District.

Michael Bart's parents, Leizer and Zenia, were Lithuanian Holocaust survivors. It was not until after their death that their son began to piece together their history of love, struggle, resistance and survival.Michale Bart spent 10 years researching his parents' past. In Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance, Bart tell the story of their romance in the Vilna ghetto and the heroics of the ghetto resistance and partisan fighters. 

In Becoming Billie Holiday, Carole Boston Weatherford's poems trace the singer's journey from B-girl to jazz royalty.  Her first book for teens, it is illustrated with cinematic, sepia-toned art by Floyd Cooper. Weatherford will also talk about her recent children's book, I, Matthew Henson. Carole Boston Weatherford was born and raised in Baltimore. She has written many award-winning books for young readers. She teaches at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

In 1980, 13-year-old Helene Cooper's life in Liberia changed forever when a coup d'etat left the President and his cabinet (including her uncle) dead, her father wounded, her mother raped. Cooper's new memoir, The House at Sugar Beach, recalls her Liberian childhood and her return 20 years after her family's flight to America, to reunite with the foster sister they left behind.Helene Cooper is a chief diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times. Previously she spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal.

A seasoned political observer and cultural critic, Jabari Asim offers a timely and sharp analysis of the "Obama phenomenon," looking past the 2008 election to show what it means for the future of American politics and society.Asim is editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP, and is a former editor at the Washington Post. He is the author of The N Word.

In his new book, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, Randall Kennedy grapples brilliantly and judiciously with "selling out," a subject of much anxiety and acrimony in black America.Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Association.

Following her groundbreaking book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700's to the dispersal after Thomas Jefferson's death in 1826 in her new book, The Hemingses of Monticello (winner of the 2008 National Book Award for Nonfiction). The saga of this American slave family is set against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790's Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. 

Stephen Whitman is an Associate Professor of History at Mount Saint Mary's University. He writes on the history of slavery and emancipation in the 18th and 19th centuries. Whitman's new book, Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake, offers an accross-the-board look at anti-slavery activity and its impact on the region. His first book, The Price of Freedom, focused on how enslaved people in Maryland gained freedom through manumission.

Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about his new book, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. A coming-of-age story, set in Baltimore in the 1980's.Ta-Nehisi Coates and his six siblings were raised by an enigmatic and unconventional father, Paul Coates (former Black Panther leader in Baltimore and founder of Black Classic Press), who was intent on pushing his children past the streets and into Howard University. This beautifully written memoir tells the story of the strong ties that bind father and son.Ta-Nehisi Coates is a former staff writer at the Village Voice and Time; he contributes to the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and other publications. 

 Tavis Smiley talks about his new book, Accountable: Making America As Good As Its Promise."Our mission is to equip citizens with the appropriate tools to assess the performance of our elected leaders and ourselves," writes Tavis Smiley. In his new book, Accountable, Smiley revisits each of the 10 covenants from The Covenant of Black America and provides riveting narratives from everyday American citizens.Experience this "town-hall" style meeting on how we -- as individuals and as a community -- can implement solutions to the top 10 issues of greatest concern to all Americans.This program was sponsored by United Health Care. 

Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed  Dr. Anne Bailowitz, pediatrician and Director of Immunization at the Baltimore City Health Department about vaccines and immunizations in adults and children.

Children's Programming Specialist Betsy Diamante-Cohen interviews Andrea Pyatt-Johnson, Coordinator Reach Out and Read of Greater Baltimore Baltimore City.  The interview is about tips on reading to your child.

 From 1917 to 1920 the Woman's Land Army (WLA) brought thousands of city workers, society women, artists, business professionals and college students into rural America to take over the farm work after men were called to wartime service. Wearing military-style uniforms, the women lived in communal camps and did what was considered men's work -- plowing fields, driving tractors, planting and harvesting crops.Elaine Weiss, a Baltimore-based journalist, tells the story of the women who kept the farms going while the soldiers were "over there."

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian, asks Frank McNeil, Community Development, PNC Bank about predatory lending.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian, asks Anne Marie Butterhoff, Branch Manager PNC Bank about checking accounts.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian, asks Michelle Hernandez Branch Manager PNC Bank about kids and finance.

Since 1987 Nancy Pelosi has represented California's 8th District, which includes most of the city of San Francisco, in the House of Representatives. Elected by her colleagues in 2002 as Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Pelosi is the first woman to lead a major party in Congress and, as of 2007, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives.Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters is her memoir of growing up in Baltimore immersed in politics and how she came to hold the highest office of any woman in U.S. history.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian asks Richard Hunt, Division Head of Business Banking at Provident Bank about financing issues people in small businesses face.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian asks Rahn V. Barnes, Vice President and Community Development Director at Provident Bank, some questions about mortgage issues.

Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, talked with Corporal William Griffin, Safety Awareness Officer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore on June 24th about keeping children safe from poisons in their homes.

Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, talked with Corporal William Griffin, Safety Awareness Officer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore on June 24th for his top five personal safety tips.

