Concord Library Thursday Author Series

 contact:  Melissa Saalfield 978 287 3583 or mcsaalfield477@comcast.net

                        CONCORD, MA    The Concord Free Public Library will launch its 2010-2011 Thursday Author Series on Thursday, September 30 at 7:30 pm with the award-winning author and distinguished journalist, Larry Tye.  Tye will discuss his recent book, Satchel:  The Life and Times of an American Legend.

                        Satchel Paige may have been the greatest baseball pitcher of all time; certainly he was one of the most flamboyant and charismatic.  In his prime, he was probably the most famous black man in America, more recognized than Joe Louis or Duke Ellington.  His legendary career spanned over forty years from the 1920s to the 1960s and eventually led him into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  One reporter offered an eyewitness account of his pitching:  "all you can see is something like a thin line of pipe smoke."

                        Larry Tye's entertaining biography attempts to marshal verifiable facts about Satchel Paige.  Given Paige's penchant for aggrandizing his own story, this was certainly one of the author's biggest challenges.  Tye offers a reasonable explanation for Paige's apocryphal stories, "he did it because reshaping history was intoxicating and empowering."

                        From 1986 – 2001, Larry Tye was a reporter for the Boston Globe covering the environment and sports. He has been a contributor to NPR and the BBC and is the other of several books including Shock:  The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy, a collaboration with Kitty Dukakis, the former first lady of Massachusetts.  Tye currently runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship, which encourages the media to provide better coverage of critical health care issues.

                        The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library sponsor the Thursday Authors Series from September through June annually.  Programs are free and open to all.  Following each presentation, books are available for purchase and guests are welcome to continue conversations with the author.  For more information, please call the Library at 978 318 3300 or visit www.concordlibrary.org.

Upcoming programs (all in the Main Library) include:

• Sunday, October 24 – 3 pm:  Special panel presentation in collaboration with the Concord Festival of Authors:  Historic Concord moderated by Leslie Perrin Wilson, with panelists Jayne Gordon (Massachusetts Historical Society), David Wood (Concord Museum) and Stephanie Stillman, (Concord Chamber of Commerce)

• Thursday, November 18 - 7:30 pm:  Harriet Reisen – Louisa May Alcott:  The Woman Behind "Little Women" –  with special birthday cake in observance of Louisa May Alcott's and Bronson Alcott's shared birthday (November 29)

Thursday, December 7 – 7:30 pm:  Mark Robbins, MD – The Coffin Blind