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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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Nino Ricci: The Origin of Species

Mon, May 10, 2010

Nino Ricci reads from his new novel, *The Origin of Species*, which was awarded the 2008 Governor General's Award for Fiction and is now being published in the United States for the first time. Montreal during the turbulent mid-1980s: Chernobyl has set Geiger counters thrumming across the globe, HIV/AIDS is cutting a deadly swath through the gay population worldwide, and locally, tempers are flaring over the recent codification of French as the official language of Quebec. Hiding out in a seedy apartment, Alex Fratarcangeli, an awkward, 30-something grad student, is plagued by the sensation that his entire life is a fraud. Scarred by a distant father and a dangerous relationship with his ex, Liz, and consumed by a floundering dissertation linking Darwin's theory of evolution with the history of human narrative, Alex has come to view love and other human emotions as "evolutionary surplus, haphazard neural responses that nature had latched onto for its own insidious purposes." When Alex receives a letter from Ingrid, the beautiful woman he knew years ago in Sweden, notifying him of the existence of his five-year-old son, he is gripped by a paralytic terror. Whenever Alex's thoughts grow darkest, he recalls Desmond, the British professor with dubious credentials whom he met years ago in the Galapagos. Treacherous and despicable, wearing his ignominy like his rumpled jacket, Desmond nonetheless caught Alex in his thrall and led him to some life-altering truths during their weeks exploring Darwin's islands together. It is only now that Alex can begin to comprehend these unlikely life lessons, and see a glimmer of hope shining through what he had thought was meaninglessness.

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The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

Mon, May 17, 2010

Wes Moore, combat veteran and former White House Fellow, discusses chance, fate, family, and accountability and his new book *The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates*. He then introduces representatives from non-profit organizations that work to provide opportunity for at-risk students. In December 2000, the *Baltimore Sun* ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes couldn't shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they'd hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Impact of the Highly Improbable

Wed, May 19, 2010

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, renowned expert on risk and randomness, discusses *The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable*. This bestselling book is now out in paperback with a new essay, "On Robustness and Fragility." A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.” This lecture contains strong language.

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Stephen Burt: Art of the Sonnet

Fri, May 21, 2010

Stephen Burt, Harvard professor of English, looks at one of the English language’s most beloved art forms and his new book, *The Art of the Sonnet.* Few poetic forms have found more uses than the sonnet in English, and none is now more recognizable. It is one of the longest-lived of verse forms, and one of the briefest. A mere 14 lines, fashioned by intricate rhymes, it is, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti called it, "a moment’s monument." From the Renaissance to the present, the sonnet has given poets a superb vehicle for private contemplation, introspection, and the expression of passionate feelings and thoughts. *The Art of the Sonnet * collects 100 exemplary sonnets of the English language (and a few sonnets in translation), representing highlights in the history of the sonnet, accompanied by short commentaries on each of the poems. The commentaries by Stephen Burt and his coauthor David Mikics offer new perspectives and insights, and, taken together, demonstrate the enduring as well as changing nature of the sonnet. The authors serve as guides to some of the most-celebrated sonnets in English as well as less-well-known gems by 19th and 20th century poets. Also included is a general introductory essay, in which the authors examine the sonnet form and its long and fascinating history, from its origin in medieval Sicily to its English appropriation in the sixteenth century to sonnet writing today in the US, the UK, and other English-speaking parts of the world.

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Claude Steele: How Stereotypes Affect Us

Tue, May 25, 2010

Claude Steele, acclaimed social psychologist, discusses identity and his new book *Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us.* Through illustrative personal stories, Claude Steele shares the experiments and studies that show, again and again, that exposing subjects to stereotypes—merely reminding a group of female math majors about to take a math test, for example, that women are considered naturally inferior to men at math—impairs their performance in the area affected by the stereotype. Steele’s conclusions shed new light on a host of American social phenomena, from the racial and gender gaps in standardized test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men. Steele explicates the dilemmas that arise in every American’s life around issues of identity, from the white student whose grades drop steadily in his African American studies class to the female engineering students deciding whether or not to attend predominantly male professional conferences. *Whistling Vivaldi* offers insight into how we form our senses of identity and ultimately lays out a plan for mitigating the negative effects of “stereotype threat” and reshaping American identities.

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Al Gore: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis

Sat, Nov 7, 2009

Former US Vice President and climate change activist Al Gore discusses his new book *Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Global Climate Crisis*. In his follow-up to the best selling *An Inconvenient Truth*, the Nobel Peace Prize—winning former vice president outlines a comprehensive strategy for combating the impending global climate crisis, while at the same time addressing long-standing issues of global poverty and inequality.

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America's Test Kitchen Cookbook

Mon, Dec 7, 2009

Chef-extraordinaire Chris Kimball and the cast of America's Test Kitchen discuss the new *The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook*. With the 2010 season, *America's Test Kitchen*, the beloved public television show, will have been on the air for 10 years, offering up fool-proof recipes, tips on what equipment and ingredients to buy, and solutions to the most vexing of kitchen-related mishaps. The cast looks back on the years so far with the entire cast, mentions a little about the upcoming season, and talks about the new definitive cookbook, featuring every recipe to have appeared on the show. *The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook* brings back all the great recipes from previous seasons, and gives an inside look at what we can look forward to in 2010. Recipes include Blueberry Muffins, Crisp Skinned Roast Chicken, Baked Ziti, Ciabatta, Roast Beef Tenderloin, Old-Fashioned Burgers, Grill Roasted Turkey Breast, Hearty Italian Meat Sauce, Mexican Pulled Pork, Fresh Berry Gratin, Super Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, and many more.

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Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Wed, Jan 6, 2010

Business and technology writer Daniel Pink explores what makes us most productive, and discusses his new book, *Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us*. In *Drive*, Pink explains that the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges.

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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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