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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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Alex Ross: Listen to This

Wed, Nov 10, 2010

*New Yorker* music critic Alex Ross discusses his second book, *Listen to This*. *Listen to This*, which takes its title from a 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at* The New Yorker*. These pieces are dedicated to classical and popular artists alike. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross retells hundreds of years of music history--from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin--through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Bjork and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition.

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Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage

Tue, Nov 16, 2010

Biographer Hazel Rowley delves into the lives of one of American history's most fascinating couples, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In *Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage*, Hazel Rowley describes the remarkable courage and lack of convention--private and public--that kept FDR and Eleanor together. She reveals a partnership that was both supportive and daring. Franklin, especially, knew what he owed to Eleanor, who was not so much behind the scenes as heavily engaged in them. Their relationship was the product of FDR and Eleanor's conscious efforts--a partnership that they created according to their own ambitions and needs. Set against the great upheavals of the Depression and World War II, Rowley paints a portrait of a tender lifelong companionship, born of mutual admiration and compassion. Most of all, she depicts an extraordinary evolution--from conventional Victorian marriage to the bold and radical partnership that has made Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt go down in history as one of the most inspiring and fascinating couples of all time.

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Harold McGee: Keys to Good Cooking

Mon, Dec 6, 2010

Harold McGee, food scientist and "Curious Cook" at _The New York Times_ talks about how to cook well, even when the recipe you're following isn't perfect. McGee is joined in conversation by Rialto's award-winning chef/owner Jody Adams. *Keys to Good Cooking* directly addresses the cook at work in the kitchen and in need of quick and reliable guidance. Cookbooks past and present frequently contradict one another about the best ways to prepare foods, and many contain erroneous information and advice. *Keys to Good Cooking* distills the modern scientific understanding of cooking and translates it into immediately useful information. Looking at ingredients from the mundane to the exotic, McGee takes you from market to table, teaching, for example, how to spot the most delectable asparagus (choose thick spears); how to best prepare the vegetable (peel, dont snap, the fibrous ends; broiling is one effective cooking method for asparagus and other flat-lying vegetables); and how to present it (coat with butter or oil after cooking to avoid a wrinkled surface). This book will be a requisite countertop resource for all home chefs, as McGee's insights on kitchen safety in particular--reboil refrigerated meat or fish stocks every few days; (they're so perishable that they can spoil even in the refrigerator); don't put ice cubes or frozen gel packs on a burn; (extreme cold can cause additional skin damage)--will save even the most knowledgeable home chefs from culinary disaster. A companion volume to recipe books, a touchstone that helps cooks spot flawed recipes and make the best of them, *Keys to Good Cooking* will be of use to cooks of all kinds: to beginners who want to learn the basics, to weekend cooks who want a quick refresher in the basics, and to accomplished cooks who want to rethink a dish from the bottom up.

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The America′s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook

Tue, Dec 7, 2010

Chris Kimball and the cast of America's Test Kitchen discuss healthy and delicious ways to feed your family, and their new book, *The Americas Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook*. *The Healthy Family Cookbook* is an all-purpose cookbook that delivers more than 800 foolproof recipes for healthier everyday cooking--including breakfast dishes, kid-friendly favorites, meat and pasta entres, vegetarian dishes, healthy makeovers of family classics, desserts, and more. Each recipe also includes calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, protein, fiber, and sodium counts. *The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook* takes a good, hard look at eating healthfully--incorporating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains into recipes on a daily basis, and reducing calories from fat whenever possible while still maximizing taste. But unlike other "healthy recipe" cookbooks that simply substitute brown rice for white, or fat-free mayonnaise for regular, every one of our recipes have been specifically developed for the ingredients used, to maximize both taste and health.

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Barbara Almond: The Hidden Side of Motherhood

Mon, Jan 10, 2011

Barbara Almond, Stanford professor and psychoanalyst, discusses the darker side of childbearing and her new book, *The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood*. Whether it is uncertainty over having a child, fears of pregnancy and childbirth, or negative thoughts about one's own children, mixed feelings about motherhood are not just hard to discuss, they are a powerful social taboo. In her new book, Barbara Almond draws on her extensive clinical experience to bring this highly troubling issue to light. In a portrait of the hidden side of contemporary motherhood, she finds that ambivalence of varying degrees is a ubiquitous phenomenon, yet one that too often causes anxiety, guilt, and depression. Weaving together case histories with examples from literature and popular culture, Almond uncovers the roots of ambivalence, tells how it manifests in lives of women and their children, and describes a spectrum of maternal behavior--from normal feelings to highly disturbed mothering characterized by blame, misuse, abuse, even child murder.

