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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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Amy Chua: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Tue, Feb 22, 2011

Yale law professor Amy Chua discusses the differences between Eastern and Western parenting techniques and her new memoir, *Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother*. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. What Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals is that the Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that. The Chinese believe that the best way to protect your children is by preparing them for the future and arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. *Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother* chronicles Chua's iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way—the Chinese way.

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Izzeldin Abuelaish: A Gaza Doctor on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity

Fri, Feb 18, 2011

Physician and peace activist Izzeldin Abuelaish discusses his memoir, an account of the deaths of three of his daughters and his powerful response to the tragedy. A Palestinian doctor with a degree from Harvard who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and "who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians" (*New York Times*), Abuelaish has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life--as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line; as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East; and, most recently, as the father whose daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be "the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis."

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Joseph O’Connor: Ghost Light

Wed, Feb 23, 2011

Acclaimed Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor reads from his newest work, *Ghost Light*, an historical novel based on the lives of Irish playwright J.M. Synge and actress Molly Allgood. Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. An actress still in her teens begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious, irreverent, beautiful, flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. Witty and watchful, she has dozens of admirers. But in the backstage of her life, there is a secret. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled, reticent genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by Edwardian conventions and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of immense loneliness and severity, he had long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender. Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on a morning after the city has been struck by a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the forlorn beauty of wrecked terraces and wintry parks, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion of life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded.

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Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy

Thu, Feb 24, 2011

Harvard's Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy Dani Rodrik discusses his latest book, *The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy*. From the mercantile monopolies of 17th-century empires to the modern-day authority of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, the nations of the world have struggled to effectively harness globalization's promise. The economic narratives that underpinned these eras—the gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the "Washington Consensus"—brought great success and great failure. In this challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik offers a new narrative, one that embraces an ineluctable tension: we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. When the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Rodrik's case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today's global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.

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Siva Vaidhyanathan: Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)

Fri, Feb 25, 2011

University of Virginia professor of media studies and the law Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the impact of Google on the Internet and the world more broadly and his new book, *The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)*. In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission—“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible”—and its much-quoted motto, “Don’t be Evil.” In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google’s global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the “evil” it pledged to avoid.

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Oliver Sacks: The Mind's Eye

Thu, Oct 28, 2010

Oliver Sacks, neurologist and popularizer of the science of the mind, discusses his newest work, *The Mind's Eye*, in conversation with writer and editor Cullen Murphy. In *The Mind's Eye*, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes--people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper--visual or who navigate by "tongue vision." He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery--or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?

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Indian Ocean and the Shifting Center of Global Power

Mon, Oct 25, 2010

Robert D. Kaplan discusses the shifting center of global power and his new book, *Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.* In *Monsoon*, an examination of the Indian Ocean region and the countries known as "Monsoon Asia," Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power in the 21st century. Like the monsoon itself, a cyclical weather system that is both destructive and essential for growth and prosperity, the rise of these countries (including India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania) represents a shift in the global balance that cannot be ignored. *Monsoon* explores the multilayered world behind the headlines. Kaplan offers insights into the economic and naval strategies of China and India and how they will affect U.S. interests. He provides an on-the-ground perspective on the more volatile countries in the region, plagued by weak infrastructures and young populations tempted by extremism. This, in one of the most nuclearized areas of the world, is a dangerous mix.

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Best American Essays 2010

Tue, Oct 26, 2010

Series editor Robert Atwan joins contributors John Summers and Jerald Walker to discuss* The Best American Essays 2010*, the 25th anniversary volume.

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Gal Beckerman: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry

Mon, Nov 1, 2010

Gal Beckerman, reporter for *The Forward*, talks about his first book, an exploration of the lives of the Jews left behind in the Soviet Union after World War II. At the end of the war, nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the Soviet Union. They lived a paradox--unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist "hooligans," and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. He also makes a case that the movement put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War. The book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats. This multi-generational saga provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.

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Robert Darnton: Poetry and the Police

Tue, Nov 2, 2010

Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Libraries, discusses his new book *Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris*. In spring 1749, Francois Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an "abominable poem about the king." So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense? In *Poetry and the Police*, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society.

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