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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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Slavoj Zizek: The Monstrosity of Christ

Mon, Apr 20, 2009

Philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek discusses his new book, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, and explains how the Christian concept of the "toxic neighbor" impacts political, economic, sexual, and cultural thought. This event is presented by the Harvard Book Store, in cooperation with the Brattle Theatre and the MIT Press.

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Pop Culture

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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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Food and Wellness

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Charlotte Dennett: The People v. Bush

Wed, Jan 20, 2010

Journalist-turned-lawyer Charlotte Dennett discusses her new book, *The People v. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encountered Along the Way*. When Charlotte Dennett became outraged that Bush White House officials were acting above the law, she did something that surprised even herself. She ran for a state attorney general seat on a platform to prosecute George W. Bush for murder. She lost the race, but found a movement--one that continues its quest to hold leaders accountable to US law and preserve a Constitutional presidency.

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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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Robert Darnton: The Case for Books

Wed, Feb 3, 2010

Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, discusses the historical and cultural importance of the printed word. In *The Case for Books*, Robert Darnton, an intellectual pioneer in the field of the history of the book and director of Harvard University's Library, offers an in-depth examination of the book from its earliest beginnings to its shifting role today in popular culture, commerce, and the academy. As an author, editorial advisor, and publishing entrepreneur, Darnton is a unique authority on the life and role of the book in society. This book is a wise work of scholarship--one that requires readers to carefully consider how the digital revolution will broadly affect the marketplace of ideas. In *The Devil in the Holy Water*, Darnton offers a startling new perspective on the origins of the French Revolution and the development of a revolutionary political culture in the years after 1789. He opens with an account of the colony of French refugees in London who churned out slanderous attacks on public figures in Versailles and of the secret agents sent over from Paris to squelch them. The libelers were not above extorting money for pretending to destroy the print runs of books they had duped the government agents into believing existed; the agents were not above recognizing the lucrative nature of such activities--and changing sides.

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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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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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Jaron Lanier: You Are Not a Gadget

Wed, Jan 13, 2010

Computer scientist Jaron Lanier discusses his new book, *You Are Not a Gadget*. Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse. The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web's first designers made crucial choices (such as making one's presence anonymous) that have had enormous--and often unintended--consequences. What's more, these designs quickly became "locked in," a permanent part of the web's very structure. Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the "wisdom" of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

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Raj Patel: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

Mon, Jan 11, 2010

Activist Raj Patel discusses his new book, *The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy*, with radio's *On Point* producer, John Wihbey. In *The Value of Nothing*, Raj Patel, a long-time visionary in issues of global development, points to the inadequecy of price as a measure of value, and urges us to look at the larger environmental, political, and social cost of the goods we consume. The book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics. While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate, and economic crises is a political one. If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn't often said who gets to make them. *The Value of Nothing* offers an accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.

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