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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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Valiant Ambition: Washington, Arnold, and the American Revolution

Sun, May 15, 2016

in September 1776, the vulnerable Continental Army under an unsure George Washington (who had never commanded a large force in battle) evacuates New York after a devastating defeat by the British Army. Three weeks later, near the Canadian border, one of his favorite generals, Benedict Arnold, miraculously succeeds in postponing the British naval advance down Lake Champlain that might have ended the war. Four years later, as the book ends, Washington has vanquished his demons and Arnold has fled to the enemy after a foiled attempt to surrender the American fortress at West Point to the British. After four years of war, America is forced to realize that the real threat to its liberties might not come from without but from within. _Valiant Ambition_ is a complex, controversial, and dramatic portrait of a people in crisis and the war that gave birth to a nation. The focus is on loyalty and personal integrity, evoking a Shakespearean tragedy that unfolds in the key relationship of Washington and Arnold, who is an impulsive but sympathetic hero whose misfortunes at the hands of self-serving politicians fatally destroy his faith in the legitimacy of the rebellion. As a country wary of tyrants suddenly must figure out how it should be led, Washington’s unmatched ability to rise above the petty politics of his time enables him to win the war that really matters.

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Angela Duckworth on Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Wed, May 4, 2016

Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research, **Angela Duckworth** explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called "grit." To succeed, we must identify our passions and follow through on our commitments. Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not "genius" but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own "character lab" and set out to test her theory. In _Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance_ (2016), she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers — from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll. Angela Duckworth discusses her book with Harvard Business School professor **Amy Cuddy**. _Grit_ is about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that - not talent or luck - makes all the difference.

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Sidney Blumenthal on A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849

Fri, May 13, 2016

_A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849_ (2016) is the first of a multi-volume history of Lincoln as a political genius - from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, his assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. In this first volume, which he discusses at Harvard Book Store, **Sidney Blumenthal** traces Lincoln from his painful youth to his emergence as the man we know as Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's anti-slavery thinking began in his childhood amidst the Primitive Baptist antislavery dissidents in backwoods Kentucky and Indiana, the roots of his repudiation of Southern Christian pro-slavery theology. Intensely ambitious, he held political aspirations from his earliest years. Obsessed with Stephen Douglas, his political rival, he battled him for decades. Successful as a circuit lawyer, Lincoln built his team of loyalists. Blumenthal reveals how Douglas and Jefferson Davis acting together made possible Lincoln’s rise. While depicting the successful politician, Blumenthal also describes a socially awkward suitor who had a nervous breakdown over his inability to deal with the opposite sex. Lincoln's marriage to the upper-class Mary Todd was crucial to his social aspirations and his political career. Blumenthal portrays Mary as an asset to her husband, a rare woman of her day with strong political opinions. Blumenthal's robust portrayal is based on prodigious research of Lincoln's record and of the period and its main players. The book reflects both Lincoln's time and the struggle that consumes our own political debate. (Photo: Ian Manka (Own work) [[CC BY 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 "CC License")], via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_Home.jpg "Lincoln Home"), image cropped) By Ian Manka (Contact me at the English Wikipedia, en:User:IanManka) (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

Wed, Apr 6, 2016

For twenty-five years **Dan Lyons** was a magazine writer at the top of his profession—until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place . . . by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

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Shirin Ebadi on Human Rights in Iran

Thu, Mar 17, 2016

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the Iranian government took everything from Shirin Ebadi—her marriage, friends, and colleagues, her home, her legal career, even her Nobel Prize. She discusses her book, "Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran," with the Kennedy School's Swanee Hunt.

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Janette Sadik-Khan: Streetfight

Thu, Mar 31, 2016

As New York City’s transportation commissioner, **Janette Sadik-Khan** managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world’s greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that’s already there. Breaking the street into its component parts, _Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution_ demonstrates, with step-by-step visuals, how to rewrite the underlying "source code" of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn’t easy, and _Streetfight_ pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. In the book, which she discusses with Professor **Jerold Kayden**, of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Sadik-Khan includes examples of how her way to read the streets has made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. _Streetfight_ deconstructs, reassembles, and reinvents the street, inviting readers to see it in ways they never imagined. (Photo: [Flickr/itdp](https://www.flickr.com/photos/itdp/12463260285/in/photolist-ojw4nk-ohtDXt-bzK6Gq-o1g8g6-jZkt52-jZmkbn-jZo6Th-o1giZF-jZmk5a-jZo6Hh-o1g46J-o1ggUj-ohHnAJ-ohKKND-ohHzRW-ohHzV3-o1ggzG-ofHUiG-ojw3C4-ofJ7Dd-o1g4fm-oht7wT-o1gjcK-ohtk1a-ojvQBF-ohLirZ-ohHnr5-o1gwVR-ojvQBk-ojw3JB-o1gwkT-o1gx2m-ohtjEk-7MK2aV "Janette Sadik-Khan cover"), image cropped)