Mental Health Month

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Mira Bartok: The Memory Palace

Tue, Jan 18, 2011

Mira Bartok, children's book writer and essayist, reads from her memoir *The Memory Palace*, her first book for adults. "People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you've been through," Mira Bartok is told at her mother's memorial service. It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira, her sister, and their mentally ill mother. Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen, beautiful piano protege Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room. She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well, but as her mental state deteriorated, Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped, murdered, or raped. When the girls left for college, the harassment escalated--Norma called them obsessively, appeared at their apartments or jobs, threatened to kill herself if they did not return home. After a traumatic encounter, Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe. But while Mira pursued her career as an artist--exploring the ancient romance of Florence, the eerie mysticism of northern Norway, and the raw desert of Israel--the haunting memories of her mother were never far away. Then one day, Mira's life changed forever after a debilitating car accident. As she struggled to recover from a traumatic brain injury, she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her life--she had to relearn how to paint, read, and interact with the outside world. In her search for a way back to her lost self, Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying. Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland, where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible. At the hospital, Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years. Filled with family photos, childhood toys, and ephemera from Norma's life, the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever.

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Seth Mnookin: The Panic Virus and Childhood Vaccines

Mon, Jan 24, 2011

Journalist **Seth Mnookin** discusses the controversy around childhood vaccines and his book *The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear*. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a shocking allegation: the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine might cause autism. The media seized hold of the story and, in the process, helped to launch one of the most devastating health scares ever. In the years to come Wakefield would be revealed as a profiteer in league with class-action lawyers, and he would eventually lose his medical license. Meanwhile one study after another failed to find any link between childhood vaccines and autism. Yet the myth that vaccines somehow cause developmental disorders lives on. Despite the lack of corroborating evidence, it has been popularized by media personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jenny McCarthy and legitimized by journalists who claim that they are just being fair to "both sides" of an issue about which there is little debate. Meanwhile millions of dollars have been diverted from potential breakthroughs in autism research, families have spent their savings on ineffective "miracle cures," and declining vaccination rates have led to outbreaks of deadly illnesses like Hib, measles, and whooping cough. Most tragic of all is the increasing number of children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases. In *The Panic Virus*, Seth Mnookin draws on interviews with parents, public-health advocates, scientists, and anti-vaccine activists to tackle a fundamental question: How do we decide what the truth is? The answer helps explain everything from the persistence of conspiracy theories about 9/11 to the appeal of talk-show hosts who demand that President Obama "prove" he was born in America.

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Christian Lander: Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast

Sat, Jan 22, 2011

Blogger Christian Lander, founder of the website *Stuff White People Like* discusses his new book, *Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattles Sweaters to Maines Microbrews*. If you thought you had white people pegged as Oscar-party-throwing, Prius-driving, Sunday *New York Times*--reading, self-satisfied latte lovers--you were right. But if you thought diversity was just for other races, then hang on to your eco-friendly tote bags. Veteran white person Christian Lander is back with new information and advice on dealing with the Caucasian population. Sure, their indie-band T-shirts, trendy politics, vegan diets, and pop-culture references make them all seem the same. But a closer look reveals that from Austin to Australia, from L.A. to the U.K., indigenous white people are as different from one another as 1 percent rBGH-free milk is different from 2 percent. Where do skinny jeans and bulky sweaters rule? Where is down-market beer the nectar of the hip?

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Susan Cheever on Louisa May Alcott

Thu, Nov 18, 2010

Susan Cheever, novelist, memoirist, literary historian, and daughter of John Cheever, discusses her newest exploration of America's literary past, *Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography*. Louisa May Alcott never intended to write *Little Women*. She had dismissed her publishers pleas for such a novel. Written out of necessity to support her family, the book had an astounding success that changed her life, a life which turned out very differently from that of her beloved heroine Jo March. In *Louisa May Alcott*, Susan Cheever returns to Concord, Massachusetts, to explore the life of one of its most iconic residents. Based on extensive research, journals, and correspondence, Cheevers biography chronicles all aspects of Alcott's life, from the fateful meeting of her parents to her death, just two days after that of her father. She details Bronson Alcott's stalwart educational vision, which led the Alcotts to relocate each time his progressive teaching went sour; her unsuccessful early attempts at serious literature; her time as a Civil War nurse, when she contracted pneumonia and was treated with mercury-laden calomel, which would affect her health for the rest of her life; and her vibrant intellectual circle of writers and reformers, idealists who led the charge in support of antislavery, temperance, and women's rights.

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Salman Rushdie on Luka and the Fire of Life

Mon, Nov 29, 2010

Salman Rushdie reads from his newest novel, *Luka and the Fire of Life*, a follow-up to the much beloved *Haroun and the Sea of Stories*. This new novel centers on Luka, Haroun's younger brother, who must save his father from certain doom. For Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, has fallen into deep sleep from which no one can wake him. To keep his father from slipping away entirely, Luka must travel to the Magic World and steal the ever-burning Fire of Life. Thus begins a quest replete with unlikely creatures, strange alliances, and seemingly insurmountable challenges as Luka and an assortment of enchanted companions race through peril after peril, pass through the land of the Badly Behaved Gods, and reach the Fire itself, where Luka's fate, and that of his father, will be decided.

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