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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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Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom

Mon, Nov 15, 2010

Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt discusses his book, *Shakespeare's Freedom*. Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes--of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. Stephen Greenblatt, author of the best-selling *Will in the World*, shows that Shakespeare was strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and churchmen. His aversion to absolutes even leads him to probe the exalted and seemingly limitless passions of his lovers. Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of Shakespeare's preoccupations across all the genres in which he worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare's works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns to Shakespeare's interest in murderous hatred, most famously embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in Measure for Measure. Next Greenblatt considers the idea of Shakespearean authority--that is, Shakespeare's deep sense of the ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately, Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are singularly unconstrained.

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Brainstorm: Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences

Fri, Nov 19, 2010

Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, an expert in the biological components of sex, gender, and sexuality discusses her book, *Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Sciences of Sex Differences*. Female and male brains are different, thanks to hormones coursing through the brain before birth. That's taught as fact in psychology textbooks, academic journals, and bestselling books. And these hardwired differences explain everything from sexual orientation to gender identity, to why there aren't more women physicists or more stay-at-home dads. In this new book, Jordan-Young takes on the evidence that sex differences are hardwired into the brain. Analyzing virtually all published research that supports the claims of "human brain organization theory," Jordan-Young reveals how often these studies fail the standards of science. Even if careful researchers point out the limits of their own studies, other researchers and journalists can easily ignore them because brain organization theory just sounds so right. But if a series of methodological weaknesses, questionable assumptions, inconsistent definitions, and enormous gaps between ambiguous findings and grand conclusions have accumulated through the years, then science isn't scientific at all.

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David Edwards on The Lab: Creativity and Culture

Wed, Dec 1, 2010

David Edwards, Harvard engineering professor, looks at the future of scientific research and his new book, *The Lab: Creativity and Culture*. Six months before opening Le Laboratoire in Paris, David Edwards visited Hans Ulrich Obrist, who had co-curated the famous exhibition "Laboratorium" that explored connections between art and science. "Famous, yes," said Hans, "which I find ironic since almost nobody saw it. You have to be careful getting too near contemporary science." But this was precisely where David Edwards chose to be. His new book, *The Lab*, promotes surprising innovations in culture, industry and society by exploring new ideas in the arts and design at the frontiers of science. Edwards argues for a new kind of educational art lab based on a contemporary science lab model--the "artscience lab." With examples ranging from breathable chocolate to contemporary art installations that explore the neuroscience of fear, he demonstrates how students learn by translating ideas alongside experienced creators and exhibiting risky experimental processes in gallery settings. Idea translation, making the conception real, is in turn facilitated by a network of complementary labs whose missions range from education to industrial and humanitarian development. A manifesto of a new innovation model driven by the arts, this is the first detailed description of an emerging cultural phenomenon in the United States and Europe where artists and scientists collaborate to produce intriguing cultural content and surprising innovations.

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Carlos Eire: Learning to Die in Miami

Wed, Dec 8, 2010

Carlos Eire, writer and professor, talks about his new book, *Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy*. In his 2003 memoir *Waiting for Snow in Havana*, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother leave Havana on an airplane--along with thousands of other children--to begin their new life in Miami in 1962. It would be years before he would see his mother again. He would never again see his beloved father. *Learning to Die in Miami* opens as the plane lands and Carlos faces, with trepidation and excitement, his new life. He quickly realizes that in order for his new American self to emerge, his Cuban self must "die." And so, with great enterprise and purpose, he begins his journey. We follow Carlos as he adjusts to life in his new home. Faced with learning English, attending American schools, and an uncertain future, young Carlos confronts the age-old immigrants plight: being surrounded by American bounty, but not able to partake right away. The abundance America has to offer excites him and, regardless of how grim his living situation becomes, he eagerly forges ahead with his own personal assimilation program, shedding the vestiges of his old life almost immediately, even changing his name to Charles. Cuba becomes a remote and vague idea in the back of his mind, something he used to know well, but now it "had ceased to be part of the world."

