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

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

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

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

On the program are the quintet for winds Op. 43 by Carl Nielson and Samuel Barber's "Summer Music"  woodwind quintet. 

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

Baltimore native and Peabody graduate student Solomon Eichner performs a program of piano music by Beethoven, Liszt and Prokofiev. 

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

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

Jamal Joseph discusses his memoir, Panther Baby. In the 1960s, he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today, he’s chair of Columbia's School of the Arts film division. Joseph’s personal odyssey—from the streets of Harlem to Riker’s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia—is as gripping as it is inspiring. Joseph is an activist, urban guerrilla, the FBI’s most wanted fugitive, drug addict, drug counselor, convict, writer, poet, filmmaker, father, professor, youth advocate, and Oscar nominee.Reading and conversation with Marc Steiner, "The Marc Steiner Show," WEAA.CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

Jen Michalski is author of the novel The Tide King, winner of the 2012 Big Moose Prize, the short story collections From Hereand Close Encounters, and the novella collection Could You Be With Her Now. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww, a co-host of The 510 Readings and the biannual Lit Show, and interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore, which Baltimore magazine called a "Best of Baltimore" in 2010. Her book featuring two novellas includes “I Can Make It to California Before It’s Time for Dinner,” which explores the dangers of living in a world while having a compromised reality, and “May-September,” which tells the story of a young writer is hired by a much-older woman over the summer to help blog her memoirs for her grandchildren.Terese Svoboda’s Tin God contains two distinct stories told in intertwining chapters connected by setting and other elements that emerge by the novel’s end. One story involves a Spanish conquistador who has fallen from his horse and finds himself alone in an expanse of lush grass so high he cannot find his way out. The other features a guy named Pork who is searching for the brick of cocaine his buddy Jim threw into a sorghum field when their car was being chased by police. Svoboda’s writing has appeared in Paris Review, The New Yorker, TLS, Narrative Magazine, and other publications. She the author of five volumes of poetry and four novels, including Tin God originally published in 2006 and just released in paperback. CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

 Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of eleven previous poetry collections, including Timber and Prayer: The Indian Pond Poems,My Father’s Geography, and The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005. He is Alumnae Professor of English at Simmons College in Boston. Weaver is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, a Pew fellowship, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a Fulbright scholar appointment, among other honors. The Government of Nature is the second volume of a trilogy (the first was The Plum Flower Dance) in which Weaver analyzes his life, striving to become the ideal poet. Reginald Harris, Poetry in The Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House in New York City, won the 2012 Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year for 10 Tongues: Poems (2002), his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and other publications. An Associate Editor for Lambda Literary Foundation’s Lambda Literary Review, he is currently pretending to work on another manuscript.Introduced by Marc Steiner, "The Marc Steiner Show," WEAA.CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

 Tim Wendel’s books include Summer of ’68, High Heat, Red Rain, and Castro’s Curveball. A writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, his stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, and Esquire.  His newest release, Habana Libre, is a novella set in Cuba and Baltimore. Get a sneak peak before the book's official publication on May 1, 2013.Leigh Newman’s memoir Still Points North—set in Maryland and Alaska—is hot off the press from Dial Press. She is the Deputy Editor of Oprah.com where she writes about books, life, happiness, survival, and—on rare, lucky days—food.  Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in One Story, Tin House, The New York Times "Modern Love" and "City" sections, Fiction, O The Oprah Magazine, Oprah.com, Condé Nast Brides, Condé Nast Concierge, and Bookforum among other publications. Her work has been anthologized in Crown’s The Collected Traveler book series, My Parents Were Awesome (Villard, 2011), andCity Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press, 2010).CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

George Saunders is the author of three collections of short stories: the bestselling Pastoralia, set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape; CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; and In Persuasion Nation, one of three finalists for the 2006 STORY Prize for best short story collection of the year. The New York Times Magazine called Saunders's latest collection, Tenth of December, "the best book you'll read this year."In 2006, Saunders received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, which described him as a “highly imaginative author [who] continues to influence a generation of young writers and brings to contemporary American fiction a sense of humor, pathos, and literary style all his own.”Saunders reads from his new book and talks with Tom Hall, Arts and Culture Editor, “Maryland Morning,” WYPR. Signing will take place after the program on the library's first floor adjacent to the Barnes & Noble table.CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

Poets laureate Stanley Plumly of Maryland and Dick Allen of Connecticut read their latest work. Plumly is the author of Orphan Hours and is recipient of the 2010 John William Corrington Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature). Allen is the author of Present Vanishing and recipient of the 2013 New Criterion Poetry Prize, one of the country's most prominent prizes for a book-length collection of poems that pays close attention to form. Introduced by Michael Salcman, poet and critic, Past Chair, CityLit Project CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

Letters About Literature is a national writing contest for students in grades 4 to 10 sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The program encourages young readers to write to the author of a book expressing how that book changed their view of themselves or the world. In state program is managed by the Maryland Humanities Council. Every year at CityLit Festival, students and their families from around the state gather to recognize regional winners.Special Guest Author:Jonathon Scott Fuqua’s latest book, Calvert the Raven In the Battle of Baltimore, is an illustrated book for children. Fuqua has written YA novels, novels for adults, illustrated chapter books, and graphic novels.CityLit Festival was made possible in part by the generous support of the following:

Fiscal sponsorship allows a nonprofit organization (the “fiscal sponsor”) to provide administrative services, access to 501 (c)(3) status and capacity building support for groups or individuals engaged in work that relates to the fiscal sponsor’s mission. The program is presented by Keith Gavazzi of FusionPartnerships, Inc., a local nonprofit fiscal sponsor for grassroots community based projects and programs working for social change in Baltimore. 

Actions have consequences -- and the ability to learn from them revolutionized life on earth. While it's easy enough to see that consequences are important, few have heard there's a science of consequences, with principles that affect us every day and applications everywhere -- at home, at work, and at school. Despite their variety, consequences appear to follow a common set of scientific principles and share some similar effects in the brain. Further, scientists have demonstrated that learning from consequences predictably activates genes and restructures the neural configuration of the brain. In The Science of Consequences, Susan M. Schneider, an internationally recognized biopsychologist, brings together research from many scientific fields to tell the story of how something so deceptively simple can help make sense of so much.(www.scienceofconsequences.com) 

Inextricably connected to issues of autonomy, privacy, and sexuality, the abortion debate remains home base for the culture wars in America. Yet, as Sarah Erdreich argues in Generation Roe, there is more common ground than meets the eye in favor of choice. Erdreich tells the stories of those who risk their lives to pursue careers in the abortion field. She also outlines the legislative battles that are being waged against abortion rights around the country. A women's health advocate, Sarah Erdreich has worked for several prominent pro-choice organizations and written for numerous publications.Presented in partnership with Planned Parenthood of Maryland. 

In this overview of health and healing in early America, Elaine G. Breslaw describes the evolution of public health crises and solutions. Breslaw examines "ethnic borrowings" of early American medicine and the tension between trained doctors and the lay public. Orthodox medicine didn't take hold over other healers until the early 20th century when germ theory finally migrated from Europe to the United States and American medical education achieved professional standing.Elaine Breslaw taught in the history department of Morgan State University for 29 years and is now a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem. 

How can multiculturalism go wrong? Through extensive interviews conducted in a large Midwestern school district, Antonia Randolph explores how teachers perceive students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and the unintended consequences of a kind of "colorblind multiculturalism." This provocative book challenges readers to look beyond the surface benefits of diversity and raises issues about American schools that need to be addressed.Antonia Randolph is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware.  

The first book to investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her and how they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, the Pratt Library is proud to present this talk by Austen scholar Juliette Wells, associate professor of English at Goucher College. 

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned Americans about the dangers of a "military industrial complex." Today, as more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the U.S. is spending more on the military than ever before. Melvin Goodman, a 24-year veteran of the CIA, argues that U.S. military spending is making Americans poorer and less secure, while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing on his first-hand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the U.S.  military economy and outlines a much-needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices and spending.Melvin Goodman was a Soviet analyst at the CIA and the Department of State for 24 years and a professor of international relations at the National War College for 18 years. Currently he is Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  

Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was an African American singer who overcame both poverty and the blatant racism of her day to become an international opera star. She may be best remembered now for her historic 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In the crowd that day was 10-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. Sabrina Coleman Clark, operatic soprano and educator, celebrates the life of this true American heroine in “Legacy of Hope: The Marian Anderson Story.” Ms. Coleman Clark melds together the music, history, and life story of this great artist into a captivating and thought-provoking narrative.  

Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku's death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. In Ghana Must Go, Taiye Selasi charts the Sais' circuitous journey to one another as Kweku's children gather at their mother's new home. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told, the crimes committed in the name of love. Born in London, Taiye Selasi was raised in Massachusetts. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale and a M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford. She made her literary debut in Granta with "The Sex Lives of African Girls," which the New York Times called a "standout piece of fiction." 

Is relativity Jewish? The Nazis denigrated Albert Einstein's revolutionary theory by calling it "Jewish science," a charge typical of the ideological excesses of Hitler and his followers. Philosopher of science Steven Gimbel explores the many meanings of this provocative phrase and considers whether there is any sense in which Einstein's theory of relativity is Jewish.Einstein's Jewish Science intertwines science, history, philosophy, theology, and politics in fresh and fascinating ways to solve the multifaceted riddle of what religion means -- and what it means to science.Steven Gimbel is the Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. He is author of Exploring the Scientific Method: Cases and Questions and other books. 

