Hello everyone, I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the Book Review Podcast.

Later I'll be talking to MJ Franklin, an editor at the Book Review who recently wrote

a profile of the author Paul Harding who returns to publishing after a decade away with

his new novel, This Other Eden.

But first, libraries and their special delights and central place in our communities are

the subject of a piece recently published by the Book Review, a photo project that drops

in on seven libraries across America.

I'm joined by Erica Ackerberg, a photo editor here at the Times who conceived of this

piece, an Elizabeth Egan and editor on the Book Review who wrote a gorgeous essay to accompany

those photos.

When I was growing up in the Bronx in the 1980s, my first apartment was on 196th Street

and Grand Concourse.

It wasn't the best part of the Bronx.

It was the 80s.

It wasn't great at all.

But I lived with my parents there.

My grandparents lived in the building next door and down the block from us was Poe Park.

And it was so named because of Edgar Allen Poe, the great American poet and short story

writer.

He lived there from 1846 to 1849, which was the year of his death.

And the Bronx at the time was pretty rural.

It was very different and he lived there in a cottage with his wife.

...