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Diane Rehm: On My Own

Sun, Apr 24, 2016

**Diane Rehm** is best known as the beloved host of WAMU's _The Diane Rehm Show_, but she is also the author of a memoir, _On My Own_. **Robin Young**, co-host of WBUR's _Here & Now_, joins her in a discussion of her book. When Rehm's husband, John, passed away from Parkinson's Disease, she found herself "on her own" after fifty-four years of marriage. She struggled to create a new life within her new reality, learning how to cope with emotional and practical issues by herself while holding on to her memories of him. Rehm's memoir describes her experiences as well as those of some recently widowed friends of hers, exploring a variety of reactions to the death of a spouse. Beyond telling the story of her forging a new life on her own, she discusses the meaning she has found in advocating for the "right to die" movement in honor of her husband's unnecessarily prolonged suffering prior to his death. The book is both practical and inspiring, offering comfort for the recently bereaved and hope about the possibilities that remain to each of us as we deal with our inevitable mortality. (Photo: [Jay/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaypcool/1441098866/in/photolist-3cm1ub-6gM9E3-6gM9CG-6gGXVZ-6gGXXK-ayHx7v "Diane Rehm"))

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Catherine J. Ross: Lessons in Censorship

Fri, Feb 26, 2016

**Catherine J. Ross**, Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Education, discusses her book, _Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students' First Amendment Rights_. Together with the Harvard Book Store, Harvard's Hutchins Center for African & African American Research has welcomed Ross to share her book's message. _Lessons in Censorship_ highlights the troubling and growing tendency of schools, especially public schools, to clamp down on off-campus speech such as texting and sexting and reveals how well-intentioned measures to counter verbal bullying and hate speech may impinge on free speech. For several decades the Supreme Court emphasized the role of schools in cultivating liberty. Since the 1970s, however, our judicial system has moved towards censoring certain categories of student speech in the name of order and authority, even if these actions are unconstitutional. In her book, Ross tells the stories of several legal battles over censorship in schools and introduces the young protesters, journalists, and artists who fought for their expressive rights. Understanding the need for a balance between freedom and order, she proposes ways to protect free expression without disrupting education.

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Hillary L. Chute on Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form

Fri, Feb 19, 2016

Comics scholar and Visiting Professor in the Harvard University English Department **Hillary L. Chute** discusses her 2016 book, _Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form_. In hard-hitting accounts of Auschwitz, Bosnia, Palestine, and Hiroshima’s Ground Zero, comics display a stunning capacity to bear witness to trauma. Investigating how hand-drawn comics have come of age as a serious medium for engaging history, _Disaster Drawn_ explores the ways graphic narratives by diverse artists document the disasters of war. In her book, Chute traces how comics inherited graphic print traditions and innovations from the seventeenth century and later, pointing out that at every turn new forms of visual-verbal representation have arisen in response to the turmoil of war. Modern nonfiction comics emerged from the shattering experience of World War II, developing in the 1970s with Art Spiegelman’s first "Maus" story about his immigrant family's survival of Nazi death camps and with Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa's inaugural work of "atomic bomb manga," the comic book "Ore Wa Mita" ("I Saw It") - a title that alludes to Francisco Goya’s famous Disasters of War etchings. Chute explains how the form of comics, their collections of frames, lends itself to historical narrative. By interlacing multiple temporalities over the space of the page or panel, comics can place pressure on conventional notions of causality. Aggregating and accumulating frames of information, comics call attention to themselves as evidence. _Disaster Drawn_ demonstrates why, even in the era of photography and film, people understand hand-drawn images to be among the most powerful forms of historical witness. (Image: Francisco Goya [Public domain], via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFrancisco_de_Goya_-_I_saw_it_(Yo_lo_vi)_from_the_series_The_Disasters_of_War_(Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg "Goya Disaster Drawn"))

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E. J. Dionne: Why the Right Went Wrong

Tue, Feb 23, 2016

**E. J. Dionne**, Jr., columnist for the Washington Post and commentator for NPR, discusses his 2016 book, _Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism - from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond_. The book, which analyzes the American political right from the 1960s onward, argues that the origin of the radicalism of some twenty-first-century conservative groups lies not with the Tea Party, but rather with Barry Goldwater's views during his 1964 presidential campaign. In this event, Dionne explores his theory of how Goldwater's ideology impacted later Republican presidencies and eventually gave rise to the Tea Party. (Photo: [Flickr/sushiesque](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sushiesque/8647458179/in/photolist-eb9u3x-6ftskX-caiG65-6fxDJs-6ftqov-6fxDf3-6fxAsL-6ftt32-6fxEcU-eb9B1a-6fttyc-6ftrqz-6ftqJk-6ftsu6-6fxA3w-6fxDAq-6ftrNZ-6fxBnh-6ftrAe-6ftrfz-6ftrXP-6fxzSL-6fxB2G-6ftr32-6ftqbr-6fts9n-6WZcv7-eb9sBR-ebfcJC-ebf8E3-eb9nzx-eb9s3p-eb9zdg-eb9C8X-ebf8Zw-ebfaZo-eb9t6T-ebf2Ph-eb9wgc-ebf8mN-ebfbQ3-eb9o3c-ebfcif-ebf9LS-ebf3MN-7TJogZ-d2dNfJ-8dv8Em-8dpSFW-eb9rvp "Tea Party"), image cropped)

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