This collection of essays by black scholars and activists, edited by Jared Ball and Todd Burroughs, is a critical response to Manning Marable's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Though lauded by many, Marable's book was debated and denounced by others as a flawed biography, full of conjecture and errors and lacking in new factual context. Dr. Jared A. Ball is associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University. Dr. Todd S. Burroughs is a lecturer in the communication studies department at Morgan State University. 

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.Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television and urban life for the New York Times, Salon, New York, Details.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post and other publications. She is the author of The Middlesteins (Grand Central Publishing).Raquel Cepeda is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. Cepeda edited the critically acclaimed anthology And It Don't Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, winner of a PEN and Latino Book Award. She is also former editor-in-chief of Russell Simmons' Oneworld magazine. Her new book is Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria Books).Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she will be teaching this spring. She is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Knopf), her first novel, has been chosen for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club 2.0. She lives and writes in Brooklyn.Dina Nayeri was born in Iran during the revolution and emigrated to Oklahoma at the age of 10. She has a BA from Princeton and an MBA and Masters of Education from Harvard. She is currently a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teaching Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her new novel is A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead).Presented in partnership with the Antigua & Barbuda International Literary Festival. Media sponsor: The Baltimore Times.Pictured, from top: Linda A. Duggins, Jami Attenberg, Raquel Cepeda, Ayana Mathis, Dina Nayeri. 

In The Secret Financial Life of Food, Kara Newman reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Kara Newman shows how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice. A former board member of the Culinary Historians of New York, Kara Newman is the spirits editor for Wine Enthusiast magazine and the author of two cocktail books. 

Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University, where she taught poetry, editing, and modern literature for decades, during one of which she was the Chair of English. Her most recent poetry collections are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice. Harriss's poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. She directs BrickHouse Books, Maryland's oldest literary press. Her ongoing research interest is in prison writers. She and Moira Egan recently edited Hot Sonnets (Entasis Press, 2011), a collection of modern erotic sonnets. CityLit has established the Harriss Award for Poetry in her honor. Novelist Geoff Becker says that poems by Harriss "have the clarity of early light and the seductiveness of dreams."Karen Garthe grew up in Baltimore and attended Towson High School. When she graduated in 1968, she went to New York to study dance, then embarked on numerous careers in a broad swath of venues in New York City. Clarinda Harriss was her English teacher at Towson and Faculty Advisor to the school literary magazine of which she was editor-in-chief. Garthe won the 2005 Colorado Prize for her first book, Frayed Escort. The Banjo Clock was published in June 2012 by the University of California Press. Reviewing The Banjo Clock in The Huffington Post, Seth Abramson says, "Karen Garthe writes some of the most expert—and tightly wound—lyric poems you'll ever read.[...] What Garthe is offering today's poetry readers is a reason to read poetry rather than prose, to listen to poetry rather than electronica, to inhabit a verse environment rather than some workaday multimedia environment whose [...] dimensions are as unlikely to educate as they are to inspire."Read poems by Clarinda Harriss here and here.Read poems by Karen Garthe here and here. 

In 1952, the skies over Washington, D.C. were saturated with flying saucers. Aerial dog fights between United States Air Force pilots and these unknown invaders were tracked by commercial and military radar. While the nation's capital was held in thrall by these nighttime activities, the highest levels of the government were involved in covering it up. Or so the conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists would have you believe. Can we look back over the intervening years and discover what happened? Is the veil of secrecy too thick and strong to penetrate? Bruce Press is the chair of the Independent Investigations Group of Washington, D.C., an affiliate of the Center for Inquiry. He is also a member of the National Capital Area Skeptics. His background as an engineer and photographer aid in his extracurricular interests investigating strange phenomena on a foundation of reason and scientific skepticism. 

Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2009. My Beloved World is the story of her life before she became the first Hispanic appointed to the court: her childhood in a Bronx housing project; her relationship with her grandmother who sheltered her from the meanness of the South Bronx; her dogged and brilliant march through public schools and the Ivy League; and her extraordinary legal career. My Beloved World is a book about self-discovery; Sotomayor, at the pinnacle of legal achievement, is still dazzled by the possibilities in America.The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the book, in English and Spanish language editions, for sale at the event.  

Isaac Rice, a teenaged slave, escapes from a South Carolina rice plantation and faces incredible hardships and danger as he travels westward. First Dark is an epic tale of a young man who pursues respect and dignity on an odyssey that takes him from the Civil War through the Indian Wars, Reconstruction and spillover bloodshed from a Mexican Revolution. Bob Rogers, author of Will and Dena, is a former army captain and combat leader during the Vietnam War.

Two well-known authors read and talk about their novels, newly published by Akashic Books. Bernice McFadden's classic novel, Nowhere Is a Place, isabout a young woman's journey of self-discovery and a road trip with her mother, told from the young woman's and the mother's point of view. McFadden is the author of eight novels including Sugar, Gathering of Waters, and Glorious. Courttia Newland's new novel, The Gospel According to Cane, tells the story of a woman torn apart by the abduction of her son and the dissolution of her marriage. Years later, once she has pieced together what is left of her life, a young man claiming to be her son follows her wherever she goes.Courttia Newland is the author of six novels including Music for the Off-Key and A Book of Blues. He is coeditor of IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain. 

Shirley Sherrod, former U.S.D.A. Georgia State Director of Rural Development, was fired from her job in July, 2010, after a conservative blogger published clips from a speech she had made several months earlier that were misconstrued as reverse racism. In her memoir, Sherrod shares what it was like to be in the center of a very public debate and how growing up in segregated Georgia during the Civil Rights movement helped prepare her for the firestorm.Shirley Sherrod lectures nationally on issues of importance to middle class families, the poor and small communities. She promotes empowerment strategies for economically and socially disadvantaged people and runs educational projects for struggling farmers. Marc Steiner of WEAA-FM leads the conversation with Shirley Sherrod. 

New York actor and editor Charles Reese brings famed American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin to life. Reese will perform selected excerpts from the book which he edited, James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire. Charles Reese is a professional performance artist, educator and consultant in television, independent film and theater. He is currently a series regular on the hit comedy web series, "WHO" (available on www.ajakwetv.com).www.JamesBaldwinASoulOnFire.com 

Wenonah Hauter is executive director of Food & Water Watch, a watchdog organization focused on corporate and government accountability as it relates to food, water and fishing. She also runs an organic family farm in northern Virginia that provides healthy vegetables to more than 500 families in the Washington, DC area as part of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. As one of the nation's leading healthy food advocates, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America's food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the massive consolidation and corporate control of food production, which prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices that people can make in the grocery store.

Adam Robinson is the author of Say Poem and Adam Robison and Other Poems, which was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award. He is the founding editor of Publishing Genius, a small press that focuses on poetry and experimental fiction, and he writes about it for HTMLGIANT. On Twitter he is @pubgen.Chris Mason is a poet and a member of three bands, The Tinklers, Coocoo Rockin Time, and Old Songs, the last of which translates archaic Greek poetry and puts it to music. He is the author of three books of poetry: Hum Who Hiccup, Click Poems, and Poems of a Doggy. A chapbook, Where To From Out, is forthcoming.Read poems by Adam Robinson here and here.Read poems by Chris Mason here and here. 

At twenty-three, Emily Raboteau traveled to Israel to visit a childhood friend who'd found a place to belong. As a biracial American woman, Raboteau couldn't say the same for herself. After meeting black Jews in Israel, she sought out other black communities that had left home in search of a Promised Land, from Africa to Jamaica to the American South. In Searching for Zion, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement and dispossession, citizenship and country in an honest and brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.Emily Raboteau is an associate professor of English at City College of New York; the author of the novel, The Professor's Daughter; and a recent recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts award. 

PNC Bank is making many efforts to provide small business owners and those interested in starting a small business with information on how to do so successfully.This panel discussion was hosted by Ramsey Harris, Business Banker for PNC, interviewing Anthony McCarthy, Principal of McCarthy Group, Jessy Mejia, CEO Estragica, and Y. Maria Welch Martinez, CEO Respira Medical; all business owners represented are also associated with Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore. The conversation is focused on current issues facing business owners doing business on both a local and national level. A discussion of the library's role in the business community is discussed as well.