 Author P. M. Forni talks about his new book, The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude.Many of us find ourselves confronted with rudeness every day and don't know how to respond. In The Civility Solution, P.M. Forni shows us what to do when we encounter bad behavior, such as the intrusive cell-phone uuser or the hostile highway driver. This simple and practical handbook will help you break the rudeness cycle in an assertive yet civil way.Dr. P.M. Forni is an award-winning professor of Italian Literature at Johns Hopkins University. In 2000 he founded The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins and has continued to teach courses on the theory and history of manners. He is the author of Choosing Civility.

Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robert Burke, Fire Marshal at the University of Maryland, Baltimore about carbon monoxide.

Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robert Burke, Fire Marshal at the University of Maryland, Baltimore about fire safety and protection.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian asks Rahn V. Barnes, Vice President and Community Development Director at Provident Bank, some questions about money management.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian asks Rahn V. Barnes, Vice President and Community Development Director at Provident Bank, some questions about money management.

Naomi Hafter, the Pratt Library's Business Information Librarian asks Rahn V. Barnes, Vice President and Community Development Director at Provident Bank, some questions about money management.

Michael Olesker, long-time Baltimore newsman, author, and former WJZ commentator, explores the general decline of local TV broadcast news in Tonight at Six: A Daily Show Masquerading as Local TV News. Michael Olesker, long-time Baltimore newsman, author, and former WJZ commentator, explores the general decline of local TV broadcast news in Tonight at Six: A Daily Show Masquerading as Local TV News.

 Actor Hill Harper talks about his new book, Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny.In this follow-up to his national bestseller, Letters to a Young Brother, actor Hill Harper opens up an honest dialogue with young women, offering guidance, advice and reassurance. Like a candid older brother, Harper delivers straight talk about the important and sensitive issues young women face.

Baltimore Sun columnist and WYPR political analyst Fraser Smith traces the roots of Jim Crow laws in Maryland, from Dred Scott to Plessy v. Ferguson. He describes the efforts of those who struggled over the years to establish freedom and basic rights for African Americans -- from Thurgood Marshall and Lillie May Jackson to Gloria Richardson and Walter Sondheim. 

 Winner of six Nebula and nine Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction. Her award-winning titles include Fire Watch, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Doomsday Book. Her latest full-length novel, Passage, deals with near-death experiences and the sinking of the Titanic. Join Connie Willis for a discussion of her works prior to her weekend appearance at Balticon 42.

Baltimore's Literati: Three bestselling authors from Baltimore talk about their new novels - Dan Fesperman (The Amateur Spy); Laura Lippman (Another Thing to Fall); and Manil Suri (The Age of Shiva). Hosted by Tom Hall, Culture Editor, WYPR's Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast.

Dr. Ben Carson shares his insight and advice from his new book, Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose and Live With Acceptable Risk. 

Gary Marcus talks about his new book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. In his new book, New York University psychologist Gary Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. If people were the product of some intelligent, compassionate designer, our thoughts would be rational, our logic impeccable, our memory robust, and our recollections reliable.Gary Marcus is director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center and the author of The Birth of the Mind.

Michael Kinsley talks with Frank Foer of The New Republic about his new book, PLEASE DON'T REMAIN CALM.       One of our nation's leading journalists, Michael Kinsley has been editor of The New Republic, an editor at Harper's and the Economist. He founded Slate and now writes a column for Time. PLEASE DON'T REMAIN CALM is a collection of his editorial writing since 1995, covering the end of the Clinton era through the two terms of George W. Bush. In addition to political essays, Kinsley also writes about the future of newspapers, the existence of God, and why powerful women love Law and Order.

Nathan McCall reads and signs his novel, THEM. From the author of the memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler, a new novel set in Atlanta.         In this fiction debut from the author of the bestselling memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall tells the story of a poor, traditionally black neighborhood in Atlanta as it confronts gentrification and the explosive interplay of class, race, and economics.Nathan McCall is a profesor of African American Studies at Emory University. Them was named one of the best books of 2007 by Publishers Weekly.

Film and music critic Hardy has been a juror at Sundance and other film festivals around the country.Ernest Hardy writes about film and music from his home base of Los Angeles. His criticism has appeared in numerous national publications and in reference books. He is the winner of the 2006 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence and the 2007 "Beyond Margins" award from the PEN American Center. A Sundance Fellow and a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, he has sat as a juror for the Sundance Film Festival and other film festivals around the country.His critically acclaimed book Blood Beats, Vol. I was published by RedBone Press in 2006; Blood Beats: Vol II is due out later this year.

Former Maryland Poet Laureate reads his own poems and those of his favorite poets.Michael Collier is professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, and director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is the author of five books of poetry, including The Ledge (2000), nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His most recent collection is Dark Wild Realm.He is also the editor of three anthologies. Collier is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Are fresh vegetables more nutritious that frozen vegetables?Does margarine have fewer calories than butter?There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

If my cholesterol is high, should I avoid eggs?Is oatmeal or oat bran my ticket to cholesterol management?There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

Does eating at night make you more likely to gain weight?There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

The author talks about her book, We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006The year 2006 marked the 20th anniversary of the "New Wave" in black film, that upstart artistic movement beginning with Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, which transformed black images on the big and small screen. In the more than 400 film reviews in We Gotta Have It, film and cultural critic Esther Iverem explores how the original new wave pioneers have morphed and branched into all manner and quality of films through the past 20 years.Esther Iverem is a former staff writer for the Washington Post and Newsday. She is founder and editor of SeeingBlack.com.

