Harvard Book Store welcomes Sarah Longwell—CEO and Publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast—for a discussion of her new book, "How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time". She will be joined in conversation by William Kristol—editor-at-large of The Bulwark, where he’s lead author of the must-read daily newsletter, Morning Shots.

The playbook for consigning MAGA-style politics to the ash heap of history (where it belongs). Featuring a foreword by Jonathan V. Last.

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Sarah Longwell did what she's done nearly every week for the past eight years: She sat down with voters. She conducted hundreds of focus groups, listening to thousands of ordinary Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and the politically homeless—with the goal of understanding politics through the eyes of the people who will decide our country’s future.

American voters, and what they want for their country, are at the heart of How to Eat an Elephant. Longwell, the founder of The Bulwark and one of the sharpest political communicators of her generation, lays out the playbook for building a coalition big enough, bold enough, and tough enough to defeat authoritarian populism for good. Not with a single election. Not by doing another poll or debating the benefits of being more progressive or more moderate, but by building something new: A modern pro-democracy movement that can create its own communications infrastructure—just like the right has done for decades—achieve narrative dominance, elevate more compelling leaders, and talk to voters like adults.

Drawing on her own unlikely political journey from a lesbian Republican operative to the vanguard of the anti-MAGA movement, Longwell delivers a book that is equal parts war manual and pep talk—with her personal and professional story woven throughout. With her trademark bluntness and humor, she explains exactly how we got here and, more importantly, what we must build next—all while directly quoting the most important but overlooked people in the country: the voters themselves.

She answers the question: How do you eat an elephant? One voter at a time.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Virginia Eubanks—investigative journalist, author of Automating Inequality, and an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York—for a discussion of her new memoir, "A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival."

A spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman's efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us.

One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten just steps from their house. In the weeks, then months and years that followed, they faced a cascade of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources to figure out how to heal: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she took a series of classes: kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass, bushwhacking, first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons from these experiences, her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a moving, hopeful, darkly funny story of two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Dr. David N. Hackney—Professor of Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve University and Division Chief of Maternal Fetal Medicine, as well as District Legislative Chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—for a discussion of his new book, "Impossible Choices: A Physician's Guidance on High-Risk Pregnancy in a World Without Roe". He will be joined in conversation by Dr. Chloe Zera—Chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School.

How the overturning of Roe has imperiled high-risk pregnancies—and how to ensure safe patient healthcare in the future.

From a leading doctor on the front lines after the Dobbs decision.

Doctors and patients confronting high-risk pregnancies have always faced profound and life-altering decisions. But after the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe, many of these decisions seem impossible. As a firsthand witness to this convulsion, David Hackney, a leading physician in maternal fetal medicine, offers knowledgeable, thoughtful guidance to patients and practitioners contending with high-risk pregnancies in our new reality.

"Impossible Choices" focuses on the practical implications of high-risk complications for people who are pregnant or considering pregnancy—including conditions such as pre-eclampsia, premature membrane rupture, or birth defects—especially in states now under abortion bans. And because maternal fetal medicine overlaps with other medical fields as pregnant patients struggle with, for instance, kidney disease, lupus, diabetes, and cancer, the book also addresses a wide array of medical questions and complications.

How do we make decisions when thrown into extreme and uncertain circumstances? The author answers this question and more by painting a nuanced and clear-eyed picture of obstetrics after Dobbs, illustrating his reflections with stories from his own practice, as well as those of his wife, in pediatric oncology. Without being partisan or polemical, the book offers the informed compassion and way forward that this fraught moment in maternal medicine calls for.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Dave Zirin, author of eleven books on the politics of sport and sports editor at The Nation Magazine, for a discussion of his new book, "The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn." He will be joined in conversation by Howard Bryant, author of eleven books and winner of a 2025 Sports Emmy for Outstanding Documentary Series as an executive producer for Netflix's The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox.

"The People's Historian" is a biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America.

From The Nation magazine columnist and New York Timesbestselling author Dave Zirin, "The People's Historian" is a deeply researched biography of Howard Zinn, the beloved author of the classic national bestseller with more than four million copies sold, A People's History of the United States.

"The People’s Historian" shows Zinn’s presence on the great canvases of the 20th century: from the Depression to World War II to the Civil Rights Movement to the war in Vietnam all the way until his death in 2010. With intimately researched stories from Zinn’s life and career, such as the way Atlanta's small Spelman College, where Zinn taught as a young professor, helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, Zinn's work traveling to Hanoi to engineer the release of POWs, and his continuing influence in the emerging Democratic Socialist movement, "The People’s Historian" explores Zinn’s past while also demonstrating how his 75 years of political engagement with the social struggles of his time informs our perilous present.

With input from family and access to Zinn's personal papers, "The People's Historian" paints a picture of the man behind A People's History, examining his work and legacy in the broader context of the United States.

In this talk, Seth Rockman, the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History at Brown University and author of "Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery" tells the biggest stories of early American history through the most mundane artifacts: shoes manufactured in Massachusetts for the use of enslaved people in Mississippi, for example, or woolen dresses stitched in Rhode Island for enslaved women in South Carolina to wear.


In following these goods from the communities in which they were made to the communities in which they were used, Rockman rethinks the geography of slavery and freedom in the decades between American independence and the Civil War. He poses questions that continue to preoccupy us in the age of the iPhone and fair-trade coffee: what are the moral, ecological, and political relationships linking consumers and producers across long distances? What does it mean to be “complicit"?

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen comes a story about DNA and our passion for biological truths. In the novel More Than Enough, a woman confronts the surprising results of an ancestry test, a challenge conversationalist Bill Griffeth knows first-hand. 

In this conversation, pairing fiction and fact, we go deep into a novel that should be read by anyone using DNA testing in pursuit of their family’s history. When high school English teacher Polly Goodman is given an ancestry test kit as a joke, she tests without thinking too much about it. When Polly learns the results match her with a stranger, she is certain there’s been a mistake. Yet she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers.

With her trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, author Anna Quindlen explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us. This is an illuminating conversation with author and TV anchor Bill Griffeth, whose own DNA journey mirrors Polly’s. During an extended audience Q+A session, Ms. Quindlen and Mr. Griffeth are joined by science journalist Libby Copeland, who shares insights on this growing area of exploration: the latest statistics, trends, and findings on DNA testing which are greatly impacting individuals and families.

The award-winning author Claire Messud joins Mark Haddon for a discussion of Leaving Home and memoir writing.

Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. Mark Haddon, author of the celebrated book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has once again portrayed what it is like to be different and see the world differently—this time, in a work of nonfiction, a full color memoir. Honest and scalpel sharp, his book is about family and much more, including heart surgery, papier mâché, mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s also about the power of art, in all its varied forms, and coming to terms with the mess of human life. Richly illustrated with images from the author’s childhood, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home. Don’t miss hearing from this best-loved British author and his conversation with the award-winning author Claire Messud about this very personal, family-oriented form of writing, documentation, and sharing.

"Land" is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.

When’s the last time you checked your paystub?


Most Americans don’t anymore. It can be hard to find them on HR websites. But Americans really should be checking their paystubs. Each of those deductions is a monument to fierce battles over what life should be like, on and off the job. They are also a reminder, every few weeks, that so much of what it has meant to be a citizen has been tied to the work that Americans have done.



Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, speaks at the Charles River Museum on the history behind the deductions on our paystubs and their connections to American democracy and capitalism.

Old North Church welcomed public historian Tad Stoermer to mark the release of his new book, "A Resistance History of the United States."