A renowned collector of Civil War photographs and a prodigious researcher, Ronald Coddington combines compelling archival images with biographical stories that reveal the human side of the war. During the Civil War, 200,000 African American men enlisted in the Union army or navy. Some of them were free men, some escaped from slavery, and some were released by sympathetic owners to join the war effort. African American Faces of the Civil War tells the story of the Civil War through the images of men of color who served as servants, laborers, enlisted men, and junior officers.Ronald Coddington is assistant managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has appeared in USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the San Jose Mercury News. He is a contributing writer to the New York Times "Disunion" series and writes a monthly column for The Civil War News. He is author of Faces of the Confederacy and Faces of the Civil War, also published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Golden Hour, and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. In 2010 she received the Maryland Author Award, given to a poet every four years by the Maryland Library Association. Ms. Thompson has taught at many universities—among them Middlebury, Wesleyan, Binghamton University and the University of Delaware—as well as The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and Annapolis and at the Academy Art Museum in Easton. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series, read on National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor, and featured in U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated newspaper column.Kathleen Hellen is a poet and the author of Umberto’s Night and The Girl Who Loved Mothra. Her poems are widely published and have been featured on WYPR’s The Signal. Awards include The Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers' Publishing House as well as poetry prizes from the H.O.W. Journal, the Washington Square Review, the Thomas Merton Institute, and the Appalachian Writers Association. Her work has earned individual artist grants from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council. She is senior editor for the Baltimore Review and teaches creative writing at Coppin State University.Read poems by Sue Ellen Thompson here and here.Read poems by Kathleen Hellen here and here. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch has selected eighteen essential moments from the Civil Rights movement as presented in his "America in the King Years" trilogy and has written new introductions to set each passage in historical context. "For nearly 25 years, since publication of Parting the Waters," says Taylor Branch, "teachers have pressed upon me their need for more accessible ways to immerse students in stories of authentic detail and import. The goal here is to accommodate them and others by careful choice."Taylor Branch is the author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65; At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68; and The Clinton Tapes. In addition to the Pulitzer, he has won the National Book Critics Circle Award.Presented in partnership with Open Society Institute - Baltimore. 

Thaddeus Logan is a former Baltimore City policeman and vice detective turned cab driver. Logan writes about his fares and the city he serves with great insight and sensitivity, and he has a particular affection for his regular customers, the perennial underclass. His vignettes show the city, warts and all, and its people, regardless of neighborhood, income or prejudices. Hey Cabbie II is a sequel to Logan's popular 1984 book. 

George Leary was a youth counselor, surrounded by kids all day, and yet he failed to see that his own child was using and abusing drugs. After facing his denial, fear and grief, he made it his purpose in life to work with addicts and educate parents on how to help their kids. In his book, he answers important questions such as: "what are the warning signs of alcohol or drug addiction?" and "how can a parent intervene and find treatment for the child and family?"George E. Leary, Jr. provides mental health services to addicts and those living with HIV/AIDS. He established and operated two recovery houses in Baltimore and served for nine years on a mobile crisis intervention team. 

Everyone is guilty of playing the blame game. It's satisfying and easy to do. If we despise our work, we can blame our manager or even our short-sighted organization for its inability to recognize our genius. If our personal lives are a disaster, we can blame our spouses, partners, and the economy.Jim Smith's No Excuse Guide to Success shows you how to stop this destructive pattern of making excuses and blaming others.Jim Smith, Jr., president and CEO of JIMPACT Enterprises, is a sought after personal-power speaker and trainer. He spent 16 years working in corporate and consulting leadership positions for a wide variety of industries. He currently serves as an adjunct faculty member for the Rutgers University MBA and Executive MBA programs. His book, No Excuse Guide to Success, has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. 

In Finnish mythology, Vellamo is the goddess of the sea. Based in Vaasa, on the western coast of Finland, the folk duo Vellamo crosses the sea to entertain American audiences. Vocalist Pia Leinonen and guitarist Joni Tiala combine the rich tradition of Finnish folksong with a "retro" sensibility, creating a magical acoustic experience. 

In Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes outlines the effects, and then the cause, of America's crisis of authority, and calls for a sweeping overhaul of the social order. Over the last decade, America has had to adjust to economic and political dysfunction and the near-total failure of each pillar institution of our society. Hayes offers an original theory about how we came to this pass and concludes that the meritocratic system upon which we depend to select the country's best and brightest is fatally flawed, creating a ruling elite that is no longer functional.Chris Hayes is editor-at-large of The Nation and host of "Up With Chris Hayes" on MSNBC. He has been a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics and at the New America Foundation. Since 2003 he's written about political culture and political economy for numerous publications including the New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Republic, and The Guardian. Hayes is a graduate of Brown University. 

The primary purpose of the Constitution is to limit Congress. There is no separation of church and state. The Second Amendment allows citizens to make threats against the government. These are a few of the myths about our Constitution put forth by a well-organized, well-funded right wing in an effort to cripple the right of We the People to govern ourselves. Garrett Epps provides the tools citizens need to fight back against the flood of constitutional nonsense. In terms every citizen can understand, he tackles ten of the most prevalent myths, providing a clear grasp of the Constitution and the government it established.Garrett Epps teaches constitutional law at the University of Baltimore Law School; he is a regular contributor on legal issues to Atlantic.com and The American Prospect. 

Craig Symonds, professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, presents a masterful history of the Civil War navies, both Union and Confederate, and places them within the broader context of the emerging industrial age. He begins with an account of the dramatic pre-war revolution in naval technology which was epitomized in the famous "Battle of the Ironclads." He offers an overview of Lincoln's blockade of the South, discusses the naval war for control of the rivers in the West, and looks at the important siege of Charleston which lasted three years. Symonds concludes with three key episodes from the end of the war: the Battle of Mobile Bay, the Battle of Wilmington, and the round-the-world voyage of the CSS Shenandoah.Symonds is the author of the Lincoln Prize-winning book, Lincoln and His Admirals. 

Thurgood Marshall was the most important American lawyer of the 20th century: he transformed the nation's legal landscape by challenging racial segregation; he won 29 of 33 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court; he was a federal appeals court judge, served as the U.S. solicitor general, and for 24 years sat on the Supreme Court. Marshall is best known for achievements after he relocated to New York in 1936 to work for the NAACP. But Marshall's personality, attitudes, priorities, and work habits had crystallized during earlier years in Maryland. Young Thurgood is the first close examination of the formative period in Marshall's life. It reveals how Marshall's distinctive traits were molded by events, people, and circumstances early in his life.Larry Gibson presents fresh information about Marshall's family, youth, and education. He describes Marshall's key mentors. the special impact of his high-school and college competitive debating, his struggles to establish a law practice during the Great Depression, and his first civil rights cases. Gibson sheds new light on the NAACP and its first lawsuits in the campaign that led to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation decision. He also corrects some of the often-repeated stories about Marshall that are inaccurate.Larry S. Gibson is a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law where he has been on the faculty for 39 years. He is also a practicing lawyer with the firm of Shapiro, Sher, Guinot, and Sandler.  

Antero Pietila's landmark book, Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City(2010), tells the story of how discrimination molded housing patterns in the Baltimore area, from Baltimore's 1910 residential segregation ordinance -- later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court -- to redlining and racial covenants and real estate practices that were lawful until passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968. Given the impact of historic housing discrimination, the Fair Housing Act requires local and state governments that receive federal housing funds to affirmatively further the law's goals.Antero Pietila, local housing officials, and advocates discuss the roots of residential segregation in the Baltimore metropolitan area and efforts to overcome present-day barriers to fair housing choice. Carol Payne, director of the Baltimore field office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, moderates the discussion.Presented in partnership with the Baltimore Regional Fair Housing Group, Baltimore Metropolitan Council, Baltimore Sustainable Communities Initiative, ABCD Network, Baltimore Neighborhoods, inc., and Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA). 

This annual Cave Canem poetry reading at the Pratt features Kwame Dawes and Cave Canem fellows Mahogany L. Brown, Raina Fields, Niki Herd, Brandon D. Johnson, Bettina Judd, and Kateema Lee. Hosted by Reginald Harris of Poets House in New York.Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and plays. Of his 16 collections of poetry, the most recent include Wheels (2011); Back of Mount Peace (2009); and Hope's Hospice (2009). He won a Pushcart Prize in 2001 for his long poem "Inheritance." Dawes is currently the Glenna Luschel Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor's Professor of English, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA program in Oregon. 

Charles Heller's early childhood in Czechoslovakia was idyllic until, when he was three, Germany occupied his country. In his memoir, Heller narrates his family's story during those hellish years. Son of a mixed marriage, he was raised a Catholic and was unaware of his Jewish roots, even after his father escaped to join the British army and fifteen members of his family disappeared. Before being sent to a slave labor camp, Heller's mother hid him on a farm to avoid deportation. After the war, he left the horrors of the past to live the proverbial "American Dream" in the United States. Following Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, two cataclysmic events brought Heller face-to-face with demons of his former life; he discovered and embraced his heritage which he had abandoned decades earlier.An Annapolis resident, Charles Heller has had a varied career as an engineer, an entrepreneur, a teacher, and now as a writer.  

In High Schools, Race, and America's Future, Lawrence Blum offers a lively account of a rigorous high school course on race and racism. Set in a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse high school, the book chronicles students' engagement with one another, with a rich and challenging academic curriculum, and with questions that relate powerfully to their daily lives.Blum, an acclaimed moral philosopher whose work focuses on issues of race, reflects with candor, insight, and humor on the challenges and surprises encountered in teaching -- the unexpected turns in conversation, the refreshing directness of students' questions, the "aha" moments and the awkward ones, and the paradoxes of his own role as a white college professor teaching in a multiracial high school classroom. High Schools, Race, and America's Future provides an invaluable resource for those who want to teach students to think deeply and talk productively about race.Lawrence Blum is the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.Presented in partnership with Open Society Institute - Baltimore. 

A Night of Mystery with Elizabeth George, author of Inspector Lynley Mysteries... as seen on PBS.  Part of the Pratt Presents... a fundraiser for child and teen literacy efforts. 

