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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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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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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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Chuck Palahniuk: Tell All

Wed, May 5, 2010

Chuck Palahniuk acclaimed novelist discusses of his newest book, *Tell All*, a novel inspired by the life of Lillian Hellman. *Tell-All* is a Sunset Boulevard–-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond. Our Thelma Ritter–ish narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton—veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart (and boudoir). Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans—and for posterity.

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Amy McCoy: Poor Girl Gourmet

Mon, Jul 19, 2010

Learn a lesson in eating well, but frugally, from blogger and now cookbook writer Amy McCoy. When the economic recession cut into Amy McCoy's food budget, she was determined to continue eating well even though she was on a budget. As a result she started the blog *Poor Girl Gourmet* as a way to document and share her experiences. In her new cookbook, also called *Poor Girl Gourmet*, McCoy breaks down the costs for each dish while also offering money-saving strategies, including tips for growing and preserving your own food, as well as ideas for quick and delicious family meals. Each recipe serves at least four people, so it's perfect for families on a budget--because eating well while saving money is something that appeals to all of us. McCoy, knowing that a gourmet meal is enhanced by the proper wine, also reviews more than 25 affordable wine varietals and blends, with pairing suggestions for many of the dishes. And there is a chapter of splurges ($15 to $30 per entre for a family of four) for when you're feeling fancy.

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William Powers: Hamlet's Blackberry

Thu, Jul 22, 2010

Media and technology writer William Powers discusses his new book, *Hamlet′s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age*. At a time when we′re all trying to make sense of our relentlessly connected lives, this book presents a bold new approach to the digital age. Part intellectual journey, part memoir, *Hamlet′s BlackBerry* sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose an enormous burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave. *Hamlet′s BlackBerry* argues that we need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. To find it, Powers reaches into the past, uncovering a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years. New technologies have always brought the mix of excitement and stress that we feel today. Drawing on some of history′s most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, he shows that digital connectedness serves us best when it′s balanced by its opposite, *disconnectedness*.

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Gail Caldwell: Let’s Take the Long Way Home

Thu, Aug 12, 2010

Memoirist and former Boston Globe book critic Gail Caldwell reads from her new memoir, *Let′s Take the Long Way Home*, about her dear friend and colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Knapp.

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Excerpt of Nell Irvin Painter: The History of White People

Mon, Mar 29, 2010

Nell Irvin Painter, an American historian discusses her newest work, *The History of White People*. * In The History of White People*, Nell Irvin Painter tells perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history. Beginning at the roots of Western civilization, she traces the invention of the idea of a white race--often for economic, scientific, and political ends. She shows how the origins of American identity in the 18th century were intrinsically tied to the elevation of white skin into the embodiment of beauty, power, and intelligence; how the great American intellectuals--including Ralph Waldo Emerson--insisted that only Anglo Saxons were truly American; and how the definitions of who is "white" and who is "American" have evolved over time. *The History of White People closes* a gap in a literature that has long focused on the nonwhite, and it forcefully reminds us that the concept of "race" is a human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed according to a long and rich history.

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Carl Hiaasen: Star Island

Mon, Aug 2, 2010

Journalist and best-selling author Carl Hiaasen reads from and explores his thriller, *Star Island*. Having worked as a reporter, investigative journalist, and columnist for newspapers in Florida (he still writes a column for The Miami Herald), Carl Hiaasen′s fiction has always combined the page-turning atmosphere of the thriller genre with hard-hitting commentaries on modern life. Meet twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye (née Cheryl Bunterman), a pop star since she was fourteen, as she is about to attempt a comeback from her latest drug-and-alcohol disaster. Now meet Cherry again: in the person of her “undercover stunt double,” Ann DeLusia. Ann portrays Cherry whenever the singer is too “indisposed” to go out in public. And it is Ann-mistaken-for-Cherry who is kidnapped from a South Beach hotel by obsessed paparazzo Bang Abbott. Now the challenge for Cherry’s handlers (über–stage mother; horndog record producer; nipped, tucked, and Botoxed twin publicists; weed whacker–wielding bodyguard) is to rescue Ann while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry’s public—and from Cherry herself. The situation is more complicated than they know. Ann has had a bewitching encounter with Skink—the unhinged former governor of Florida living wild in a mangrove swamp—and now he’s heading for Miami to find her.

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Maile Meloy: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

Mon, Jun 28, 2010

Short story writer and novelist Maile Meloy reads and discusses her newly in paperback collection of stories, *Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It*. This collection is about the battlefields--and fields of victory--that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly--and reluctantly--in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire.

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Arianna Huffington: Third World America

Mon, Sep 13, 2010

Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, discusses the future of American prosperity and her new book, *Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream*. Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first century jobs; our infrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, our transportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economic system has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a small financial elite using the power of the checkbook to control both parties. And America’s middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation—that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did.

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