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Richard Wolffe: Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House

Fri, Jan 14, 2011

(Jan. 2011) **Richard Wolffe**, VP and Executive Editor of MSNBC, drew on his unrivaled access to the West Wing to write the political biography *Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House,* a natural sequel to his earlier campaign biography. Starting at the first anniversary of the inauguration, Wolffe paints a portrait of a White House at work under exceptional strain across a sweeping set of challenges: from health care reform to a struggling economy, from two wars to terrorism. *Revival* is a road map to understanding the dynamics, characters, and disputes that shape the Obama White House. It reveals for the first time the fault lines at the heart of the West Wing between two groups competing for control of the president's agenda. On one side are the Revivalists, who want to return to the high-minded spirit of the presidential campaign. On the other side are the Survivalists, who believe that government demands a low-minded set of compromises and combat. At the center of this story is a man who remains opaque to supporters, staff, and critics alike. What motivates him to risk his presidency on health care? What frustrations does he feel at this incredible time of testing?

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Allen Shawn: Twin

Thu, Jan 20, 2011

Allen Shawn, pianist and composer, discusses his memoir, *Twin*, about growing up as the twin brother of a sister with autism. When Allen Shawn and his sister, Mary, were two, Mary began exhibiting signs of what would be diagnosed many years later as autism. Understanding Mary and making her life a happy one appeared to be impossible for the Shawns. At the age of eight, with almost no warning, her parents sent Mary to a residential treatment center. She never lived at home again. Fifty years later, as he probed the sources of his anxieties in his previous memoir, *Wish I Could Be There*, Shawn realized that his fate was inextricably linked to his sister's, and that their natures were far from being different. *Twin* highlights the difficulties American families coping with autism faced in the 1950s. Shawn also examines the secrets and family dramas as his father, William, became editor of *The New Yorker*. *Twin* reconstructs a parallel narrative for the two siblings, who experienced such divergent fates yet shared talents and proclivities.

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Amy Bloom: Where the God of Love Hangs Out

Tue, Jan 25, 2011

Amy Bloom, award-winning novelist and short story writer, reads from her collection of linked stories, *Where the God of Love Hangs Out*. A young woman is haunted by her roommate's murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places; two middle-aged, married friends find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all for their love but never underestimating the cost. *Where the God of Love Hangs Out* takes us to the margins and the centers of people's emotional lives, exploring the changes that come with love and loss.

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Robert and Ellen Kaplan: Hidden Harmonies of the Pythagorean Theorem

Thu, Jan 27, 2011

Husband-and-wife mathematics education team Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan reveal the wonder of one of geometrys simplest equations and discuss their new book, *Hidden Harmonies: The Lives and Times of the Pythagorean Theorem*. a2 + b2 = c2. It sounds simple, doesnt it? Yet this familiar equation is a gateway into the riotous garden of mathematics, and sends us on a journey of exploration in the company of two inspired guides, authors and teachers Robert and Ellen Kaplan. They trace the life of the Pythagorean Theorem, from ancient Babylon to the present, visiting along the way Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, President James Garfield, and the Freemasons--not to mention the elusive Pythagoras himself, who almost certainly did not make the statement that bears his name. How can a theorem have more than one proof? Why does this one have more than two hundred--or is it four thousand? The Pythagorean Theorem has even more applications than proofs: Ancient Egyptians used it for surveying property lines, and today astronomers call on it to measure the distance between stars. Its generalizations are stunning--the theorem works even with shapes on the sides that arent squares, and not just in two dimensions, but any number you like. And perhaps its most intriguing feature of all, this tidy equation opened the door to the world of irrational numbers, an untidy discovery that deeply troubled Pythagoras' disciples.

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Siddhartha Mukherjee: A Biography of Cancer

Thu, Dec 2, 2010

Siddhartha Mukherjee, cancer physician and researcher, discusses his first book, *The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.* The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer." From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjees own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive--and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

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Paul Auster: Sunset Park

Tue, Nov 9, 2010

Writer Paul Auster reads from his newest book, *Sunset Park*, which follows the hopes and fears of a cast of unforgettable characters brought together by the mysterious Miles Heller during the dark months of the 2008 economic collapse: An enigmatic young man employed as a trash-out worker in southern Florida obsessively photographing thousands of abandoned objects left behind by the evicted families; a group of young people squatting in an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; The Hospital for Broken Things, which specializes in repairing the artifacts of a vanished world; William Wyler′s 1946 classic *The Best Years of Our Lives*; a celebrated actress preparing to return to Broadway; an independent publisher desperately trying to save his business and his marriage; these are just some of the elements Auster weaves together in this novel about contemporary America and its ghosts.

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