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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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Rachel Maddow - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Sun, Apr 1, 2012

Rachel Maddow discusses her book, *Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power*. *Drift* argues that the U.S. has drifted away from its original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow explores numerous changes that have taken place from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan. She discusses the rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight in wars, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she demonstrates just how much could be lost by allowing the priorities of national security to overpower political discourse.

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Hanne Blank - Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

Thu, Apr 5, 2012

"Author and historian Hanne Blank discusses her book *Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality*. Like the typewriter and the light bulb, Blank argues that the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly and permanently transformed Western culture. The idea of 'the heterosexual' was unprecedented. Men and women had been having sex, marrying, building families, and falling in love for millennia without having any special name for their emotions or acts. Yet, within half a century, 'heterosexual' had become a byword for 'normal,' enshrined in law, medicine, psychiatry, and the media as a new gold standard for human experience. In this chronicle, Blank digs deep into the past of sexual orientation, while simultaneously exploring its contemporary psyche. Illuminating the hidden patterns in centuries of events and trends, Blank shows how culture creates and manipulates the ways we think about and experience desire, love, and relationships between men and women."

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Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer

Fri, May 4, 2012

"Kenneth Mack discusses his book *Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer*. *Representing the Race* tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to sympathize with African Americans. This conundrum, as Kenneth Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today. Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was'as nearly as possible'one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to 'represent' a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?"

Civil Rights Movement Series

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Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness

Fri, May 4, 2012

"Loung Ung discusses her memoir, *Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness*. Concluding the trilogy that started with her bestselling memoir, *First They Killed My Father*, Loung Ung illuminates her struggle to reconcile with her past while moving forward toward happiness. When readers first met Ung in *First They Killed My Father*, she was a young, innocent child in Cambodia. But forced by the Khmer Rouge into the life of a child soldier, she soon found herself locked in a desperate struggle for survival in Cambodia's notorious killing fields. In , her life took a turn. As a refugee in Vermont, she grappled with post-traumatic stress, cultural assimilation roadblocks, and the abandonment of her sister in Cambodia. Now, *Lulu in the Sky* tells the next chapter in Ung's life, revealing her daily struggle to keep darkness and depression at bay while she attends college and falls in love with Mark Priemer, a Midwestern archetype of American optimism. *Lulu in the Sky* is the story of Ung's tentative steps into love, activism, and marriage'a journey that takes her to a Cambodian village to reconnect with her mother's spirit, to a vocation focused on healing the landscape of her birth, and to the patience and unconditional support of a very special man."

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Paul Krugman: End This Depression Now!

Mon, May 7, 2012

"Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize'winning economist and New York Times columnist discusses his latest book, *End This Depression Now!* The Great Recession is more than four years old'and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out, ""Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge'all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all'remain in a state of intense pain."" How bad have things gotten? How did the U.S. get stuck in what Krugman argues can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions, and declares that a strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the ""intellectual clarity and political will"" to end this depression now."

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Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis

Tue, May 8, 2012

As the reach of financial markets extends across the U.S. and the globe, interest rates, debt, and debt crises become the dominant forces driving the rise of economic inequality almost everywhere. The "super-bubble" that investor George Soros identified in rich countries for the two decades after 1980 became a super-crisis for the majority of the population, not just in the U.S. but the entire world. Economist James K. Galbraith discusses his book, *Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis*. In it he argues that finance is the driveshaft that links inequality to economic instability. The book challenges the viewpoint that technology is behind rising inequality. It also challenges those who have placed the blame narrowly on trade and outsourcing. *Inequality and Instability* presents evidence that the rise of inequality mirrors the stock market in the U.S. and the rise of finance and of free-market policies elsewhere.

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La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life

Mon, May 14, 2012

"Food writer and photographer Béatrice Peltre discuses her new cookbook, *La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life*. For Béatrice Peltre, author of the award-winning blog LaTartineGourmande.com, to cook is to delight in the best of what life has to offer ' the people and places she loves. With nearly 100 gluten-free recipes and anecdotes, *La Tartine Gourmande* takes the reader on a journey, not only through the meals of the day but around the world, as Peltre revisits her inspiration for each dish. Though her style is largely inspired by her native France, other influences include places as diverse as New England, Denmark, and New Zealand. Here she discusses the inspiration behind her book, her blog, her photography, her favorite cuisines and ingredients, and more."

Food and Wellness

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Theda Skocpol - Obama and America's Political Future

Tue, Sep 4, 2012

**Theda Skocpol**, Harvard Professor of Government and Sociology, discusses her book, "Obama and America's Political Future". Barack Obama's victory in 2008 opened the door to major reforms. But the president quickly faced skepticism from supporters and fierce opposition from Republicans. What happened to Obama's "new New Deal"? Why have his achievements enraged opponents more than they have satisfied supporters? How has the Tea Party's ascendance reshaped American politics? What are the possible consequences for both parties, and the U.S. public, after the 2012 election?

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Daniel Kantstroom - Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora

Fri, Sep 21, 2012

Daniel Kantstroom discusses his latest book, "Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora," presented by Harvard Book Store and Amnesty International. Since 1996, when new deportation laws went into effect, the U.S. has deported millions of noncitizens back to their countries of origin. While the rights of immigrants as well as the appropriate pathway to legal status are the subject of much debate, little attention had been paid to what happens to deportees once they leave. Kantstroom argues that the U.S. has fostered a new diaspora of deportees, many of whom are alone and isolated, with strong ties to their former communities in the U.S. Introduction by Joshua Rubenstein of Amnesty International.

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Ishmael Beah: Radiance of Tomorrow

Thu, Jan 9, 2014

"When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone's civil war and the fate of child soldiers that 'everyone in the world should read' (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called 'arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature,' has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone. At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they're beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town's water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they're forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike. With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times."

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