Environmentalist Eric Rutkow presents a remarkable and thoroughly researched book about how trees have shaped American history, and in turn how forests have been shaped by history,. He shows that trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country's rise as both an empire and a civilization. Rutkow writes about characters like Johnny Appleseed, Henry David Thoreau, and of course, George Washington and his cherry tree.Eric Rutkow is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He has worked as a lawyer on environmental issues. Currently he is pursuing a doctorate in American history at Yale. 

Linda Pastan has written over 13 books, including the recent poetry collections The Last Uncle, Queen of a Rainy Country, and Traveling Light. She has received the Dylan Thomas award, a Pushcart Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry, the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her PM/AM: New and Selected Poems and Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 were finalists for the National Book Award, and The Imperfect Paradise was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. From 1991 to 1995 Pastan served as Poet Laureate of Maryland. She lives in Potomac, Maryland.Myra Sklarew, former president of the artist community Yaddo and professor emerita of literature at American University, is the author of three chapbooks and seven collections of poetry, including Harmless, Lithuania: New & Selected Poems, The Witness Trees, and the forthcoming chapbook, If You Want to Live Forever. Awards include the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry. Her poetry has been recorded for the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, Library of Congress. Read poems by Linda Pastan here and here.Read poems by Myra Sklarew here. Pastan photo credit: Margaretta K. Mitchell. Sklarew photo credit: Danielle Sklarew.  

For more than two centuries, Americans have debated the concept of freedom of religion. Did the Founding Fathers intend to create a Christian nation, or a government based on total exclusion of religion in the public sphere?In Endowed by Our Creator, Michael Meyerson shows that the framers of the Constitution understood that the American government should not acknowledge religion in a way that favors any particular creed or denomination. Nevertheless, the framers believed that religion could instill virtue and help to unify a diverse nation. Through their writings and their decisions, the framers affirmed that respect for religious differences is a fundamental American value. Now it is for us, Meyerson concludes, to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.Michael I. Meyerson is Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law and Piper & Marbury Faculty Fellow, University of Baltimore School of Law. He is the author of Liberty's Blueprint, a history of the writing of of the Federalist Papers.  

Dr. Robert A. Hill is professor emeritus of history at UCLA and director of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project. He is internationally recognized as a leading authority on the life of Garvey and the history of the Garvey movement.  

Rob Kasper, former Baltimore Sun reporter and columnist, has produced a hoppy, refreshing account of the history of brewing in Baltimore, from ancient craft brewers in the 18th century, through the beer wars of the Victorian era, to mass production in the 20th century, then finally back to the craft brewers of today. Kasper uses interviews, vintage images, and a few recipes to pop the cap on Charm City's brewing history.While at the Sun, Rob Kasper wrote often about the area's food and drink. The Association of Food Journalists cited his 2008 food columns as among the best in American and Canadian newspapers. He has also won two National Headliner Awards.   

Ellen Cassedy's longing to recover the Yiddish she'd lost with her mother's death led her to Lithuania, once the "Jerusalem of the North." What began as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. Ellen Cassedy has spent 10 years studying the world of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Her translations and articles have appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Forward, and Hadassah.Part of the Schapiro Lecture Series. 

The winners of the Baltimore City Senior Citizens Poetry Contest 2012, sponsored by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks, are: Barbara Morrison, first place; Helen Szymkowiak, second place; Kate Richardson, third place; and Mary Dozier, honorable mention. They will read from their winning entries at this Free Fall Baltimore event. Carla Dupree, one of the contest judges, will present a special tribute to her friend Lucille Clifton, former Maryland poet laureate.  

Launched by CityLit Project in 2010, CityLit Press publishes quality books often overlooked by larger publishers due to their regional focus or literary nature. In two years, the press has released five individual titles, three chapbooks under its Harriss Poetry Prize series, and four specialty books as part of CityLit Project's youth programming. Although the publishing business is undergoing unprecedented changes, and reading hhabits fluctuate, CityLit Press is dedicated to championing the art and voice of creative writers.Join local authors of CityLit Press -- Jen Michalski, Laura Shovan, Leonora "Peachy" Dixon, Bruce Sager, Jennifer Wallace, and Neil Didriksen -- and publisher Gregg Wilhelm as they share their wonderful literary art and discuss the dynamic state of publishing. 

In a voice caught somewhere between speech and singing, ‘moonstruck’ Pierrot, the sad, lovelorn clown, takes a darkly comic journey through music colored by the smoky decadence of Berlin cabarets. Paul Mathews, co-author of the book Inside Pierrot Lunaire, speaks about the significance of Arnold Schoenberg's cornerstone 20th century work, followed by a performance of the piece by the Baltimore-based LUNAR Ensemble. 

Kate and Zoe are British Olympic cyclists and friends. Kate's family duties keep her away from the 2004 Olympics in Athens as Zoe goes for the gold. Fast forward to 2012, as Kate and Zoe train for their last Olympics in London. Meanwhile, Kate copes with her seriously ill daughter and Zoe contends with loneliness. Chris Cleave's captivating novel explores friendship, rivalry, and the private cost of public victory.Chris Cleave is the author of Incendiary and the international bestseller Little Bee. Incendiary won numerous awards, including the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award. Little Bee has sold more than two million copies worldwide. Cleave lives in London.(www.chriscleave.com) 

The relationship between Barack Obama's White House and John Roberts' Supreme Court has been rocky from the start, when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the Oath of Office at President Obama's inauguration. Both men are young, brilliant, charismatic, determined to change the course of the nation -- and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue. Award-winning journalist and author Jeffrey Toobin offers an insider's account of this ideological war in his latest book, The Oath.Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and legal analyst at CNN, is the author of The Nine, Too Close to Call, A War Conspiracy, and The Run of His Life. 

According to Harold Kwalwasser, former general counsel of the Los Angeles Unified School District, it is the parents' duty to drive school reform. Parents who participate in their children's school activities are able to see clearly a school's strengths and weaknesses better than Washington or the states. Parents and taxpayers can play a key role in the reform of public education, but they must know what a well-managed, high-performing school looks like.Kwalwasser visited 40 high-performing schools to see what it takes for an education system to succeed. He found that high performance and improvement in schools is possible given commitment to institute change. His book can be used as a guide for parents and taxpayers to drive reform locally.Harold Kwalwasser is an expert on school management and education policy and politics. He served on the staffs of three U.S. Senators and was Deputy General Counsel/Legal Counsel for the Department of Defense during the Clinton administration. 

Tuerk House, Baltimore's groundbreaking drug and alcohol rehab center, opened in 1970 after Maryland reclassified alcoholism from a criminal offense to a disease. In The Tuerk House, author and former newspaperman Rafael Alvarez covers the institution's founding and changes in the philosophy of treatment over the years. It also includes a biography of Dr. Isadore Tuerk, the University of Maryland psychiatrist and alcoholism expert for whom the rehab center is named. Operating in west Baltimore since the 1990s, Tuerk House treats as many as 1,200 addicts a year at little or no cost. 

What we don't know can hurt us and others -- and unconscious bias along with racial anxiety can unwittingly affect our responses and behavior. The examples revealed in provocative new research may surprise you: embedded stereotypes, it concludes, are experienced by people of color and whites alike. Understanding these biases is critical, especially for people in positions of power where critical decisions are made -- in the classroom, in the court room, and in the doctor's office.Rachel Godsil, Director of Research at the American Values Institute, and Alan Jenkins, Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, will present some of the most recent research and reports on this topic. This event is part of the "Talking About Race" series sponsored by Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the Pratt Library. 

Millions of people got their introduction to Baltimore by watching "The Wire." The show examined some very difficult urban problems. For example, did Omar Little die of lead poisoning? Can children like Wallace and Dukie be saved? Tapping Into "The Wire" uses the television series as a road map for exploring connections between inner-city poverty and drug-related violence. Dr. Peter Beilenson and Patrick McGuire have written a compelling, highly-readable examination of urban policy and public health issues impacting cities across the nation. Each chapter recounts scenes from "The Wire," placing the characters' challenges into the broader context of public policy.Dr. Peter Beilenson is Howard County's health officer. From 1992 to 2005 he served as Baltimore City's health commissioner. Patrick McGuire is a journalist with more than 20 years' experience, fourteen of which were at the Baltimore Sun. 

The 2012 Mencken Memorial Lecture - "The Scopes Trial: How the Letter Kills," presented by Richard J. Schrader, professor emeritus of English, Boston College. Dr. Schrader taught at Princeton University and at Boston College from 1975 to 2009. His publications include H. L. Mencken: A Descriptive Bibliography (1998) and H. L. Mencken: A Documentary Volume (2000).This lecture was part of the Mencken Society annual meeting. 