There are many common questions surrounding dieting and other nutrition matters.Kate Niemczyk, a librarian in the Business, Science, and Technology Department, interviewed Robin Spence from Union Memorial Hospital and asked her some of these questions.

 Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985) was an African-American surgical technician who helped develop the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was an assistant to Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.Without any education past high school, Thomas rose above poverty and racism to become a cardiac surgery pioneer and a teacher to many of the country's most prominent surgeons.

 Presidential Historian and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author An equally gifted historian and storyteller, Doris Kearns Goodwin illustrates lessons in leadership relevant to today’s issues and headlines from some of the country’s greatest figures. With stories and anecdotes from the inner circles of wives, friends and close associates who surrounded our president's, Goodwin brings the past alive, allowing listeners to learn from the talents, skills, and human failings of some of our most fascinating leaders, as well as providing insight in to the proper boundaries between private and public lives.Doris Kearns is the 2007 recipient of Enoch Pratt Free Library's Lifetime Literary Achievement Award and delivered this keynote address at the Pratt Society Dinner on November 10.

discusses her new book, Sole Sisters: The Joys and Pains of Single Black WomenMore black women today are single -- and likely to remain single -- than are married, in numbers that have reached historic heights.Drawing on interviews with 125 single black women from around the country, journalist Deborah Mathis has compiled a funny, poignant and thought-provoking chronicle of the realities of being single, black and female today.Deborah Mathis is a print and broadcast journalist, teacher, and author whose work has appeared in countless publications. She is the author of Yet a Stranger and What God Can Do. 

talks about "The Impact of Ghetto Mores, Attitudes and Lifestyles on American Culture."Cora Daniels is an award-winning journalist and the author of GHETTONATION: A Journey into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless and Black Power, Inc: The New Voice of Success. She is currently a contributing writer for Essence, and her work has appeared in numerous national publications. An expert on diversity and business issues, Daniels has served as a commentator on ABC News, CNN, CNBC, BET, NPR, and "The Charlie Rose Show."Cora Daniels graduated from Yale University, with a B.A. in History, and earned an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.Photo of Cora Daniels by Jamel Toppin, from her Random House author page.This program is part of the Brown Lecture Series. Additional support has been provided by Alpha Kappa Alpha, Epsilon Omega chapter, in Baltimore.

 Find out the answers to all your flu shot questions. Dr. Anne Bailowitz, a pediatrician with the Baltimore City Health Department, is interviewed while providing free flu shots at a public health flu clinic at the Enoch Pratt Free Library.Stay healthy this winter -- get a FREE flu shot!   (check out our calendar to find out more).

 Hosted by the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips and Natasha Trethewey gave a special reading as part of the 30th anniversary celebration for Callaloo , the premier journal of literature, art, and culture of the African Diaspora. Founded in 1976 by editor Charles H. Rowell in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Callaloo publishes original works and critical studies of black artists and writers worldwide.Yusef Komunyakaa's numerous books of poems include Neon Vernacular (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Komunyakaa is a chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.Carl Phillips' collection The Rest of Love (2004) won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His recent collections are Quiver of Arrows and Riding Westward. Phillips is Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University.Natasha Trethewey won the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for her first collection of poems, Domestic Work (2000). Since then she has published two more collections of poetry and received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard (2006). Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University.

Author and national radio personality Garrison Keillor reads from his new Lake Wobegon novel, PONTOON.Evelyn was a Sanctified Brethren woman of good standing, a devoted mother, a serious quilter. Only after she dies in her sleep, as she always wished she would, do we find out that she has been living a secret life. Garrison Keillor's latest Lake Wobegon novel is about courage and transformation in a town stuck in its ways.Keillor is the host and writer of the public radio program, A Prairie Home Companion, now in its 30th year. He is the author of 16 books, most recently the New York Times bestseller Homegrown Democrat.Presented in partnership with WYPR and The Ivy Bookshop. 

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Wild Mountain Thyme -- First recorded by Francis McPeake (of Ulster, Ireland) in 1957

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Planxty Fanny Power -- composed before 1728 by blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738).

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Give Me Your Hand (Tabhair domh do Lámh) -- composed in 1603 by Ruainn Dall O'Catháin (d. 1653)Halting March -- Traditional

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Rights of Man -- Traditional

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Denis Murphy's Polka -- by fiddler Denis Murphy (d. 1974) of County Kerry, Ireland

This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Moonlight In Mayo -- Traditional

 This performance was part of the Playin' o' the Green Casual Concert series at Central Library, which featured traditional irish folk music. Recorded March 14, 2007 at 12:00 p.m.John Damond - guitar and mandolin Erin Kelly - concertina and guitar Andrea Snyder - violin Irish Washerwoman -- Traditional