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Fresh Air Weekend: Ellen And Ben Harper; Inside A 'Smalltime' Mob Operation

The author's grandparents, Russell and Mary Shorto, socialize at Club Harlem in Atlantic City, N.J., in the mid-1950s.
Courtesy of Russell Shorto
The author's grandparents, Russell and Mary Shorto, socialize at Club Harlem in Atlantic City, N.J., in the mid-1950s.

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Ben Harper And Mom Ellen Reflect On A Lifetime Immersed In A Folk Music 'Wonderland': Ellen and Ben Harper both grew up in the Folk Music Center in Claremont Calif., which Ellen's parents founded in 1958. They join Fresh Air to discuss Ellen's new memoir, Always a Song.

New Translation Shares The Voice Of A Poet Who Wrote As Intensely As She Lived: Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen took her own life in 1976. A newly translated version of her three-part memoir traces the sometimes amusing, sometimes painful turns of her unconventional life.

Author Digs Into Family's 'Smalltime' Mob Operation, Finds Family Secrets: Russell Shorto's grandfather was a mob boss in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa. Shorto writes about the family havoc that resulted from his grandfather's operation in his new memoir, Smalltime.

You can listen to the original interviews and review here:

Ben Harper And Mom Ellen Reflect On A Lifetime Immersed In A Folk Music 'Wonderland'

New Translation Shares The Voice Of A Poet Who Wrote As Intensely As She Lived

Author Digs Into Family's 'Smalltime' Mob Operation, Finds Family Secrets

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