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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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Collaborate or Perish! Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World

Wed, Feb 1, 2012

"In *Collaborate or Perish!*, William Bratton and Zachary Tumin lay out a field-tested playbook for collaborating across the boundaries of our new, networked world. Today, when everyone is connected, collaboration is the game changer. Agencies and firms, citizens and groups who can collaborate, Bratton and Tumin argue, will thrive in the networked world; those who can't are doomed to perish. Boston native William Bratton is known around the world for his ability to get citizens, governments, and industries working together to improve the safety of cities. At Harvard, Zachary Tumin has led executives from government and industry in sessions and classrooms for over a decade. Together, they draw on in-depth accounts from Fortune 100 companies, and the education, social work, and military sectors to discuss the keys to effective collaboration. "

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Jodi Kantor: The Obamas

Tue, Jan 31, 2012

"Jodi Kantor, New York Times correspondent, discusses *The Obamas*, her portrait of the first couple, and addresses the recent media attention and controversy around the book. In *The Obamas*, Jodi Kantor takes the reader inside the White House as the Obamas try to grapple with their new roles, change the country, raise children, maintain friendships, and figure out what it means to be the first black President and First Lady. "

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Rachel Maddow - Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Sun, Apr 1, 2012

Rachel Maddow discusses her book, *Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power*. *Drift* argues that the U.S. has drifted away from its original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow explores numerous changes that have taken place from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan. She discusses the rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight in wars, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she demonstrates just how much could be lost by allowing the priorities of national security to overpower political discourse.

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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Wed, Mar 21, 2012

Daron Acemoglu discusses his book, *Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty*. Acemoglu answers the question that have stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Acemoglu argues that none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Acemoglu and co-author James Robinson demonstrate that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Based on fifteen years of original research, Acemoglu and Robinson marshall historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy."

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Thomas Piketty: Capital

Fri, Apr 18, 2014

Harvard Book Store welcomed Paris School of Economics professor Thomas Piketty for a discussion of his seminal new work Capital in the Twenty-First Century. What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality 'the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth 'today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

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Elizabeth Warren: A Fighting Chance

Thu, Apr 24, 2014

First-term Massachusetts State Senator **Elizabeth Warren** spoke last April to a sold-out crowd about her biography, _A Fighting Chance._ Sponsored by the Harvard Book Store at First Parish Church in Cambridge, Warren talks about her family history, including her parents and how she was given the chance to succeed. She also discusses her stance on big banks, the middle class, and what education policies need to be put in place to help students pay for higher education.

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Ramachandra Guha: Gandhi Before India

Tue, Apr 29, 2014

Harvard Book Store welcomed award-winning author Ramachandra Guha and President of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, Pratap Bhanu Mehta for a discussion of Guha's new book Gandhi Before India. Here is a revelatory work of biography that takes us from Mohandas Gandhi's birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London, and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Ramachandra Guha has uncovered a myriad of previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi's contemporaries and co-workers, contemporary newspapers and court documents, the writings of Gandhi's children, secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in a brilliantly nuanced narrative, Guha describes the social, political, and personal worlds in which Gandhi began his journey to become the modern era's most important and influential political actor. And Guha makes clear that Gandhi's work in South Africa-far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India-was profoundly influential on his evolution as a political thinker, social reformer, and beloved leader.

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Sam Kean: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

Fri, May 9, 2014

Harvard Book Store welcomed bestselling author of The Disappearing Spoon Sam Kean for a discussion of his latest book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery. Early studies of the functions of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike 'strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, lobotomies, horrendous accidents' and see how the victim coped. In many cases survival was miraculous, and observers could only marvel at the transformations that took place afterward, altering victims' personalities. An injury to one section can leave a person unable to recognize loved ones; some brain trauma can even make you a pathological gambler, pedophile, or liar. But a few scientists realized that these injuries were an opportunity for studying brain function at its extremes. With lucid explanations and incisive wit, Sam Kean explains the brain's secret passageways while recounting forgotten stories of common people whose struggles, resiliency, and deep humanity made modern neuroscience possible."

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Laurence Tribe: Uncertain Justice - The Roberts Court and the Constitution

Tue, Jun 10, 2014

From Citizens United to its momentous rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has profoundly affected American life. Yet the court remains a mysterious institution, and the motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure. Harvard University Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe shows the surprising extent to which the Roberts Court is revising the meaning of our Constitution in his book Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, co-authored by Joshua Matz. Filled with original insights and compelling human stories, _Uncertain Justice_ illuminates the most colorful story of how the Supreme Court and the Constitution frame the way we live.

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Linda Hill and Emily Truelove: Collective Genius - The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

Thu, Jun 12, 2014

Harvard Book Store welcomed Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Linda Hill and MIT Sloan School of Management researcher Emily Truelove for a discussion of their book Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help'but there's only one way to ensure sustained innovation: you need to lead it'and with a special kind of leadership. Collective Genius shows you how. Preeminent leadership scholar Linda Hill, along with former Pixar tech wizard Greg Brandeau, MIT researcher Emily Truelove, and Being the Boss coauthor Kent Lineback, found among leaders a widely shared, and mistaken, assumption: that a 'good' leader in all other respects would also be an effective leader of innovation. The truth is, leading innovation takes a distinctive kind of leadership, one that unleashes and harnesses the 'collective genius' of the people in the organization.

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