Top 10 Author Event Podcasts Downloaded in September 2013

By Peter SM RSS Tue, October 15, 2013

View the Top 10 Author Event Podcasts Downloaded in September 2013.

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Ross King | The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism Ross King | The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism
Recorded 4/20/2006
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Ross King is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michaelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, as well as the novels Ex-Libris and Domino. The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions: the scandalous Salon des Refusés in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874, where the artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment.
Diane Ravitch | Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools Diane Ravitch | Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
Recorded 9/17/2013
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A historian of education at the forefront of debate for over 40 years, “whistleblower extraordinaire” (Wall Street Journal) Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, she was awarded the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education. Her books include the critically acclaimed Language Police and The Death and Life of the Great American School System, an impassioned plea to preserve and renew public education. Reign of Error is a call to halt the privatization of the public school system and a detailed plan for the survival of this American institution.
Jamie Moyer and Larry Platt | Just Tell Me I Can't: How Jamie Moyer Defied the Radar Gun and Defeated Time Jamie Moyer and Larry Platt | Just Tell Me I Can’t: How Jamie Moyer Defied the Radar Gun and Defeated Time
Recorded 9/10/2013
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A World Series champion known for his trademark pitches—slow, slower, and slowest—Jamie Moyer ended his epic career just a few wins shy of 300 victories. Having pitched for eight teams, he is one of the most popular players in professional baseball and one of only 29 players in the sport’s history to have played major league games for four decades. Moyer was named to the 2003 All-Star Team and has served as an on-air analyst for ESPN and the Major League Baseball Network. At a crucial juncture in his mid-twenties, he encountered world-renowned sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman, whose teachings primed Moyer for a reinvention that would shape his remarkable career. His new memoir unfolds that fateful experience and his 25 extraordinary years in the big leagues. Larry Platt served as the editor of both the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine and has written for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, New York, and Men’s Journal.
Wole Soyinka | You Must Set Forth at Dawn Wole Soyinka | You Must Set Forth at Dawn
Recorded 4/18/2006
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Wole Soyinka is the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels, plays, poems, and essays. He has been a courageous voice for justice, freedom, and human rights around the world. You Must Set Forth at Dawn continues the autobiographical narrative begun in Ake, Soyinka's memoir of his African childhood, focusing on his turbulent adult years.
Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion
Recorded 11/2/2006
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The preeminent scientist Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Discover magazine recently dubbed him "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce defense of evolution and Prospect magazine placed him among the top three public intellectuals (with Noam Chomsky and Umberto Eco) worldwide. His award-winning books include The Selfish Gene, in which he first introduced the concept of the "meme," and The Blind Watchmaker, a convincing account of neo-Darwinian theory. In The God Delusion, Dawkins asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has done society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
A. Scott Berg | Wilson A. Scott Berg | Wilson
Recorded 9/24/2013
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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg is renowned for his detailed portraits of American icons, including the National Book Award-winning biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, an exploration of the famed editor and the literary giants he nurtured, and Lindbergh, which chronicled Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 one-man transatlantic journey, turning “that historic flight into a narrative tour de force” (New York Times). Berg’s other works include Goldwyn: A Biography and the New York Times bestseller Kate Remembered, a biographical memoir spanning Berg’s 20-year friendship with Katharine Hepburn, published just weeks after her death. Drawing from newly discovered papers and previously unknown events, Wilson casts a new light on the life of the 28th President—Woodrow Wilson—100 years after his first inauguration.
Eric Schlosser | Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety Eric Schlosser | Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
Recorded 9/20/2013
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Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Fast Food Nation, which helped launch a revolution in how people think about what they eat; Reefer Madness, which probed the flourishing black market of sex, drugs, and cheap labor; and Chew on This, a children’s book about industrial agriculture and the health effects of fast food. He produced the feature film adaptation of Fast Food Nation and the award-winning films Food, Inc. and There Will Be Blood. Command and Control is a lively account of the management of our country’s nuclear arsenal that grapples with the dilemma faced since the dawn of the atomic era: how to deploy a nuclear arsenal without being destroyed by it.
Bill McKibben | Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist Bill McKibben | Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
Recorded 9/19/2013
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“The planet’s best green journalist” (Time), Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about global warming with his 1989 book The End of Nature. The author of a dozen books about the environment, he received the 2013 Gandhi Peace Award for his efforts to highlight the connection between local environmental dangers and their regional and global consequences. McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Mother Jones, and Rolling Stone. From raising one year’s honey crop to combating the fossil fuel industry, his new book Oil and Honey reveals the imperative to fight for a sustainable planet.
James McBride | The Good Lord Bird James McBride | The Good Lord Bird
Recorded 9/12/2013
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James McBride is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and 2004 One Book, One Philadelphia selection, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, in which “race and religion are transcended by family love” (New York Times Book Review). His novels include Miracle at St. Anna—which he adapted for Spike Lee’s film—and Song Yet Sung, a tragic and triumphant tale of a slave revolt in Maryland during the tense days before the Civil War. McBride is an award-winning composer and screenwriter and a former staff writer for The Boston Globe, People, and The Washington Post. In The Good Lord Bird, a young boy born into slavery joins abolitionist John Brown’s crusade, concealing his identity and gender to survive.

James McBride was joined onstage by his band for the "John Brown Good God, Good Lord, Good Riddance Gospel Tour." Please note that the music was not mixed for rebroadcast; as a result, some of the songs distort during playback. If you were here you know how good they sounded live!
Reza Aslan | Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth Reza Aslan | Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Recorded 9/18/2013
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Religion scholar Reza Aslan is the internationally bestselling author of No god but God, “an eloquent, erudite paean to Islam in all of its complicated glory” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). The book was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and named Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times. His next book, How to Win a Cosmic War, offered an incisive analysis of religion and the war on terror. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Aslan is the founder of AslanMedia.com, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Zealot radically reframes the life of Jesus through the lens of first-century Israel/Palestine awash in apocalyptic fervor.

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