View and listen to the Top 10 Author Event Podcasts Downloaded in January 2014.
Don't forget to view our schedule for upcoming Winter and Spring 2014 author events!
Jane Pauley | Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life Recorded 1/21/2014 Listen to MP3 audio A television broadcasting fixture for more than three decades, Jane Pauley cohosted the Today show from 1976 to 1989, anchored Dateline NBC for 11 years, and in 2004 became the host of her own daytime program, The Jane Pauley Show. That same year she published a memoir, Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue, in which she extolls the self-discovery and revitalization she found at midlife. In addition to many other honors, Pauley has received several Emmy Awards and the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. She currently hosts the “Your Life Calling” segment on the Today show, and through experiential insight and profiles of remarkable people, she revisits many of the themes of reinvention and personal growth in her latest book. In conversation with Tracy Davidson, Emmy award-winning NBC10 news anchor and consumer advocate. Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture |
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Max Tegmark | Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality with Dave Goldberg | The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality Recorded 1/14/2014 Listen to MP3 audio “Not your run-of-the mill cosmologist” (Discover), Max Tegmark explores the complex origins and ultimate fate of the cosmos in his erudite and entertaining writing. The Swedish-born theoretical physicist is the author of more than 200 technical papers and has created several of the fundamental data analysis tools, theories, and measurement systems that have advanced modern cosmological study. Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012, he directs the Foundation Questions Institute and is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Our Mathematical Universe, Tegmark explains revolutionary theories about the very nature of reality with common sense, wit, and passion. Dave Goldberg co-authored A User’s Guide to the Universe, an irreverent and entertaining guide to the real-life physics behind some of the most nagging questions about extraterrestrial life, parallel universes, dark matter, and a score of other pop-science topics. He has been featured on NPR’s Studio 360, has contributed to Slate and the Los Angeles Times, writes the “Ask a Physicist” column for io9.com, and teaches at Drexel University. “An informative, math-free, and completely entertaining look at the concept of symmetry in physics” (Publishers Weekly), The Universe in the Rearview Mirror reveals the profound forces behind the elegant fabric of reality while also answering the nerd questions about the possibility of shrink-ray guns and warp-speed travel. |
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E.L. Doctorow | Andrew’s Brain Recorded 1/16/2014 Listen to MP3 audio E. L. Doctorow concocts “a ferocious re-imagining of the past that returns it to us as something powerful and strange” (Time) in novels such as The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, City of God, March, and Homer & Langley. He has also written several collections of stories and essays. His many honors include the 2012 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the National Humanities Medal and the 2013 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Doctorow once again shows his ability to meld “the personal and the mythic into a thrilling and poignant story” (New York Times) in Andrew’s Brain, a radical, lyrical trip through the mind that raises probing questions about what we know about our memories and each other. In conversation with Jim Holt, bestselling author of Why Does The World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture |
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James Carville and Mary Matalin | Love & War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home Recorded 1/13/2014 Listen to MP3 audio For 20 years of marriage, James Carville and Mary Matalin have reigned as the country’s most politically divergent, ideologically mismatched, and intensely opinionated couple. Often referred to as the “Ragin’ Cajun” for his animated and colorful debating style, Carville is a Democratic strategist who serves as a political contributor for CNN. Matalin was the media-savvy Republican strategist for two Bushes and one Cheney. In two distinct voices, their spirited new memoir follows the couple’s story from the end of the 1992 presidential campaign—where he managed Bill Clinton’s triumph while she suffered defeat—through the Clinton era, George W. Bush’s complicated presidency, the election of Barack Obama, and the rise of the destructive partisanship that dominates Washington today. In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org Carole Phillips Memorial Lecture |
