Our special guest is Mr. Nick Taylor, the author of American-Made, The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR put the Nation to Work.

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Nick Taylor has written ten books of non-fiction, both solely and in collaboration, on a wide variety of subjects.  His history of the Works Progress Administration, was published last February to wide acclaim.

Taylor’s other subjects include tournament bass fishing, the Mafia, and life in a small church. His memoir, A Necessary End recounts a baby boomer’s growing concern and care for his parents in their final years.  His story of an intrepid Israeli’s journey into the German neo-Nazi underground, In Hitler’s Shadow, written with Yaron Svoray, was adapted as the HBO feature movie, The Infiltrator, starring Oliver Platt.  His account of a Mafia family in the government’s Witness Protection Program, Sins of the Father, is currently under a motion picture option.  Laser, published in 2000, tells the story of the laser’s true inventor and his thirty-year fight to win the patents that would make him rich.  And he worked with astronaut and Senator John Glenn on the bestselling, John Glenn: A Memoir.
 
His pro bono work includes four years as president of the Authors Guild, the oldest and largest organization of published writers in the United States, which advocates for authors’ rights.  He is a native of western North Carolina who today lives in Greenwich Village with his wife Barbara Nevins Taylor, who is an investigative reporter for Fox TV’s New York stations Fox 5 and My 9 News.

Mr. Taylor will address some of the following questions:
• Who was Harry Hopkins and how did he get to run the WPA?
• What role did the WPA play in preparing us for WWII?
• Why was the WPA so criticized and by whom?
• Where was the work of the WPA concentrated?