The poets will perform and join with the audience in a discussion of the differences and commonalities between poems made for the page and poems performed on the stage.Performance poet, writer, percussionist, and amateur photographer, Linda Joy Burke is a 2002 Distinguished Black Marylander Award recipient for Art from Towson University’s Office of Diversity; a 2004 Poetry for the People Baltimore Legacy Award recipient; and a 2007 Columbia Festival of the Arts Poetry Slam winner. She is currently a consulting editor to Little Patuxent Review and a Maryland State Arts Council coordinator for the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Competition. Burke’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Little Patuxent Review, Obsidian II, Beltway, Passager, Thy Mother’s Glass, Gargoyle 54, and When Divas Laugh. In 2011, she released the first in a series of chapbooks – Moods, Minds and Multitudes - Somewhere Between There and Here, a collection of photographs and poetry.Michelle Antoinette Nelson, also known as LOVE the poet, is a prominent indie artist/author on the national performance and literary art scenes and in the field of creative writing education. She has appeared on CNN as a speaker at the Jena Six rally in Washington, D.C., authored the book Black Marks on White Paper, received the 2011 Baker b-grant award, released multiple spoken word CDs, and performed at the Smithsonian and college campuses nationwide. Michelle is also a guitarist, a Punany Poet (as seen on HBO), an active member of the Maryland Speakers Bureau, a host at Busboys and Poets, the creator of Live Lyrics! creative writing workshops, founder/host of BE FREE Fridays (a monthly open mic series), and an active member of Poetry for the People Baltimore.Linda Joy Burke photo credit: David Hobby. 

Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French's Faithful Place, is the Dublin murder squad's top detective -- and that's what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands. On one of the half-built, half-abandoned "luxury" developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it's going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can't be explained. With her signature blend of police procedural and psychological thriller, Tana French's new novel, Broken Harbor, goes full throttle with a heinous crime.Tana French is the author of three bestselling novels, including the award-winning In the Woods. She has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for Best First Novel and the IVCA Clarion Award for Best Fiction. She trained as a professional actress at Trinity College, Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover.  

More than five million young adults in the U.S. have only a high school education and are facing an "opportunity divide" that strands motivated workers outside the economic mainstream. In 2000, Gerald Chertavian, a visionary businessman, former Wall Street investment banker, and longtime mentor with the Big Brother program, created Year Up to address these challenges and help close the "opportunity divide."Year Up makes available extensive, job-focused education to underserved and marginalized urban young adults, ages 18-24, equipping them with the skills needed to enter a market starving for entry level talent. This intensive program, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, provides training, mentorship, internships, and college credits, resulting in real jobs that corporations need to fill. Today, Year Up serves more than 1400 students annually in nine cities, including Baltimore. 

In American Tapestry, Rachel Swarns unearths the hidden story of First Lady Michelle Obama's multiracial ancestors, a history that she herself did not know. It traces the black, white and multiracial forebears of the nation's first African American first lady back to the 19th century and reveals, for the first time, the identity of Mrs. Obama's white great-great-great grandfather, a man who remained hidden for more than a century in her family tree.Rachel L. Swarns has been a reporter for the New York Times since 1995. She has written about domestic policy and national politics, reporting on immigration, the presidential campaigns of 2004 and 2008, and First Lady Michelle Obama. She has also worked overseas for the Times, reporting from Russia, Cuba and southern Africa where she served as the Johannesburg bureau chief.  

The Harcourts of Chevy Chase, Maryland, are a respectable middle class, middle-aged, mixed-race couple with four marriageable daughters. One of the daughters, Elizabeth (Bliss) moves back home in the aftermath of a messy divorce and begins working on her Ph.D. When her younger sister Diana becomes the star of a local Bachelorette-style reality television show, "The Virgin," Bliss gets drawn into the romantic drama that ensues.Susan Fales-Hill is the author of One Flight Up and the memoir, Always Wear Joy. A contributing editor at Essence, her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Town & Country, and Travel & Leisure.www.susanfales-hill.com 

Rachel Hennick tells the story of her father, Bill Hennick, a firefighter and paramedic in Baltimore, a city with the busiest fire stations in the U.S. As a child, Bill survives a terrible fire and later joins the still-segregated Baltimore City Fire Department at the height of the civil rights movement. He witnesses the race riots of 1968 and the ensuing infernos. After whites begin fleeing to the suburbs, Bill develops empathy for those left behind and tries to make a difference by becoming a paramedic. a service then in its infancy. He embarks on a spiritual journey as he risks his own life in caring for the poorest of the poor in Baltimore City. 

On January 1, 2009, Maggie and John Anderson, two African American professionals living in the Chicago suburbs, embarked on a year-long public pledge to "buy black." They thought that by taking a stand, the black community would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead, blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history, as well as her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our part to reverse this trend.As CEO and cofounder of The Empowerment Experiment Foundation, Maggie Anderson has become the leader of a self-help economics movement that supports quality black businesses and urges consumers to proactively and publicly support them. Anderson received her JD and MBA from the University of Chicago. 

When Barack Obama took office, he brought with him a new group of foreign policy advisers intent on carving out a new global role for America in the wake of the Bush administration's war in Iraq. James Mann, the author of Rise of the Vulcans, offers a definitive, even-handed account of the messier realities they've faced in implementing their policies.In The Obamians, Mann takes readers inside the back rooms of the White House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA to reveal the interplay of events, ideas, personalities and conflicts that drive America's foreign policy at the highest levels. At the heart of the struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies are the generational conflicts between the Democratic establishment (Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden) and Obama and his inner circle of largely unknown, remarkably youthful advisers who came of age after the Cold War had ended.A former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent, and columnist, James Mann is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to the bestselling Rise of the Vulcans, he has written three books about America's relationship with China. He was awarded the Edward Weintal Prize in 1999 for distinguished coverage of foreign policy, and he was also a two-time winner of the Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic reporting. 

Tom Wilber has spent years interviewing key players and local residents on all sides of the Marcellus Shale issue. Running from southern West Virginia through eastern Ohio, across central and northeast Pennsylvania and into New York, the Marcellus Shale formation underlies a sparsely populated region that features striking landscapes, critical watersheds, and a struggling economic base. It also contains one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible until recently. Technological developments that combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing -- "fracking" -- have removed physical and economic barriers to extracting gas from bedrock deep below the Appalachian basin. Under the Surface is the first book-length journalistic overview of shale gas development and the controversies surrounding it.Tom Wilber has been in the newspaper business for more than 20 years and has written for the Central New York Business Journal and the Watertown Daily Times. For 17 years he worked for the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, covering business, health, and environement beats. From 1992 through 2005, he taught various journalism courses at Broome Community College and Binghamton University.Presented in partnership with Baltimore GreenWorks as part of the "Sustainable Speaker Series." 

Syndicated columnist and political cartoonist Ted Rall revisits the rapid rise and dizzying fall of Barack Obama, and the emergence of the Tea Party and Occupy movements, and draws a startling conclusion: We the People weren't lied to. We lied to ourselves, both about Obama and the two-party system. We voted when we ought to have revolted. Ted Rall is the winner of numerous awards and honors, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged (twice) and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 16 books, including Revenge of the Latchkey Kids, The Anti-American Manifesto, and To Afghanistan and Back. Outspoken and often controversial, Ted Rall is a frequent guest on Fox News, Al Jazeera, and Russia Today TV. 

Nikki Giovanni and Afaa Michael Weaver head a star-studded lineup of poets and writers reading and remembering Lucille Clifton on the 75th anniversary of her birth; readers include Melvin Brown, Sarah Browning, Linda Joy Burke, Hayes Davis, Teri Cross Davis, Joanne Gabbin, Reginald Harris, Bruce Jacobs and Jadi Omowale. Michael Glaser, Maryland Poet Laureate 2004-2009, will serve as emcee.Program Notes:WelcomeDr. Carla HaydenCEO, Enoch Pratt Free Library RemarksDr. Joanne GabbinExecutive DirectorFurious Flower Poetry CenterJames Madison UniversityReadingLynda KoolishPhotographer, Won't You Celebrate With Me?HostMichael GlaserReadingsSarah BrowningMelvin BrownTeri Cross DavisBruce JacobsLinda Joy BurkeMusicJohn Milton WesleyReadingsHayes DavisJadi OmowaleReginald HarrisAfaa Michael WeaverNikki Giovanni 

Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael are co-editors of Passager journal, now in its 22nd year, and Passager Books, a press dedicated to older writers. They have published books by individual authors and co-edited two anthologies, most recently Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years. Kendra Kopelke is author of four books of poems, including Hopper's Women, based on the paintings of Edward Hopper. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore. Mary Azrael is the author of three books of poems and an opera libretto, Lost Childhood, inspired by the life of Holocaust survivor Yehuda Nir. She teaches poetry in the Odyssey program at Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus. Read poems by Kendra Kopelke. Read a poem by Mary Azrael.Learn more about Passager. 

As a prelude to the Star-Spangled Sailabration, an international parade of ships sailing into Baltimore's Inner Harbor June 13 - 19, David Taylor talks about the U.S. Navy's official commemorative book of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. Taylor and coauthor Mark Collins Jenkins present historical recollections, personal reminiscences of the war, and detailed histories through vibrant images and intimate stories. The book features photographs, period illustrations, historic documents, maps, letters, ephemera, and artifacts, including fascinating finds from the Navy's most recent underwater excavation of the war's lost ships.David Taylor is the author of the award-winning books Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America; Ginseng, the Divine Root; and Success: Stories, a fiction collection. He has written and co-produced documentary films for PBS, the National Geographic Society, Discovery Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel, including "Soul of a People," which was nominated for a 2010 Writers Guild award. 

Better Than Alright, an innovative collaboration with Essence and Ledisi in her writing debut, is a collection of Ledisi's personal photos, quotes, lyrics and richly detailed stories. Beginning with her performance at Essence's first Black Women in Hollywood luncheon in 2008, Ledisi charts her journey to acceptance of her beauty, talent and power, showing how she endured and ultimately triumphed in the music business, on her own terms.  