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Ishmael Beah | The Radiance of Tomorrow Recorded 1/24/2014 Listen to MP3 audio “Hideously effective in conveying the essential horror of his experiences,” (Kirkus Reviews), former child soldier Ishmael Beah escaped his native Sierra Leone at 17. He detailed his brutal early years and his struggle to return to civilized society in his international bestseller, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, required reading “to learn about the world and what it means to be human” (Washington Post). Beah’s other writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, LIT, and numerous academic journals. He has spoken before the United Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations on the effects of war on children, and is also a UNICEF ambassador and advocate. Radiance of Tomorrow, his first novel, explores the depredations, upheavals, and tenacious hope experienced by two friends in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s civil war. |
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Ann Patchett | This is the Story of a Happy Marriage Recorded 11/13/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Ann Patchett’s six novels and two nonfiction works have earned her numerous awards, including the Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for Bel Canto, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Taft, and the New York Times Notable Book of the Year for The Patron Saint of Liars. She is also the author of the suspenseful novel State of Wonder, set amid a forgotten tribe along the banks of the Amazon river, and two works of nonfiction: the New York Times bestselling Truth & Beauty and What Now?. Named one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People, Patchett opened Parnassus Books when her hometown of Nashville was left without a bookstore. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a collection of the large experiences and small moments that have shaped her life. Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture |
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Sue Monk Kidd | The Invention of Wings Recorded 1/28/2014 Listen to MP3 audio “A direct literary descendant of Carson McCullers” (The Baltimore Sun), Sue Monk Kidd grapples with the struggles of women to be heard, loved, and understood. Her no. 1 New York Times bestseller The Secret Life of Bees maps a young girl’s “journey toward self-acceptance, faith and freedom” (USA Today) amidst the unrest of 1960s South Carolina. Kidd is also the author of the bestselling The Mermaid Chair. Both were adapted into popular films. Her nonfiction writing explores feminist theology, personal memoir, contemplative Christianity, and her introspective relationship with her daughter. The Invention of Wings follows the fortunes of two women, one a slave and the other born into a life of privilege, who nevertheless forge a profound bond as they strive toward liberation and achievement over several decades in the early 19th-century South. |
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Deepak Chopra | What Are You Hungry For?: The Chopra Solution to Permanent Weight Loss, Well-Being, and Lightness of Soul Recorded 11/18/2013 Listen to MP3 audio “The poet-prophet of alternative medicine” (Time), Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 70 books on mind-body health, spirituality, and peace, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. One of Time’s top 100 heroes and icons of this century, he is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Well Being. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, a Distinguished Executive Scholar at Columbia Business School, and a Senior Scientist at the Gallup organization. In his new book What Are You Hungry For?, Chopra reveals how overeating is often a symptom of hunger for love and happiness, and outlines an approach to eating that will lead to permanent weight loss and spiritual well-being. |
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Debora Spar | Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection Recorded 12/12/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Current President of Barnard College, former professor at Harvard Business School, member of the Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs, and mother of three, Debora Spar understands how difficult it can be for women to achieve professionally while balancing the concerns of family and the pursuit of ideal personal life. She is the author of six books, including Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Invention, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet, and numerous articles. In Wonder Women, Spar takes a “wise, worthy” (Kirkus Reviews) look at how American women’s lives have and have not changed over the last 50 years. “Tactfully navigating heated debates” while also narrating the story of her own successes and roadblocks over the years, Spar confronts the new issues that confront women and provides a roadmap for the future. In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Sponsored by Brandywine Realty Trust and Shechtman, Marks, Devor PC. |
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James K. Galbraith | John Kenneth Galbraith: The Affluent Society & Other Writings 1952-1967 Recorded 11/18/2010 Listen to MP3 audio James K. Galbraith is a professor of economics and the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. A regular contributor to The Nation and Mother Jones, Galbraith is the author of The Predator State, Balancing Acts, and Created Unequal, all of which examine different aspects of the distribution of wealth in the United States. His new book collects the notable writings of his father--renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith--including American Capitalism, The Affluent Society, and The New Industrial State into one definitive volume. |
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