Should your boyfriend save your beloved cat or a drowning stranger? Your stepdad has Alzheimer's and now your mom wants to date. Is this okay? Kwame Anthony Appiah, the author of The Ethicist column for the New York Times Magazine and 2024 winner of the Library’s John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, took on these and other quandries in a fun Live! At the Library event.
Bill Moyers, who died yesterday at the age of 91, was at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium one night in the fall of 2023 to mark the preservation of more than 1,000 of his public television programs in The American Archive of Public Broadcasting. a collaboration between the Library and GBH, the public media production company in Boston. It was a crowning night to one of the most influential careers in American media.
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's final lecture last week in the Coolidge Auditorium was a love letter to poetry to libraries and librarians. Her lecture, titled “Against Breaking: On the Public and Private Power of Poetry,” framed poetry as a shared, not solitary, experience and as a celebration of humanity’s range of voices and perspectives.
Mac Barnett, the bestselling author of more than 60 children's books, including “Twenty Questions,” “Sam & Dave Dig a Hole,” “A Polar Bear in the Snow” as well as the “Mac B., Kid Spy” series, will be inaugurated today as the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
The Library's 2024 National Book Festival will be August 24, featuring writers and personalities across the humanities including James McBride, Renee Fleming, James Patterson, Marie Arana and many others.
Bernie Taupin took the stage recently to speak with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden about his songwriting journey with Elton John. The pair are the 2024 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song winners and their award concert will be broadcast on PBS April 8.
George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” a rapturous burst of music that has become a motif of the nation’s creative spirit, turns 100 today. It was first performed in New York on the snowy Tuesday afternoon of Feb. 12, 1924. Commissioned and premiered by the popular conductor Paul Whiteman at a concert designed to showcase high-minded …
Jessica Castelo is a museum technician in the Visitor Engagement Office. Here, she answers a short Q&A session about her work and life outside the office.
Mariah Carey surprised a festive crowd during the Library’s Santa Claus edition of “Live! At the Library“ last night, making an entrance as her signature hit, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” played in the Great Hall. Decked out in a stage-worthy sparkling dress and pink high heels, she picked up the song's framed certificate of induction from the National Recording Registry from Librarian Carla Hayden and - like most everyone else at the party - posed for a couple of pictures by the Christmas tree.