When Sargent "Sarge" Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps and architect of President Johnson's War on Poverty , died in 2011, thousands of tributes poured in from friends and strangers around the world. These tributes, which extolled the daily kindness and humanity of "a good man," moved Shriver's son Mark more than those lauding Sarge for his big-stage, headline-making accomplishments. After a lifetime searching for the path to his father's success in the public arena, Mark instead turns to a search for the secret of his father's joy, his devotion to others, and his sense of purpose. In A Good Man, he writes about his relationship with his father and his quest to understand the principles by which his father lived his extraordinary life.Mark Shriver is the senior vice president of U.S. Programs at Save the Children in Washington, D.C., and a former Maryland state legislator. He also started the Choice Program and served on the coalition to create the National Commission on Children and Disasters following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of UMBC, will introduce Mark Shriver.Photo of Mark Shriver © Laurence L. Levin. 

The first of three volumnes of The Graphic Canon is a collection of the world's great literature interpreted by artists and illustrators including R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Molly Crabapple, and Gareth Hinds. Volume One: From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons covers the earliest iterature through the end of the 1700s. Russ Kick has edited the bestselling anthologies You Are Being Lied To and Everyone You Know is Wrong.The New York Times has dubbed Kick "an information archaeologist" and Utne Reader named him one of its "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." 

Armed with only early boyhood memories, Lawrence P. Jackson begins his quest by setting out from his home in Baltimore for Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to find his late grandfather's old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs. My Father's Name tells the tale of the ensuing journey, at once a detective story and a moving historical memoir, uncovering the mixture of anguish and fulfillment that accompanies a venture into the ancestral past, specifically one tied to the history of slavery.Jackson's dogged research in libraries, census records, and courthouse registries enables him to trace his family to his grandfather's grandfather, a man who was born or sold into slavery but who, when Federal troops abandoned the South in 1877, was able to buy forty acres of land. Jackson reconstructs moments in the lives of his father's grandfather, Edward Jackson, and great-grandfather, Granville Hundley, and gives life to revealing narratives of Pittsylvania County, recalling both the horror of slavery and the later struggles of postbellum freedom.Lawrence Jackson is professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of The Indignant Generation: A Narrative Histoyr of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 and Ralph Emerson: Emergence of Genius. 

We kicked off the 2012 Adult Summer Reading Program by helping you find good reads this summer. Join us for our first live, online "What should I read next?" session with Pratt librarians.

Raised by a pro-black, pan-Afrikan single mother during the crack years of 1980s Washington, DC, and educated at Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University, Baratunde Thurston has over 30 years' experience being black. Now, through stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other details, he shares with readers of all colors his wisdom and expertise of "being black."Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital at The Onion, the cofounder of Jack & Jill Politics, a stand-up comedian, and a globe-trotting speaker. He was named one of the 100 most influential African Americans of 2011 by The Root andone of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. 

Millions of readers and film-goers around the world have been thrilled by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Stieg Larsson trilogy. In a series of short vignettes, Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's life partner, tells the story of their 30-year romance; of Larsson's lifelong struggle to expose Sweden's neo-Nazis; of his struggle to keep Expo, the magazine he founded, alive; his difficult relationships with his immediate family; and the joy and relief he discovered writing the Millenium Trilogy.Eva Gabrielsson is an architect, author and political activist. In addition to working with Stieg Larsson on his writing projects, she is the coauthor of several books. As an activist, she works to stop violence against women. 

Launched in 2006, this free community writing workshop meets weekly at the Reentry Center in the Northwest Career Center. Baltimore writers and teachers from Coppin State, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, MICA and other area institutions nurture the creativity of adult students.

In this memoir, Richard O'Mara, a former reporter, columnist, foreign correspondent and editor for the Baltimore Sun, writes about growing up in Philadelphia during the Great Depression. "Reading these engrossing essays, the reader is gripped by two emotions: admiration at the author's story-telling skill, and wonder ... that a young man with such a backgound ... could develop into such a skilled and remarkable writer." Betsy Olavarueth, editor, The Puerto Escondido Times 

The Jazz Exponents, a saxophone quartet, perform music from a real ‘golden age’ in jazz history, with tunes by greats like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Horace Silver. 

Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently Rough Likeness. Her essays are full of joy in the act of intense observation; they're also deliciously subversive and alert to the ways language gets locked and loaded by culture. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness.Lia Purpura is Writer in Residence at Loyola University, Baltimore, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program. Her awards include a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for On Looking), NEA and Fulbright fellowships, four Pushcart prizes, the AWP Award in nonfiction and the Beatrice Hawley award in poetry. 

In her debut novel, Meredith Goldstein tells the story of five singles at a friend's lavish wedding on the Chesapeake Bay. Their entertaining trials of heartbreak, loneliness, and relationship disasters are set against the joyous occasion of Bee's nuptials. Funny, romantic and unpredictable, The Singles takes you to the wedding festivities where the guests take center stage.Meredith Goldstein is an advice columnist and entertainment reporter for the Boston Globe. She writes the "Love Letters" blog and co-writes the paper's society column, "Names." 

Before the age of 12, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, World War II, fascism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright recounts her own experiences during this time, and those of her family, in Prague Winter. Drawing upon her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, she offers a moving account of this tumultuous period. An intense personal journey into the past, it offers vital lessons for the future.Madeleine Albright served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling books: Madam Secretary; The Mighty and The Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs; Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership; and Read My Pins.Madeleine Albright is interviewed by Sanford Ungar, president of Goucher College. 

Over Time is as unconventional and wide-ranging as Frank Deford's remarkable career. Fresh out of Princeton in 1962, Deford joined Sports Illustrated. They called him "the Kid," and he made his reputation with dumb luck, discovering fellow Princetonian Bill Bradley and a Canadian teenager named Bobby Orr. In this charming memoir, Deford traces the entire arc of American sports writing and gives us a tour of great American sports literature.A Baltimore native, Frank Deford has written 18 books, won a Peabody and an Emmy, and read more than 1,500 commentaries on NPR's Morning Edition. He is senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and is a regular correspondent on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. Among his many honors: he has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters; has been voted U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times; and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review. 

 Facilitated by: Anthony McCarthyThe Anthony McCarthy Show is a one-stop show for the in-depth interviews and information on breaking news, politics, public policy, arts, and culture. The key difference between this show and others can be summed up in one word, experience.Panelists:Navasha DayaThis singer, songwriter and producer is no stranger to the ears of many. Navasha is internationally known as lead singer and founding member of the Baltimore based nu-jazz band, Fertile Ground. Fanon HillRecentlly the Co-Director of the Black Male Identity project, he is Co-Founder/Executive Director of The Youth Resiliency Institute (YRI). Musician, Cultural Arts Advocate, and Community Organizer, Fanon is author of the essay, "In the Indigenous Loop: Fela Anikulapo - Kuti."Chris PumphreyMusician and Founder of the Baltimore Afrobeat Society 

Mary Jo Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit and Baltimore. She is Andrew W. Mellon Professor and Co-Chair of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her six volumes of poems include Henry Purcell in Japan (1985), Unfinished Painting (1989), Sunday Skaters (1995), A Kiss in Space (1999), Open Shutters (2004), and A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems (2008). She has also published a children’s book, The Moon Comes Home (1989), and is a co-editor of the fourth and fifth editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. She edited The Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt (2010).Stephen Kampa has published poetry, critical prose, and reviews in journals such as the Southwest Review, Tampa Review, The Hopkins Review, Subtropics, Poetry Northwest, the Sewanee Theological Review, and River Styx. He is the winner of the 2011 River Styx International Poetry Contest, and his first book, Cracks in the Invisible, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and a Florida Book Awards' Gold Medal in poetry. He holds degrees from Carleton College and the Johns Hopkins University and has worked as a teacher and a musician.Read a poem by Mary Jo Salter.Read a poem by Stephen Kampa.Mary Jo Salter photo credit: Michael Malyzsko. 

On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a civil rights victory occurred in Baltimore. Segregation finally ended at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park when 11-month-old Sharon Langley became the first African American child to ride on the park's classic merry-go-round. In Round & Round Together, Amy Nathan tells the story of that merry-go-round and the nearly decade-long effort to integrate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. Amy Nathan is the author of Yankee Doodle Gals, Count On Us, and Take a Seat--Make a Stand. She grew up in Baltimore where she went to Western High School.Veterans of the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore who are featured in the book -- Lu Coleman, Charles Mason, John Roemer, Mary Sue Welcome, and Lydia Wilkins -- will share their memories of this historic time. 

Listen to scrumptious stories about food from the folk and fairy tale tradition. 

Poet, professor, lecturer on black culture and literature, women's liberation, peace and racial justice, Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than 18 books. These include: Homecoming; Wounded in the House of a Friend; Shake Loose My Skin; and Morning Haiku. She has won numerous awards including a 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999. Sonia Sanchez has lectured at more than 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry from Africa to Europe to Australia. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she also held the Laura Carnell Chair in English. In December, 2011, Sonia Sanchez was selected as Philadelphia's first Poet Laureate.Tony Medina, two-time winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, is the author/editor of 16 books for adults and young readers, the most recent of which are I and I, Bob Marley; My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (2011 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist); Broke on Ice; An Onion of Wars; and The President Looks Like Me and Other Poems. He divides his time between his New York City hometown and the Washington, DC, metropolitan area where he is the first-ever Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University. 

