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.

• Central Library   Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Wheeler Auditorium

• Teens
 
• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Wednesday, Aug 11, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Teens
 
• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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. 

• Central Library   Wednesday, Aug 18, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
    Wheeler Auditorium

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

In Four Fish Paul Greenberg explores our relationship with the oceans, honing in on four varieties of fish staples -- salmon, bass, cod, and tuna. Greenberg travels from wild salmon runs in Alaska to the massive fish farms in Vietnam, from the Long Island Sound to the fjords of Norway, to uncover the myths, misconceptions, and cultural precedents that persist about fish. He explains why these well-known types are not our healthiest, most cost-effective or environmentally sound choices and leads us to better alternatives.

Paul Greenberg's writing on seafood and the oceans has appeared regularly in the New York Times. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow and a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow. Greenberg lives and works in New York City and Lake Placid, NY.

• Southeast Anchor Library   Wednesday, Aug 18, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

Summer Whitford provides an insider's view of how foreign ambassadors and embassies in Washington entertain and showcase their countries' food, wine, and culture. Included are fascinating tidbits about national dishes and regional foods, wines, dining customs, festivals and holidays, and protocol.

Summer Whitford is a professional chef, cooking instructor and wine educator. She is President of Chez Vous Productions, a food specialty and lifestyle company.

• Edmondson Avenue Branch   Saturday, Sep 11, 2010 (2:00 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Sunday, Sep 12, 2010 (2:30 p.m.)
    Main Hall

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

• Central Library   Tuesday, Sep 14, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

• Central Library   Wednesday, Sep 15, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
    Wheeler Auditorium

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Thursday, Sep 16, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

In Half Empty, a collection of witty, wise and poignant essays, David Rakoff examines the realities of our sunny contemporary culture and finds that the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won't come true. Ranging from the personal to the universal, the stories come from Rakoff's reporting and his own experiences.

David Rakoff is the author of Don't Get Too Comfortable and Fraud. He writes for GQ, New York Times Magazine, and other publications and is a regular contributor to Public Radio International's "This American Life."

• Central Library   Wednesday, Sep 22, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

Combining memoir, history, and fiction, Neela Vaswani follows the paths of her Irish-Catholic mother and Sindhi-Indian father on their journey towards each other and the biracial child they create. You Have Given Me a Country explores blurred borders, identity, and what it means to be bicultural.

Neela Vaswani has a Ph.D. in American Cultural Studies from the University of Maryland and teaches writing at Spalding University. She is the author of the short story collection, Where the Long Grass Bends, and received th O. Henry Prize in 2006.

• Southeast Anchor Library   Wednesday, Sep 22, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

• Central Library   Thursday, Sep 23, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Wheeler Auditorium

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

Picking up in 1986, twenty-three years after the events detailed in her bestselling novel Church Folk, Michele Andrea Bowen's inspirational novel, More Church Folk, uses humor, local color, and vividly descriptive language, demonstrating why she is the queen of African American Christian fiction.

Bowen is the author of four novels, including Church Folk and Second Sunday, which were Essence bestsellers. She graduated from the University of North Carolina with masters degrees in history and public health.

• Edmondson Avenue Branch   Saturday, Sep 25, 2010 (2:00 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

When Deborah Rudacille was growing up in Dundalk, Maryland, a worker at the local Sparrows Point steel mill made more than enough to comfortably support a family. Then came the decline of the American steel industry that put tens of thousands out of work. Through personal narrative, interviews with workers, and extensive research, Rudacille captures the history and character of communities around Sparrows Point and dissects the complicated racial, class, and gender politics that played out at the mill since 1889.

Deborah Rudacille is an independent journalist and science writer. Her first book, The Scalpel and the Butterfly, was named one of the year's best nonfiction books by the Los Angeles Times. Her next book, The Riddle of Gender, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

• Light Street Branch   Monday, Sep 27, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Wednesday, Sep 29, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Tuesday, Oct 05, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

• Central Library   Wednesday, Oct 06, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

For 132 years, Hutzler Brothers Company was a beloved part of the Baltimore retail and cultural scene. Michael Lisicky chronicles the rise of the family-run department store, its growth into Towson and other Maryland cities, and its eventual and much lamented passing. With his vivid prose and some classic Hutzler's recipes, Lisicky brings to life this lost Baltimore institution.

Michael Lisicky is an oboist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and a certified tour guide for the Preservation Society of Fell's Point and Federal Hill.

• Roland Park Branch   Saturday, Oct 09, 2010 (2:00 p.m.)

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

Brian Murray takes a wide-ranging look at Charles Dickens' life and career, from his politics to his Christian faith to his pragmatic, yet hopeful, worldview. He sheds light on Dickens' role as both polemicist and journalist, considering his most persistent literary themes and analyzing how his politics provoked both admiration and scorn among his contemporaries.

Brian Murray is professor in the Writing Department at Loyola Universiity and the author of Charles Dickens.

• Central Library   Wednesday, Oct 13, 2010 (6:30 p.m.)
    Poe Room

• Adults
 
• Seniors
 

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.

• Central Library   Wednesday, Oct 27, 2010 (7:00 p.m.)
    Wheeler Auditorium

• Adults
 
• Seniors