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Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store is an independently run bookstore serving the greater Cambridge area. The bookstore is located in Harvard Square and has been family-owned since 1932. We are known for our extraordinary selection of new, used and remaindered books and for a history of innovation. In 2009, we introduced same-day "green delivery" and a book-making robot capable of printing and binding any of millions of titles in minutes. Find out more about us at www.harvard.com.

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Jaron Lanier: You Are Not a Gadget

Wed, Jan 13, 2010

Computer scientist Jaron Lanier discusses his new book, *You Are Not a Gadget*. Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse. The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web's first designers made crucial choices (such as making one's presence anonymous) that have had enormous--and often unintended--consequences. What's more, these designs quickly became "locked in," a permanent part of the web's very structure. Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the "wisdom" of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

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Don Lattin: The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Thu, Jan 14, 2010

Journalist and religion writer Don Lattin gives an inside look into *The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America*. The Harvard Psychedelic Club is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in Cambridge in the winter of 1960-61, and how their experiences in a psychedelic drug research project transformed their lives and much of American culture in the 1960s and 1970s. They came together in a time of upheaval and experimentation, and they set the stage for the social, spiritual, sexual, and psychological revolution of the 1960s. Huston Smith would be the teacher, practicing every world religion and educating three generations of Americans to adopt a more tolerant, inclusive attitude toward other culture's religions. Richard Alpert would be the seeker, traveling to India, returning to America as "Ram Dass" and reborn as a spiritual leader with his "Be Here Now" mantra, inspiring a restless army of spiritual pilgrims. Andrew Weil would be the healer, becoming the undisputed leader of alternative medicine, devoting his life to the holistic reformation of the American health care system. And Timothy Leary would play the rebellious trickster, the premier proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, advising a generation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out."

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Charlotte Dennett: The People v. Bush

Wed, Jan 20, 2010

Journalist-turned-lawyer Charlotte Dennett discusses her new book, *The People v. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encountered Along the Way*. When Charlotte Dennett became outraged that Bush White House officials were acting above the law, she did something that surprised even herself. She ran for a state attorney general seat on a platform to prosecute George W. Bush for murder. She lost the race, but found a movement--one that continues its quest to hold leaders accountable to US law and preserve a Constitutional presidency.

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Joseph Stiglitz: America and the Sinking of the World Economy

Mon, Jan 25, 2010

Nobel Prize--winning economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about his new treatise, *Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy*, in conversation with writer and editor Cullen Murphy. Although the current financial crisis is global in reach, it has its roots in the mismanagement, on multiple levels, of the American economy. In *Freefall*, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government, addressing the inequalities of the global financial system, and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists.

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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Tue, Feb 2, 2010

Award-winning novelist and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein reads from her new novel *36 Arguments for the Existence of God*. After Cass Seltzer's book becomes a surprise best seller, he's dubbed "the atheist with a soul" and becomes a celebrity. He wins over the stunning Lucinda Mandelbaum, "the goddess of game theory," and loses himself in a spiritually expansive infatuation. A former girlfriend appears: an anthropologist who invites him to join in her quest for immortality through biochemistry. And he is haunted by reminders of the two people who ignited his passion to understand religion: his mentor and professor--a renowned literary scholar with a suspicious obsession with messianism--and an angelic 6-year-old mathematical genius who is heir to the leadership of a Hasidic sect. Each encounter reinforces Cass's theory that the religious impulse spills over into life at large.

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Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy

Tue, Mar 2, 2010

Journalist Paula Butturini talks about her new memoir *Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy*. Paula and John met in Italy, fell in love, and four years later, married in Rome. But less than a month after the wedding, tragedy struck. They had transferred from their Italian paradise to Warsaw and while reporting on an uprising in Romania, John was shot and nearly killed by sniper fire. Although he recovered from his physical wounds in less than a year, the process of healing had just begun. Unable to regain his equilibrium, he sank into a deep sadness that reverberated throughout their relationship. It was the abrupt end of what they'd known together, and the beginning of a new phase of life neither had planned for. All of a sudden, Paula was forced to reexamine her marriage, her husband, and herself. Paula began to reconsider all of her previous assumptions about healing. She discovered that sometimes patience can be a vice, anger a virtue. That sometimes it is vital to make demands of the sick, that they show signs of getting better. And she rediscovered the importance of the most fundamental of human rituals: the daily sharing of food around the family table.

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The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson

Tue, Mar 9, 2010

Novelist and Finalist for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award Jerome Charyn reads from his new novel, *The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson*. Emily Dickinson's older brother, Austin, spoke of her as his "wild sister." Jerome Charyn, author most recently of *Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution*, continues his exploration of American history through fiction in this new novel about Emily Dickinson, in her own voice, with all its characteristic modulations that he learned from her letters and poems. The poet dons a hundred veils, alternately playing wounded lover, penitent, and female devil. We meet the significant characters of her life, including her tempestuous sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert; her brooding father, Edward; and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who may have inspired some of her greatest letters and poems. Charyn has also invented characters, including an impoverished fellow student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, who will betray her; and a handyman named Tom, who will obsess Emily throughout her life.

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Al Gore: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis

Sat, Nov 7, 2009

Former US Vice President and climate change activist Al Gore discusses his new book *Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis*. In his follow-up to the best selling *An Inconvenient Truth*, the Nobel Peace Prize—winning former vice president outlines a comprehensive strategy for combating the impending global climate crisis, while at the same time addressing long-standing issues of global poverty and inequality.

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Robert Darnton: The Case for Books

Wed, Feb 3, 2010

Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, discusses the historical and cultural importance of the printed word. In *The Case for Books*, Robert Darnton, an intellectual pioneer in the field of the history of the book and director of Harvard University's Library, offers an in-depth examination of the book from its earliest beginnings to its shifting role today in popular culture, commerce, and the academy. As an author, editorial advisor, and publishing entrepreneur, Darnton is a unique authority on the life and role of the book in society. This book is a wise work of scholarship--one that requires readers to carefully consider how the digital revolution will broadly affect the marketplace of ideas. In *The Devil in the Holy Water*, Darnton offers a startling new perspective on the origins of the French Revolution and the development of a revolutionary political culture in the years after 1789. He opens with an account of the colony of French refugees in London who churned out slanderous attacks on public figures in Versailles and of the secret agents sent over from Paris to squelch them. The libelers were not above extorting money for pretending to destroy the print runs of books they had duped the government agents into believing existed; the agents were not above recognizing the lucrative nature of such activities--and changing sides.

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Shankar Vedantam: The Hidden Brain

Tue, Feb 9, 2010

Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam discusses his book *The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives*. The hidden brain is Vedantam’s shorthand for a host of brain functions, emotional responses, and cognitive processes that happen outside of our conscious awareness, but that have a decisive effect on how we behave. The hidden brain has its finger on the scale when we make all of our most complex and important decisions—it decides who we fall in love with, whether we should convict someone of murder, or which way to run when someone yells “fire!” Vedantam, longtime author of the Washington Post’s popular “Department of Human Behavior” column, takes us on a tour of this phenomenon and explores its consequences. Using original reporting that combines the latest scientific research with narratives that take readers from the American campaign trail to terrorist indoctrination camps, Vedantam illuminates the dark recesses of our minds while making an argument about how we can compensate for our blind spots—and what happens when we don't.

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