ROBIN SLOAN returns with his latest novel, Sourdough
Harvard Book Store welcomes Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore author ROBIN SLOAN for a reading from his latest novel, Sourdough.
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her―feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
This event is not ticketed.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century
Harvard Book Store welcomes KATHRYN SIKKINK—the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—for a discussion of her latest book, Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century.
Evidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert SIKKINK draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to the pessimistic doubts about human rights laws and institutions. She demonstrates that change comes slowly and as the result of struggle, but in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective.
This event is free and open to the public.
Evidence for Hope will be on sale at the event, 20% off.
NYT best-selling author GRETCHEN RUBIN in conversation with MELISSA HARTWIG
Harvard Book Store welcomes New York Times-bestselling author GRETCHEN RUBIN—author of Better Than Before and The Happiness Project—and Whole30 program creator MELISSA HARTWIG for a discussion of Rubin’s latest book, The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too). A book signing with both speakers will follow the discussion. Please note that each ticket comes with a copy of Rubin’s The Four Tendencies.
More than 600,000 people have taken her online quiz, and managers, doctors, teachers, spouses, and parents already use the framework to help people make significant, lasting change. With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. It’s far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.
This event is ticketed. You may purchase tickets here. Tickets include a copy of The Four Tendencies.
This book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
Folk/Rock legend ART GARFUNKEL on his memoir
Harvard Book Store welcomes folk rock legend ART GARFUNKEL for a discussion of his memoir, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man. This event, taking place at First Parish Church, is co-sponsored by Harvard Square’s Club Passim. GARFUNKEL will be joined in conversation by JARED BOWEN, WGBH’s Emmy Award-winning Executive Editor and Host for Arts.
GARFUNKEL writes about his life before, during, and after Simon & Garfunkel…about their folk-rock music in the roiling age that embraced and was defined by their path-breaking sound. He writes about growing up in the 1940s and ’50s (son of a traveling salesman), a middle class Jewish boy, living in a red brick semi-attached house in Kew Gardens, Queens, a kid who was different—from the age of five feeling his vocal cords “vibrating with the love of sound”…
This event is ticketed. You may purchase tickets here, and all tickets come with a presigned copy of GARFUNKEL’s memoir.
This event is co-sponsored with Club Passim.
Award-winning author ALEX GILVARRY at Harvard Book Store
Harvard Book Store welcomes ALEX GILVARRY, the Hornblower Award–winning author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, for a discussion of Eastman Was Here—a novel set in the literary world of 1970’s New York, following a washed-up writer in an errant quest to pick up the pieces of his life.
The year is 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband, and philanderer; finds himself alone on the floor of his study in an existential crisis. His wife has taken their kids and left him to live with her mother in New Jersey, and his best work feels as though it is years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call from his old rival dating back to his days on the Harvard literary journal, offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America’s longest war.
This event is not ticketed.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Body, and Brain
Harvard Book Store welcomes psychologists DANIEL GOLEMAN and RICHARD J. DAVIDSON for a discussion of their book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.
In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, DANIEL GOLEMAN and RICHARD DAVIDSON show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.
This event is ticketed. You may purchase tickets here.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
VANESSA GRIGORIADIS: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus
Harvard Book Store welcomes VANESSA GRIGORIADIS, contributing editor of the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, for a discussion of her book, Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus.
A new sexual revolution is sweeping the country, and college students are on the front lines. Women use fresh, savvy methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality as never before. Many “woke” male students are more sensitive to women’s concerns than previous generations ever were, while other men perpetuate the most cruel misogyny. Amid such apparent contradictions, it’s no surprise that intense confusion shrouds the topic of sex on campus.
This event is not ticketed.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
Rethinking the Cold War with Kennedy School scholar ODD ARNE WESTAD
Harvard Book Store welcomes Harvard Kennedy School’s ODD ARNE WESTAD for a discussion of his latest book, The Cold War: A World History.
We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar ODD ARNE WESTAD argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world.
This event is not ticketed.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
CLAIRE MESSUD in conversation with WBUR’s CHRISTOPHER LYDON
Harvard Book Store and WBUR welcome local bestselling novelist CLAIRE MESSUD—author of The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs—and Radio Open Source‘s CHRISTOPHER LYDON for a discussion of MESSUD’s latest novel, The Burning Girl, a coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, set in small-town Massachusetts.
This event is ticketed. You may purchase tickets here.
This event is co-sponsored by WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station.
NATHAN ENGLANDER shares his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed writer and translator NATHAN ENGLANDER—author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—for a discussion of his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth.
Dinner at the Center of the Earth is a political thriller that unfolds in the highly charged territory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pivots on the complex relationship between a secret prisoner and his guard.
This event is not ticketed.
Dinner at the Center of the Earth will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