Record unemployment and rampant corporate greed, empty houses but homeless families, dwindling opportunities in a paralyzed nation -- these are the realities of America, land of the free and home of the new middle-class poor.In The Rich and the Rest of Us, award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West, one of the nation's leading public intellectuals, take on the "p" word -- poverty. They challenge all Americans to re-examine their assumptions about poverty in America -- what it really is and how to eradicate it. 

Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also a Civil War hero, fervent abolitionist, crusading journalist, and an early voice for the environment. Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn't simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted's designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. Justin Martin is a former staff writer for Fortune magazine and the author of Greenspan: The Man Behind Money and Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon.  

Session ThreeReading and writing poems that borrow their form and/or subject areas from other countries, including non-Western countries: (from Japan, haiku; from France, villanelles; from Italy, sestinas; from Malaysia, pantoums; from Persia, ghazals). The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  

Session TwoReading and discussing blank verse, a la Shakespeare (and many contemporary poets); reading and writing sonnets (sure, sonnets have been around since the Renaissance, but they're still alive and kicking); then bending the standard blank verse or sonnet "rules" when you write YOUR poem. The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  

Session OneReading and writing poems that make strong use of sounds to carry the meaning: luscious-, funny-, or ugly-sounding words; rhythms that tell the tale; echoes (rhyme, repetition). The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  

Deep within the forest green, in a magical and secret place, the gentle, green dragon resides! Come hear dragon tales as part of our Fairy Tale Festival.

Navigating the 1940 Census, an examination of the 1940 count, will introduce users to the data that will be released on April 2, 2012.Thomas MacEntee brings his considerable knowledge and experiences to Baltimore for the first time. He is a professional genealogist who specializes in the use of social media and technology in family history research and is the creator of GeneaBloggers.com and High-Definition Genealogy. A Chicago resident, he is frequently featured at genealogy conferences and workshops across the U.S.  

Justin Jones-Fosu's book, Finding Your Glasses: Revealing and Achieving Authentic Success, is a practical guide to help you find your prescription for success in life. Find out if you are really living your life according to your core values and not by society's definition of success. Pursue what really matters to you as you join the journey of "finding your glasses."Justin Jones-Fosu is president of Justin Inspires International and the author of Inspiration for Life. He hosts a weekly radio show, "Listen UP with Justin Jones-Fosu," on WEAA 88.9FM. In 2008 he was named one of "30 Young Leaders Under 30 On the Rise" by Ebony magazine.  

In her new book, Fran Allen McKinney shares the inspirational, encouraging, and motivating sayings she has authored and collected over the years. "Life comes at you from every angle, with any issue, for no reason, without regard for order or organization," she writes. "Expecting the best and preparing for the worst will keep you in a proactive posture and will be good for your health."A native of Omaha, Nebraska, McKinney served nearly eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps. She eared a Bachelor's degree in business from Johns Hopkins University and now serves as District Director of Congressman Elijah E. Cummings. She is president and CEO of Self Development Success (SDS), providing services for leadership coaching and nonprofit fundraising. 

In 1916 Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, childhood friends and Smith College graduates, left their affluent lives in Auburn, New York, and went off to teach the children of homesteaders in a remote schoolhouse on the Western Slope of Colorado. Dorothy Woodruff was the grandmother of New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden. Nearly 100 years later Wickenden found the detailed, colorful letters the two women wrote to their families and set out to discover what two intrepid Eastern women found when they went West. Before joining the New Yorker in 1996, Dorothy Wickenden was national affairs editor at Newsweek (1993-1995)and was the longtime executive editor at The New Republic. She has also written for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. 

Equal parts investigative legal history and compelling detective tale, Flagrant Conduct is the still-untold story of Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark Supreme Court decision that promises to be the Brown v. Board of gay rights. From the 1998 arrest of Houston defendants John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, charged with sodomy in Lawrence's own bedroom, to the stirring Supreme Court ruling five years later, Flagrant Conduct is an insightful work of formidable scholarship.Drawing from dozens of new interviews that yield surprising new evidence, Dale Carpenter reexamines the motives of almost every character involved, from the arresting police officers to the brilliant gay-rights attorneys, whose maneuuverings brought the case to national attention, to the nine Supreme Court justices, whose predispositions are on full display. With the legal battle over gay marriage looming, this first complete history of Lawrence v. Texas, which expanded the legal rights of millions of gay and lesbian Americans, could not be timelier.Dale Carpenter is the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnnesota Law School.Presented in partnership with ACLU of Maryland. 

Jane Satterfield is the author of two poetry collections: Assignation at Vanishing Point and Shepherdess with an Automatic. Among her awards are an N.E.A. Fellowship and the Faulkner Society Gold Medal, as well as residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A new manuscript, Her Familiars, was a finalist for this year’s National Poetry Series, and her poem, “The War Years,” won the 2011 Mslexia Poetry Competition. Ned Balbo received the 2010 Donald Justice Prize for The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems. His previous books are Lives of the Sleepers, Galileo’s Banquet, and the chapbook Something Must Happen. He has received three Maryland Arts Council grants, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. He teaches at Loyola University Maryland. Virginia Crawford, Poet-in-Residence with the Maryland State Arts Council, teaches through the Artists-in-Education program. Her first collection of poems, Touch, was featured on WYPR’s Maryland Morning. Her poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Mas Tequila Review, The Potomac: A Journal of Poetry and Politics, and others. Sam Schmidt's first collection of poems, Suburban Myths, comes out this year. His work has appeared in the Maryland Poetry Review, Black Moon, the Dancing Shadow Review, the Potomac Review, and Gargoyle. With his wife, he coedited the anthology, Poetry Baltimore: Poems about a City. He founded WordHouse, Baltimore's newsletter for writers. Read poems by Jane Satterfield.Read poems by Ned Balbo.Read poems by Virginia Crawford. 

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate for birth control even before the term existed, Margaret Sanger ignited a movement that has shaped our society to this day.Her views on reproductive rights have made her a frequent target of conservatives and so-called family values activists. Yet lately even progressives have shied away from her, citing socialist leanings and a purported belief in eugenics as a blight on her accomplishments. In this new biography, historian Jean H. Baker rescues Sanger from such critiques and restores her to the vaunted place in history she once held.Trained as a nurse and midwife in the gritty tenements of New York's Lower East Side, Sanger grew increasingly aware of the dangers of unplanned pregnancy, both physical and psychological. Following a botched abortion and the death of the mother, Sanger quickly became one of the loudest voices in favor of sex education and contraception. The movement she started spread across the country, eventually becoming a vast international organization with her as its spokeswoman.Jean H. Baker is the author of Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists and many other books on American history. She is professor of history at Goucher College. 

In 2008 Peggielene Bartels received a call from a cousin in Ghana: her uncle had died, and Peggielene was now the King of Otuam, a fishing village with 7,000 residents. King Peggy chronicles the astonishing journey of a middle-aged secretary in Washington, DC, struggling to make ends meet, who suddenly finds herself responsible for the future of a town half-a-world away. 

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.Leila Cobo, a Fulbright scholar from Cali, Colombia, is a novelist, pianist, TV host, and executive editor for Latin content and programming for Billboard. She is considered one of the country's leading experts on Latin music. She is the author of Tell Me Something True. Her second novel, The Second Time We Met (Grand Central Publishing), will be released February 29, 2012. (www.leilacobo.com)Jacqueline Luckett is the author of Searching for Tina Turner and the newly published Passing Love (Grand Central Publishing). She participated in the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) writing workshops and, in 2004, formed the Finish Party along with seven other women writers-of-color. (www.jacquelineluckett.com)Bernice L. McFadden is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar and Glorious. She is a two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. In her new novel, Gathering of Waters (Akashic Books), McFadden brings her own vision to the story of Emmett Till and the town of Money, Mississippi. (www.bernicemcfadden.com)Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning (Feminist Press) is a National Book Critics Circle finalist, an Asian American Literary Award finalist, a Grub Street National Book Award winner, and a Dayton Literary Peace Prize nominee. Her first novel, Why She Left Us, won the American Book Award. She is associate editor of The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City and is on the faculty of the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing program. (www.r3reiko.com)Presented in partnership with the Antigua & Barbuda International Literary Festival. Media sponsor: The Baltimore Times.   

Enjoy the sounds of music from long, long ago, as talented young musicians perform works from the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras on faithful reproductions of period instruments.   

What was he like? Jack Kennedy said that the reason people read biographies was to answer that question. Chris Matthews has devoted years studying the life of Jack Kennedy. to find out what he was like. From interviews with prep school classmates and college friends to war buddies and political associates, Matthews gives us an intimate picture of John F. Kennedy's coming-of-age. "In searching for Jack Kennedy," writes Matthews, "I found a fighting prince never free from pain, never far from trouble, never accepting the world he found, never wanting to be his father's son. He was a far greater hero than he ever wished us to know."Chris Matthews is the host of MSNBC's Hardball and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show. His bestselling books include Hardball; Kennedy & Nixon; Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think; and American: Beyond Our Grandest Notions. 

