Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

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.

http://www.harvard.com

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.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Raj Patel: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

Mon, Jan 11, 2010

Activist Raj Patel discusses his new book, *The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy*, with radio's *On Point* producer, John Wihbey. In *The Value of Nothing*, Raj Patel, a long-time visionary in issues of global development, points to the inadequecy of price as a measure of value, and urges us to look at the larger environmental, political, and social cost of the goods we consume. The book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics. While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate, and economic crises is a political one. If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn't often said who gets to make them. *The Value of Nothing* offers an accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
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."

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Jill McCorkle: Going Away Shoes

Tue, Oct 6, 2009

Jill McCorkle reads from her new collection of short stories, *Going Away Shoes*. With her trademark wit and intelligence, McCorkle's new collection provides variations on the theme of women confronting the dark and difficult sides of love. From a woman about to embark on her first adulterous affair to the siblings who struggle with their widowed father's new love interest, the lives these stories follow can be full of heartbreak, but McCorkle's tenderness and humor make them feel lived in and purely believable.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President

Thu, Oct 8, 2009

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch takes us inside the Clinton White House with a discussion of *The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President*. During President Clinton's two terms in the White House, Taylor Branch spent many hours interviewing him about recent events, his private torments, life in the White House, and his political challenges. *The Clinton Tapes* depicts the unique content of those interviews, interspersed with some of Branch's own experience in collecting an oral history that amounts to Clinton's secret diary of his presidential years. The Bill Clinton diaries are a unique historical treasure, holding stories of revelation and impact. There has never been a book quite like this--as a president, in office, tries to remember, explain, contemplate, and manage his actions and their legacy.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Barbara Ehrenreich: How Positive Thinking Undermines America

Thu, Oct 15, 2009

Journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich discusses her book, *Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America*. She shares how her own experience dealing with breast cancer showed her that the dogma of the positive thinking movement can lead to individual self-blame, and how institutional disregard for possible negative outcomes led to the national housing crisis. Americans have a singular capacity for glossing over hardships with exhortations to "look on the bright side." The oft-prescribed power of positive thinking is certainly capable of altering our outlooks, but as Ehrenreich argues in her new book, this is not entirely for the better. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best--poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and calling for existential clarity and courage.

Pop Culture

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
How Our Social Networks Shape Our Lives

Mon, Oct 12, 2009

Harvard professor of sociology and health care policy Nicholas Christakis discusses *Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives*. Nicholas Christakis and fellow scientist James Fowler finally met, after having worked in adjoining buildings on the same university campus for several years, when introduced by a mutual friend. Their common intellectual interests in the power of this very phenomenon, social networks, eventually led them to write *Connected*, an exploration of the role that social networks play in our lives, how they are formed, how they are maintained, and how far-reaching their effects can be. *Connected* shows that our world is governed by the Three Degrees Rule -- we influence and are influenced by people up to three degrees removed from us, most of whom we do not even know. For example, your friend's friend's friend has more impact on your happiness than $5,000 in your pocket. Our social networks underlie financial scams, eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicide clusters, but also voter turnout, innovation, altruism, and "random" acts of kindness.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
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.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
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.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

Fri, Apr 16, 2010

Steve Almond, *New York Times* best-selling author presents *Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life*, a musical extravaganza in celebration of his new book about obsessive fandom. The evening will include literary explorations of classic hits by Styx, Toto, and other bands you are now ashamed to admit you once loved, along with other selections from the book, which *Publishers Weekly* calls "a hilarious riff on the power of music." The show closes with a live set by the utterly rocking Boris McCutcheon & The Salt Licks. With a life that’s spanned the phonographic era and the digital age, Steve Almond lives to Rawk. Like you, he’s secretly longed to live the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel rooms to be trashed. Also like you, he’s had to settle for the life of a rabid fan, one who has converted his unrequited desires into a (sort of) noble obsession.

Pop Culture

Partner:

Harvard Book Store