Welcome to "Meet the Mayor," a segment in which we interview local Foursquare Mayors in their natural habitats.

Boston Public Library
Gina Perille

Are libraries putting bookstores out of business? All the books here are free ...
I think there's room for everybody, but we have definitely gotten busier since times have gotten tighter.

^{Happy 201st birthday, EAP.}

Considering that the man was the original architect of the detective story -- that'd be The Murders in the Rue Morgue -- it’s only fitting that we celebrate the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe with a riddle. Which city can rightfully claim the legacy of Poe: Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Boston?

A year ago tomorrow we woke up and elected the first-ever black President. A couple of weeks ago at the Boston Book Festival, a panel of pundits kicked off what is sure to be an avalanche of first-year retrospectives on the Obama presidency. Surprise: nobody's happy. And this, folks, is the loyal opposition.

LANI GUINIER says the first year of Obama has been marked by the "dis-involvement of all the people who helped make him president in the first place," adding that if he sticks to his current course, it will be "very dificult to accomplish the change he promised and that we need."

Photo by Boston Book Festival via Flickr

It was hard not to feel cheerleaderish during Saturday's inaugural BOSTON BOOK FESTIVAL, which crammed 90 authors into 40 or so hour-long programs in and around Copley Square, and drew lines-around-the-block crowds for . . . well, people talking about and reading from books.

The best Revolutionary Road adaptation of 2008, hands down, was season 2 of Mad Men. If Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road takes home any of the bazilion Golden Globe awards it's up for on Sunday night, it'll have very little to do with the limp, Titanicized performances of Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio, and every bit to do with the enormous (and justly deserved) reputation that Richard Yates's novel has acquired over the past half-century.