Free Library Podcast

The Author Events Series presents Geraldine Brooks | Memorial Days  In Conversation with Tamala Edwards Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse. Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life,...

The Author Events Series presents Ben Crump | Worse Than A Lie First 100 people to arrive onsite receive a free copy of the book. It's the night of November 4, 2008. America's first Black president has just been elected. And fifty-three-year-old Hollis Montrose-a Black ex–police officer from the suburbs of Chicago-has become the latest victim of a brutal attack. As the result of a traffic stop gon...

The Author Events Series presents Amitav Ghosh | Ghost-Eye In Conversation with Brooke O'Harra Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type." Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Va...

The Author Events Series presents Danielle Allen | Radical Duke An explosive, deeply revisionist work that reveals how a renegade English Duke and Thomas Paine, the firebrand polemicist, almost brought the American Revolution to Britain. When Danielle Allen discovered a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had stumbled onto a lar...

The Author Events Series presents Matt Haig | The Midnight Train In Conversation with Katy Waldman When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his...

The Author Events Series presents Barbara McQuade | The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government In Conversation with Zane Memeger In The Fix, McQuade draws on her decades of experience as a federal prosecutor to reveal how systems of organized crime and political opportunism exploit the levers of power-using corruption, cruelty, and chaos as tools to dominate institutions...

The Author Events Series presents Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. | America, U.S.A.  In Conversation with Senator Cory Booker SOLD OUT Celebrated public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. presents a groundbreaking analysis of the vicious cycles of American history and the country's enduring refusal to face its true nature-especially at the moments when national anniversaries steer us back toward the mythology...

The Author Events Series presents Jodi Kantor | How to Start Join Jodi Kantor and Michael Solomonov for a discussion of the question: how, in these challenging times, can anyone discover and begin their life's work? Jodi Kantor's groundbreaking reporting has toppled media magnates, sparked reform worldwide, and foretold many of the unsettling changes we see in the workplace today. But before all o...

The Author Events Series presents Annette Gordon-Reed | Jefferson on Race: A Reader In Conversation with Patrick Spero, Ph. D Among America's Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that ''all men are created equal'' enslaved more than 600 people of African des...

The Author Events Series presents M Lin | The Memory Museum: Stories In Conversation with 'Pemi Aguda Stretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin's piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China's One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and...

The Author Events Series presents Bob Spitz | The Rolling Stones: The Biography In Conversation with Dan DeLuca  All great music is a threat. What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n' roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of...

The Author Events Series presents Sheinelle Jones | Through Mom's Eyes In Conversation with Mike Jerrick Montgomery Auditorium is now sold out. We have opened a rush line for anyone interested in purchasing Auditorium tickets at the door for $5. Please register for the rush line. The rush line will be available on a first come, first served basis. Guests will be asked to line up in the Lobby prior...

The Author Events Series presents Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | The Edge of Space-Time In Conversation with Airea D. Matthews In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shared with her audience an abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos, while imagining a world without the entrenched injustice that plagues her field. Now, in The Edge of...

The Author Events Series presents Senator Cory Booker | STAND In Conversation with Cherri Gregg SOLD OUT Join U.S. Senator Cory Booker for a timely and hopeful conversation about our shared American ideals. Centered around his new book, STAND, Senator Booker will share stirring personal reflections and powerful stories of leadership that will challenge us to reclaim our national story and work tog...

The Author Events Series presents Lynn Matluck Brooks | Theatres of the Body  Theatres of the Body is Lynn Matluck Brooks' critical examination of danced stage productions in antebellum Philadelphia. Starting in the 1820s, Brooks explores visual art and social and theatrical dancing across different classes, focusing on the work of E. W. Clay. Continuing through the 1830s, she looks at pantomime b...

The Author Events Series presents Karla Trotman & Cheryl McKissack Daniel | Dark, Dirty, Dangerous & The Black Family Who Built America  In Conversation with Joann Bell Karla Trotman  is President and CEO of Electro Soft, Inc., a second-generation family business specializing in electronics contract manufacturing for defense, aviation, and transit markets. A passionate advocate for entrepreneurshi...

The Author Events Series presents Namwali Serpell | On Morrison In Conversation with Angela Flournoy  Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, ''she is our only truly canonical black, female writer-and her work i...

The Author Events Series presents Heather Ann Thompson | Fear and Fury In Conversation with Cherri Gregg On December 22, 1984, in a graffiti-covered New York City subway car, passengers looked on in horror as a white loner named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teens,  Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, at point-blank range. He then disappeared into a dark tunnel. After an in...

The Author Events Series presents Victoria Christopher Murray, author of the award winning book, The Personal Librarian. In Conversation with Elizabeth Wellington This partnership was inspired by Victoria Christopher Murray's role as an Honorary Member of The Society, Inc., and developed in collaboration with the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation and The Greater Delaware Valley Chapter of Th...

The Author Events Series presents Dorothy Roberts | The Mixed Marriage Project In Conversation with Marcia Chatelain  Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the ''colorline.'' Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn't just a part of her upbringing, it was...

The Author Events Series presents James Martin, SJ | Work in Progress  In Conversation with Tamala Edwards Work in Progress, set in the Philly suburbs, is a snapshot of several years-first as a boy, then as a teenager, and finally as a young adult--of being thrown into a series of jobs for which Martin had zero training. He had never set foot in a restaurant kitchen before working as a busboy and...

The Author Events Series presents Matthew F. Delmont | Until the Last Gun Is Silent  In Conversation with Richard Brookshire As the civil rights movement blazed through America, more than 300,000 Black troops were drafted and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. These soldiers, often from disadvantaged backgrounds and subjected to the brutalities of racism back home, found themselves thrust onto the...

The Author Events Series presents Marc Shaiman | Never Mind the Happy In Conversation with Alan Zweibel Featuring a special performance from Rob Reiner's THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT with MATTHEW GALLAGHER, Principal trumpeter of The Philly Pops Orchestra.  In Never Mind the Happy, musical dynamo Marc Shaiman looks back on five decades of Broadway triumphs, Hollywood hijinks, and unforgettable collabora...

The Author Events Series presents Lee Bollinger | University: A Reckoning In Conversation with Ali Velshi The American university-one of the most successful institutions in human history-is facing an unprecedented assault from the President of the United States. Experts on authoritarianism have drawn comparisons to Turkey and Hungary, where strongmen subdued universities as part of their power gra...

The Author Events Series presents Governor Josh Shapiro | Where We Keep the Light  SOLD OUT In Where We Keep the Light, Josh Shapiro, a leading voice in the Democratic party, shares powerful stories about his family, his faith, and his career in public service. From an early age, Shapiro learned and practiced the power of helping others, values which he carried through successful campaigns for the...