Upcoming Speakers At Philly Free Library

Jeff Greenfield | If Kennedy Lived Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture Monday, October 28, 2013 at 7:30 PM; buy tickets online>> Veteran politics and culture analyst Jeff Greenfield has spent over 30 years on network television and currently hostsNeed To Know on PBS. The recipient of five Emmy Awards, Greenfield worked as a speechwriter in the 1968 Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and has served as a floor reporter or anchor-booth analyst for every national convention since 1988. He is the author of 12 books, including Then Everything Changed, an alternate history that "turns these twists of fate into accelerating historical snowballs that rumble through our recent history, altering the social landscape in ways both small and large" (New York Times). If Kennedy Lived, published on the 50th anniversary of his assassination, imagines the political and cultural implications of Kennedy's second term.

Terry Teachout | Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 7:30 PM; FREENo tickets or reservations required. For more info: 215-567-4341 Terry Teachout is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the critic-at-large ofCommentary, and the author of "Sightings," a biweekly column about the arts in the United States. His books include Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong,All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, and The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken. His play Satchmo at the Waldorf, a one-man show about Armstrong's life and times, premiered in 2011, and he also wrote the libretti for two operas, including Danse Russe, which premiered at Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater. His new biography Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington tells the story of one of the greatest jazz composers-and most enigmatic public figures-of the 20th century.

Donna Tartt | The Goldfinch Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at 7:30 PM; FREENo tickets or reservations required. For more info: 215-567-4341 Donna Tarrt burst onto the literary scene with her "gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite, and persistently (and quite anachronistically) high-minded" (Vanity Fair) debut novel, The Secret History. The book, packed with literary references from both classical Greek and contemporary literature, follows a group of classics students at a small Vermont liberal arts college who slay a stranger and then one of their own. Her second novel The Little Friend, set in 1970s Mississippi, begins with the shocking Mother's Day discovery of the hanging body of a 9-year-old boy. The book received the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The Goldfinch is her long-awaited third novel.