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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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Daniel J. Carlat: The Trouble with Psychiatry

Wed, Jun 2, 2010

Noted psychiatrist and mental health journalist Daniel J. Carlat holds a discussion about the current state of the field of psychiatry and his new book, *Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis*. In *Unhinged*, Daniel Carlat exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession, revealing the ways it has abandoned its essential purpose: to understand the mind, so that psychiatrists can heal mental illness and not just treat symptoms. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies.

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Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans

Fri, Jun 11, 2010

Award-winning writer and teacher Philip Gambone holds a discussion of his new book, *Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans*, a snapshot of the variety of gay lives and culture in America today. For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives. In addition to interviews with David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin, *Travels in a Gay Nation* brings us lesser-known voices--a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and "drag king," a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers. In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual. For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life's work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant. But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone's subjects have managed--despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference--to construct passionate, inspiring lives.

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Stephen Kinzer: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future

Tue, Jun 8, 2010

Foreign correspondent and Boston University professor Stephen Kinzer discusses his book *Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future*, which examines the complex state of Middle East politics. What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? In *Reset*, Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran. Besides proposing this new "power triangle," Kinzer also recommends that the United States reshape relations with its two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. In *Reset*, Kinzer introduces us to larger-than-life figures, like a Nebraska schoolteacher who became a martyr to democracy in Iran, a Turkish radical who transformed his country and Islam forever, and a colorful parade of princes, politicians, women of the world, spies, oppressors, liberators, and dreamers.

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Kathryn Schulz on Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Fri, Jun 18, 2010

Journalist and "wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz holds a conversation about mistakes (and admitting them), and her new book, *Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error*. To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at imagining that our beliefs could be mistaken, and why do we react to our errors with surprise, denial, defensiveness, and shame? In *Being Wrong*, Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes relationships--whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations. Along the way, she takes us on a tour of human fallibility, from wrongful convictions to no-fault divorce; medical mistakes to misadventures at sea; failed prophecies to false memories; "I told you so!" to "Mistakes were made." In the end, *Being Wrong* is not just an account of human error but a tribute to human creativity--the way we generate and revise our beliefs about ourselves and the world. At a moment when economic, political, and religious dogmatism increasingly divide us, Schulz explores the seduction of certainty and the crises occasioned by error.

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Robert B. Reich: The Next Economy and America’s Future

Fri, Sep 24, 2010

Public policy expert and former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich takes us into the aftermath of the economic crisis with his book *Aftershock: The Next Economy and America′s Future*. When the nation’s economy foundered in 2008, blame was directed almost universally at Wall Street. But Robert B. Reich suggests a different reason for the meltdown, and for a perilous road ahead. He argues that the real problem is structural: it lies in the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top, and in a middle class that has had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. Persuasively and straightforwardly, Reich reveals how precarious our situation still is. The last time in American history when wealth was so highly concentrated at the top—indeed, when the top 1 percent of the population was paid 23 percent of the nation’s income—was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. Such a disparity leads to ever greater booms followed by ever deeper busts. Reich’s account of where we are headed over the next decades reveals the essential truth about our economy that is driving our politics and shaping our future. With keen insight, he shows us how the middle class lacks enough purchasing power to buy what the economy can produce and has adopted coping mechanisms that have a negative impact on their quality of life; how the rich use their increasing wealth to speculate; and how an angrier politics emerges as more Americans conclude that the game is rigged for the benefit of a few. Unless this trend is reversed, the Great Recession will only be repeated.

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James Howard Kunstler: The Witch of Hebron

Tue, Sep 28, 2010

James Howard Kunstler reads from his novel, *The Witch of Hebron*, a sequel to 2008's *World Made by Hand*. In *The Witch of Hebron*, Kunstler expands on his vision of a post-oil society with a new novel about an America in which the electricity has flickered off, the Internet is a distant memory, and the government is little more than a rumor. In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, travel is horse-drawn and farming is back at the center of life. But it's no pastoral haven. Wars are fought over dwindling resources and illness is a constant presence. Bandits roam the countryside, preying on the weak. And a sinister cult threatens to shatter Union Grove's fragile stability.

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Daniel Kehlmann on Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes

Mon, Sep 20, 2010

Award-winning German novelist Daniel Kehlmann, for a reading from his most recent novel, *Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes*, just translated into English. Imagine being famous. Being recognized on the street, adored by people who have never even met you, known the world over. Wouldn’t that be great? But what if, one day, you got stuck in a country where celebrity means nothing, where no one spoke your language and you didn’t speak theirs, where no one knew your face (no book jackets, no TV) and you had no way of calling home? How would your fame help you then? What if someone got hold of your cell phone? What if they spoke to your girlfriends, your agent, your director, and started making decisions for you? And worse, what if no one believed you were you anymore? When you saw a look-alike acting your roles for you, what would you do? And what if one day you realized your magnum opus, like everything else you’d ever written, was a total waste of time, empty nonsense? What would you do next? Would your audience of seven million people keep you going? Or would you lose the capacity to keep on doing it?

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The Tenth Parallel: The Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam

Wed, Sep 22, 2010

Award-winning investigative journalist Eliza Griswold discusses one of the richest, though often contentious, ideological battlegrounds in current world culture--the meeting of Christianity and Islam across Africa and Asia--as described in her book, *The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam*. The tenth parallel--the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator--is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do 60 percent of the world's 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well. An investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in *The Tenth Parallel* show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one's sense of God is shaped by one's place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic.

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Justice Stephen Breyer: Making Our Democracy Work

Thu, Sep 30, 2010

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer discusses the role and future of the Court in American democracy, and his book *Making Democracy Work: A Judges View*. The Supreme Court is one of the most extraordinary institutions in our system of government. Charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, the nine unelected justices of the Court have the awesome power to strike down laws enacted by our elected representatives. Why does the public accept the Court's decisions as legitimate and follow them, even when those decisions are highly unpopular? What must the Court do to maintain the public's faith? How can the Court help make our democracy work? Today we assume that when the Court rules, the public will obey. But Breyer declares that we cannot take the public's confidence in the Court for granted. He reminds us that at various moments in our history, the Court's decisions were disobeyed or ignored. And through investigations of past cases, concerning the Cherokee Indians, slavery, and Brown v. Board of Education, he brilliantly captures the steps--and the missteps--the Court took on the road to establishing its legitimacy as the guardian of the Constitution. Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution's text or to the 18th-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances--an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well. The Court, he believes, must also respect the roles that other actors--such as the president, Congress, administrative agencies, and the states--play in our democracy, and he emphasizes the Court's obligation to build cooperative relationships with them. Finally, Justice Breyer examines the Court's recent decisions concerning the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, contrasting these decisions with rulings concerning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. He uses these cases to show how the Court can promote workable government by respecting the roles of other constitutional actors without compromising constitutional principles.

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Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power

Tue, Sep 7, 2010

Can torture ever be justified? Since 9/11 there has been an intense debate about the government’s application of torture, eavesdropping and data mining to thwart acts of terrorism. Father and son political philosophy team Charles and Gregory Fried talk about terrorism and torture with Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz and terrorism expert Jessica Stern. When is eavesdropping acceptable? Should a kidnapper be waterboarded to reveal where his victim has been hidden? To create this seminal statement on torture and surveillance, Charles Fried and Gregory Fried have measured current controversies against the philosophies of Aristotle, Locke, Kant, and Machiavelli, and against the historic decisions, large and small, of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Pope Sixtus V, among many others. In their book *Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror* they discusses the behavior and justifications of Bush government officials but also examines more broadly what should be done when high officials have broken moral and legal norms in an attempt to protect us.

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