Grocery prices and the forsaken foods at the back of your refrigerator seem to increase weekly. After reading American Wasteland, you will never look at your shopping list, refrigerator, plate or wallet the same way again. Jonathan Bloom wades into the garbage heap to unearth what our squandered food says about us, why it matters, and how you can make a difference starting in your own kitchen -- reducing waste and saving money. Interviews with experts such as chef Alice Waters and food psychologist Brian Wansink, among others, uncover not only how and why we waste, but, most importantly, what we can do about it.Jonathan Bloom is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University.Presented in partnership with United Way of Central Maryland, Wesleyan University, and JHU Center for a Livable Future.  

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Professor Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and death of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. He invokes the spirits of Billie Holiday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Wells, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology -- to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.James H. Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians in America. His books include A Black Theology of Liberation, The Spirituals & the Blues, God of the Oppressed, and Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare.  

For a century Harlem has been celebrated as the capital of black America, a thriving center of cultural achievement and political action. At a crucial moment in Harlem's history, as gentrification encroaches, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts untangles the myth and meaning of Harlem's legacy. Examining the epic Harlem of official history and the personal Harlem that begins at her front door, Rhodes-Pitts introduces us to a wide variety of characters, past and present. She compares her own experience of moving to Harlem with accounts from literature of the Harlem Renaissance. A graduate of Harvard University, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and was a Fulbright Scholar for 2006-07. 

In Out of Left Field, Rebecca Alpert explores how Jewish sports entrepreneurs, political radicals, and a team of black Jews from Belleville, Virginia called the Belleville Grays -- the only Jewish team in the history of black baseball -- made their mark on the segregated world of the Negro Leagues. Through in-depth research, Alpert tells the stories of the Jewish businessmen who owned and promoted teams as they both acted out and fell victim to pervasive stereotypes of Jews as greedy middlemen and hucksters. Some Jewish owners produced a kind of comedy baseball, similar to basketball's Harlem Globetrotters, that reaped financial benefits for both owners and players but also played upon the worst stereotypes of African Americans and prevented these black "showmen" from being taken seriously by the major leagues. Alpert also shows how Jewish entrepreneurs, motivated in part by the traditional Jewish commitment to social justice, helped grow the business of black baseball in the face of oppressive Jim Crow restrictions.Rebecca Alpert is associate professor of religion and women's studies at Temple University. She is the author of Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism. 

With Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), Phillis Wheatley became the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book and only the second woman -- of any race or background -- to do so in America. Written in Boston while she was just a teenager, and still a slave, Wheatley's work was an international sensation. In Phillis Wheatley, Vincent Carretta offers the first full-length biography of a figure whose origins and later life have remained shadowy despite her iconic status.A scholar with extensive knowledge of transatlantic literature and history, Carretta uncovers new details about Wheatley's origins, her upbringing, and how she gained freedom. Assessing Wheatley's entire body of work, he discusses the likely role she played in the production, marketing, and distribution of her writing. She developed a remarkable network that transcended racial, class, political, religious, and geographical boundaries.Vincent Carretta is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. His most recent books are Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, winner of the Annibel Jenkins Prize, and The Life and Letters of Philip Quaque, the First African Anglican Missionary, coedited with Ty M. Reese. 

In Delirium, Nancy L. Cohen tells the story of a little-known shadow movement that has fueled America's political wars for 40 years. She traces our current political crisis back to the rise of a well-organized, ideologically driven opposition movement to turn back the sexual revolution, feminism, and gay rights. This sexual counterrevolution, Cohen shows, has played a leading role in shattering both political parties, dividing Americans into irreconcilable warring camps, and polarizing the nation.Nancy L. Cohen is a historian, writer and contributor to The Huffington Post. She is the author of two books, including The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Business History Review, and elsewhere.  

A family's recently discovered correspondence provides the inspiration for this fascinating and deeply moving account of Jewish family life before, during and after the Holocaust. Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey reveal how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and dispersed over three continents. The family's unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decisions of when, if, and to where they should emigrate. Boehling and Larkey capture the family members' fluctuating emotions of hope, optimism, resignation and despair, as well as the day-to-day concerns, experiences and dynamics of family life despite increasing persecution and impending deportation. Headed by two sisters who were among the first female business owners in Essen, the family was far from conventional, and their story contributes new dimensions to our understanding of Jewish life in Germany and in exile during these dark years.Rebecca Boehling is professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.Uta Larkey is associate professor of German at Goucher College. Part of the Schapiro Lecture Series, sponsored by a generous bequest from Mrs. Gloria L. Schapiro.

The first of two novels based on the slave revolt led by Nat Turner, Part One: The Witnesses is a fact-based epic that discredits the primary historical source document, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), which served as the basis for William Styron's novel. Foster located the original handwritten trial transcripts in which Turner actually pled innocent and offered no confession. During five years of research, she interviewed descendants of those killed, Turner's family, friends and foes, and analyzed related trial transcripts. Sharon Ewell Foster is the author of seven novels, including Passing by Samaria. She describes her new novel as "Roots meets The Da Vinci Code.''' 

In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel tells the story of the Great Blasket Island off the west coast of Ireland, notable during the early 20th century for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke. With the Irish language rapidly vanishing throughout the rest of Ireland, the Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars and writers, linguists and playwrights, drawn there during the Gaelic renaissance to study and to learn. As we follow these visitors, we become immersed both in the fascinating culture of the 150 or so islanders who, tucked away from the rest of civilization, kept alive an entire country's past, and in the newcomers and island dwellers alike who would bring the island's remarkable story to the larger world.Robert Kanigel is an award-winning writer and teacher. He is the author of six previous books, including The Man Who Knew Infinity, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Most recently he taught at MIT, where he directed the graduate program in science writing.  

Ron and his girlfriend Jill bought an old condemned fraternity house in Baltimore and gave it new life, despite the fact that neither of them knew anything about home renovation. Their realtor, friends and parents told them they were mad as March hares to attempt it. Ron and Jill's story of anguish, love, and the ultimate "American Dream" of home ownership offers inspiration, insight, and hilarity. In 2008, This Old House magazine published a feature story about their work, and it drew more than 40,000 readers to the magazine's website.Ron Tanner teaches writing at Loyola University in Baltimore and directs the Marshall Islands Story Project (mistories.org). He is the author of two books: Kiss Me, Stranger and Bed of Nails, which won both the G.S. Sharat Chandra Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. He has won many other literary prizes as well, including a Faulkner Society gold medal, a Jack Dyer Fiction Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.  

Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice. She recently coedited Hot Sonnets, a collection of modern erotic sonnets. She directs BrickHouse Books, Maryland's oldest literary press. Her ongoing research interest is in prison writers. CityLit Project established the Harriss Poetry Prize in her honor.Read a poem by Clarinda Harriss.Bruce Sager works as a corporate officer in a systems integration firm. His book Famous won the 2010 Harriss Poetry Prize. He has received Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards, a Baltimore City Arts Grant, and an Artscape Literary Arts Award. Prior books include Nine Ninety­-Five and The Pumping Station. Dick Allen, the Connecticut Poet Laureate, has described Sager's voice as "self-conscious, knowledgeable, confident, wacky, exuberant."Read a poem by Bruce Sager. 

When Fortune, a slave, died in 1798, his owner, Dr. Porter, dissected his body and preserved the skeleton. Fortune's bones remained in the doctor's family until they were given to the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1930. In the 1950s, a young African American woman named Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital for cancer treatment. During her treatment, tissues were taken from her body without her knowledge and used to grow cells for research purposes. These cells, later nicknamed HeLa cells, were discovered to have extraordinary growth abilities and have been used in countless experiments since.This panel discussion examines ethics in medical education, research, treatment, and practice and explore the parallels between Fortune's story and that of Henrietta Lacks. Panelists include: Professor Taunya Lovell-Banks, University of Maryland School of Law; Dr. Curt Civin, University of Maryland School of Medicine; David Lacks, son of Henrietta Lacks; Ysaye Barnwell, composer and curator of the Fortune's Bones Project. Moderator: Kojo Nnamdi, WAMU-FM.Presented in partnership with the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. www.claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/fortune 

Dedicated to the promotion of new music through engaging and unique performances, the AM/PM quartet presents premieres and pieces by young composers alongside established works in contemporary music. The group has itself commissioned and premiered five pieces for saxophone quartet, including two chamber operas, since 2008.  

Meet the authors of Health First! The Black Woman's Wellness Guide: Eleanor Hinton Hoytt, president and CEO, Black Women's Health Imperative, and Hilary Beard, award-winning health journalist.Health First! provides an in-depth look at every stage of a woman's life, from adolescence to adulthood to senior years. It identifies the "Top 10 Health Risks" black women face and discusses what can be done to avoid becoming another statistic. It also provides resources on prevention and awareness.Eleanor Hinton-Hoyt and Hilary Beard lead a conversation exploring the question: What makes it difficult to be black, female and healthy in America? Other panelists: WJZ news anchor Gigi Barnett and Tracee Bryant, executive director of the Baltimore Mental Health Alliance. 

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 wrote for GQ, New York Times Magazine, and other publications and was a regular contributor to Public Radio International's "This American Life."The award-winning humorist died August 9th, 2012 after battling a long illness.  His final work titled Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish is slated to be published in 2013.

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.