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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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Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip

Wed, Feb 9, 2011

*The New Yorker's* longtime Beijing correspondent Peter Hessler discusses his latest exploration of everyday life in China, *Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip*. *Country Driving* begins with Hessler's 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center.

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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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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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Carlos Eire: Learning to Die in Miami

Wed, Dec 8, 2010

Carlos Eire, writer and professor, talks about his new book, *Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy*. In his 2003 memoir *Waiting for Snow in Havana*, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother leave Havana on an airplane--along with thousands of other children--to begin their new life in Miami in 1962. It would be years before he would see his mother again. He would never again see his beloved father. *Learning to Die in Miami* opens as the plane lands and Carlos faces, with trepidation and excitement, his new life. He quickly realizes that in order for his new American self to emerge, his Cuban self must "die." And so, with great enterprise and purpose, he begins his journey. We follow Carlos as he adjusts to life in his new home. Faced with learning English, attending American schools, and an uncertain future, young Carlos confronts the age-old immigrants plight: being surrounded by American bounty, but not able to partake right away. The abundance America has to offer excites him and, regardless of how grim his living situation becomes, he eagerly forges ahead with his own personal assimilation program, shedding the vestiges of his old life almost immediately, even changing his name to Charles. Cuba becomes a remote and vague idea in the back of his mind, something he used to know well, but now it "had ceased to be part of the world."

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Leo Damrosch: Tocqueville’s Discovery of America

Thu, Apr 22, 2010

Leo Damrosch, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, discusses of his new book, *Tocqueville’s Discovery of America*, and an exploration of Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous journey through the fledgling nation. Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, *Democracy in America*, was the product of a young man’s open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In *Tocqueville’s Discovery of America*, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville’s nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America.

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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet

Tue, Apr 27, 2010

Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, *Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It*. In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's *Diet for a Small Planet* sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappe, picks up the conversation. In her groundbreaking new book, the younger Lappe exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis. While you may not think "global warming" when you sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food--from Pop Tarts packaged in Tennessee and eaten in Texas to pork chops raised in Poland, with feed from Brazil, shipped to South Korea--contributes to as much as one-third of the global warming effect. Livestock alone is associated with more emissions than all of the world's transportation combined. Move over Hummer. Say hello to the hamburger. If we're serious about the climate crisis, says Lappe, we have to talk about food. In this groundbreaking book, Lappe exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin-tactics companies are employing to defuse the heat. She also offers a vision of a food system that can be part of healing the planet--and the climate. Lappe explores how food can be a powerful entry point for tackling our most pressing environmental problems. With seven principles for a climate-friendly diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, Lappe offers strategies and inspiration to bring to life food that's better for people and the planet.

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David Remnick: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

Thu, Apr 29, 2010

David Remnick, a *New Yorker* editor and noted journalist, shares with us his thoughts on the historic 2008 presidential election and his new book, *The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama*. No story has been more central to America's history this century than the rise of Barack Obama, and until now, no journalist or historian has written a book thatfully investigates the circumstances and experiences of Obama's life or explores the ambition behind his rise. Those familiar with Obama's own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but now--from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfolding events is without peer--we have a portrait of a young man in search of himself, and of a rising politician determined to become the first African American president.

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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.

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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.

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