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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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Bret Easton Ellis: Imperial Bedrooms

Thu, Jun 24, 2010

Bret Easton Ellis, author of *Rules of Attraction* and *American Psycho*, reads from his newest novel, *Imperial Bedrooms*, which follows the infamous teenagers of his debut, *Less Than Zero*, into an even more desperate middle age. Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, an influential manager who's still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame, fortune and power. Then there's Clay's childhood friend Julian, a recovering addict, and their old dealer, Rip, face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than in his notorious past. But Clay's own demons emerge once he meets a gorgeous young actress determined to win a role in his movie. And when his life careens completely out of control, he has no choice but to plumb the darkest recesses of his character and come to terms with his proclivity for betrayal.

Pop Culture

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Nick Bunker: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World

Wed, May 26, 2010

Journalist and historian Nick Bunker steps into a long-past world with his book, *Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World; A New History*. At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile. Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, and cattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence from landscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglected documents, Nick Bunker gives an original account of the Mayflower project and the first decade of the Plymouth Colony. From mercantile London and the rural England of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I to the mountains and rivers of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative that combines religion, politics, money, science, and the sea.

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Kim Severson: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life

Thu, May 27, 2010

Journalist and food writer Kim Severson discusses her new memoir,* Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life*. Somewhere between the lessons her mother taught her as a child and the ones she is now trying to teach her own daughter, Kim Severson stumbled. She lost sight of what mattered, of who she was and who she wanted to be, and of how she wanted to live her life. It took a series of women cooks to reteach her the life lessons she forgot--and some she had never learned in the first place. Some as small as a spoonful, and others so big they saved her life, the best lessons she found were delivered in the kitchen. *Spoon Fed* weaves together the stories of eight important cooks with the lessons they taught her--lessons that seemed to come right when she needed them most. We follow Kim's journey from an awkward adolescent to an adult who channeled her passions into failing relationships, alcohol, and professional ambition, almost losing herself in the process. Finally as Severson finds sobriety and starts a family of her own, we see her mature into a strong, successful woman, as we learn alongside her.

Food and Wellness

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Laura Eldridge: Contraceptive Choices for Women

Fri, Jun 25, 2010

Womens health writer and activist Laura Eldridge holds a conversation about her new book, *In Our Control: The Complete Guide to Contraceptive Choices for Women*. The efficacy and risks of different birth control options are dramatically different today from what they once were thanks to scientific advances and increased awareness of STDs and other factors. In the most comprehensive book on birth control since the 1970s, Laura Eldridge discusses the history, scientific advances, and practical uses of everything from condoms to the male pill to Plan B. *In Our Control* is a definitive guide to modern contraceptive and sexual health. Eldridge presents her meticulous research and unbiased consideration of women's (and men's) options and goes on to explore large-scale issues that might factor into women's birth control choices, urging her readers to consider the environmental impacts of each method and to take part in a dialogue on how international reproductive health issues affect us all.

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Sebastian Junger: War in Afghanistan

Mon, Jun 7, 2010

Journalist and best-selling author Sebastian Junger discusses his book, *War*, an account of his time with a US Army platoon on the battlefields of Afghanistan. They were collectively known as "The Rock." For one year, in 2007--2008, Sebastian Junger accompanied 30 men--a single platoon--from the storied 2nd battalion of the US Army as they fought their way through a remote valley in eastern Afghanistan. Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he could count, as men he knew were killed or wounded and he himself was almost killed. His relationship with these soldiers grew so close that they considered him part of the platoon, and he enjoyed an access and a candidness that few, if any, journalists ever attain. This lecture contains discussion of adult content.

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What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Mon, Jun 28, 2010

Technology commentator Nicholas Carr explores the psychological impact of the Internet and his new book *The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains*. “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question in an *Atlantic Monthly* cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the bounties of the internet, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, *The Shallows* explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher.

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George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

Thu, Jul 8, 2010

Historian of science Oren Harman holds a conversation about his new book, *The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness*. Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be. Set against the tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, *The Price of Altruism* tells for the first time the story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922-1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired equation that explains altruism to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin's enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter's flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence.

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Jennifer Weiner: Fly Away Home

Wed, Jul 21, 2010

Bestselling novelist Jennifer Weiner reads from a discusses her most recent book, *Fly Away Home*. When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician’s wife—her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledges that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to her husband, the senator. Lizzie, the Woodruffs’ younger daughter, is at twenty-four a recovering addict, whose mantra HALT (Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?) helps her keep her life under control. Still, trouble always seems to find her. Her older sister, Diana, an emergency room physician, has everything Lizzie failed to achieve—a husband, a young son, the perfect home—and yet she’s trapped in a loveless marriage. With temptation waiting in one of the ER’s exam rooms, she finds herself craving more. After Richard’s extramarital affair makes headlines, the three women are drawn into the painful glare of the national spotlight. Once the press conference is over, each is forced to reconsider her life, who she is and who she is meant to be.

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Adam Ross: Mr. Peanut

Thu, Jul 15, 2010

Nashville columnist and debut novelist Adam Ross discusses *Mr. Peanut*. David Pepin has been in love with his wife, Alice, since the moment they met in a university seminar on Alfred Hitchcock. After thirteen years of marriage, he still can't imagine a remotely happy life without her--yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she is dead, and David is both deeply distraught and the prime suspect. The detectives investigating Alice's suspicious death have plenty of personal experience with conjugal enigmas: Ward Hastroll is happily married until his wife inexplicably becomes voluntarily and militantly bedridden; and Sam Sheppard is especially sensitive to the intricacies of marital guilt and innocence, having decades before been convicted and then exonerated of the brutal murder of his wife. Still, these men are in the business of figuring things out, even as Pepin's role in Alice's death grows ever more confounding when they link him to a highly unusual hit man called Mobius. Like the Escher drawings that inspire the computer games David designs for a living, these complex, interlocking dramas are structurally and emotionally intense, subtle, and intriguing; they brilliantly explore the warring impulses of affection and hatred, and pose a host of arresting questions. Is it possible to know anyone fully, completely? Are murder and marriage two sides of the same coin, each endlessly recycling into the other? And what, in the end, is the truth about love?

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Howard Norman: What Is Left the Daughter

Tue, Jul 27, 2010

Howard Norman reads and explores his newest work, *What Is Left the Daughter*. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel′s chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Wyatt′s account of the astonishing—not least to him—events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It′s a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one.

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