John Sandford: Storm Prey
Monday 05/24/10
Decatur Library
7:00 pm

Sandford's popular "Prey" series has sold millions of copies and made him one of America's most highly regarded authors. He'll be visiting us to talk about Storm Prey, the 20th book in this prize-winning series. Sandford is really John Camp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former newspaper journalist whose many successful books include Phantom Prey and Dark of the Moon. Sandford is also the author of two nonfiction books on plastic surgery and art and is the principal financial backer for a major archaeological project in the Jordan Valley of Israel

Wes Moore: The Other Wes Moore
Monday 5/24/2010
Carter Library
7:00 pm

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes scholarship. The same paper also ran a huge story about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore.
Wes just couldn't shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?
That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless, both were in and out of school; they'd hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.
Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.

Jonathan Alter: The Promise: President Obama, Year One
Wednesday 05/26/10
Atlanta History Center
7:00 pm

In The Promise, Jonathan Alter provides a fast-paced inside account of the breakneck speed with which Barack Obama began making critical decisions and assuming the burdens of office amid the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.  With dozens of exclusive details about everything from the selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state to the president’s personal secrets for running a good meeting, Alter paints a fresh and often surprising portrait of a highly disciplined and self-aware president and his team.
Jonathan Alter is a senior editor at Newsweek where he has written an acclaimed column on politics, history, media, and society at large since 1991. Alter is also an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News.