Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

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.

http://www.harvard.com

Jennifer Weiner: Fly Away Home

Wed, Jul 21, 2010

Bestselling novelist Jennifer Weiner reads from a discusses her most recent book, *Fly Away Home*. When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician’s wife—her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledges that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to her husband, the senator. Lizzie, the Woodruffs’ younger daughter, is at twenty-four a recovering addict, whose mantra HALT (Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?) helps her keep her life under control. Still, trouble always seems to find her. Her older sister, Diana, an emergency room physician, has everything Lizzie failed to achieve—a husband, a young son, the perfect home—and yet she’s trapped in a loveless marriage. With temptation waiting in one of the ER’s exam rooms, she finds herself craving more. After Richard’s extramarital affair makes headlines, the three women are drawn into the painful glare of the national spotlight. Once the press conference is over, each is forced to reconsider her life, who she is and who she is meant to be.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Herbert Benson: The Relaxation Revolution

Tue, Jul 13, 2010

Pioneer of mind body medicine Herbert Benson explores his new book, *The Relaxation Revolution: Enhancing Your Personal Health Through the Science and Genetics of Mind Body Healing*. In the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School ushered in a new era of understanding in the field of mind body medicine. Coining the term "relaxation response," Dr. Benson identified the body's physiologic reaction that is the exact opposite of the stress (fight-or-flight) response. In the four decades since that initial discovery, Benson and his colleagues have established the first effective therapy to counteract the harmful effects of stress. They have explored how the relaxation response, the power of expectation and belief, and other mind body phenomena can produce healing in your own body. *Relaxation Revolution* details Dr. Benson's recent work with colleagues in the field of genetics, which links mind body treatments to the healing of a steadily expanding number of medical conditions. Mind and body have become part of a scientific and medical whole; together they represent a complete approach to healing and maximal well-being. In clear, straightforward language, Benson and Proctor cite the experiences of real people to show how mind body techniques have the potential not only to enhance healing but also to reduce health costs to individuals and to society as a whole.

Mental Health Month

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Howard Norman: What Is Left the Daughter

Tue, Jul 27, 2010

Howard Norman reads and explores his newest work, *What Is Left the Daughter*. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel′s chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Wyatt′s account of the astonishing—not least to him—events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It′s a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Ann Beattie: Walks With Men

Wed, Jun 9, 2010

Award-winning novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie reads from and discusses her latest novel, *Walks with Men*. It is 1980 in New York City, and Jane, a valedictorian fresh out of Harvard, strikes a deal with Neil, an intoxicating writer twenty years her senior. The two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone, and Neil reveals the rules for a life well lived: If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s because you want leftovers for "the dog." Say that you want the bones for "a friend who does autopsies." If you can’t stand on your head (which is best), learn to do cartwheels. Have sex in airplane bathrooms. Wear only raincoats made in England. Neil’s certainties, Jane discovers, mask his deceptions. Her true education begins.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality

Thu, Jun 10, 2010

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely discusses his new book, *The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home*. The 2008 economic crisis taught us that irrationality is an influential player in financial markets. But it is often the case that irrationality also makes it way into our daily lives and decisionmaking—in slightly different and vastly more subtle ways. In this follow-up to his *New York Times* bestseller *Predictably Irrational*, Dan Ariely shows how irrationality is an inherent part of the way we function and think, and how it affects our behavior in all areas of our lives, from our romantic relationships to our experiences in the workplace to our temptations to cheat. Blending everyday experience with new research into our how we actually make decisions, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Using data from original experiments, he draws invaluable conclusions about how—and why—we behave the way we do, and reflects on ways we can make ourselves and our society better.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
William Powers: Twelve by Twelve

Tue, Jun 15, 2010

Critically acclaimed author and activist William Powers discusses his experiences escaping from society, chronicled in his new book, *Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream*. Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? To find out, William Powers visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back from a decade of international aid work, then accepted Benton’s offer to stay at the cabin for a season while she traveled. There, he befriended her eclectic neighbors—organic farmers, biofuel brewers, eco-developers—and discovered a sustainable but imperiled way of life. In the pages of *Twelve by Twelve*, Powers not only explores this small patch of community but draws on his international experiences with other pockets of resistance. This tale of Powers’s struggle for a meaningful life with a smaller footprint proposes a paradigm shift to an elusive “Soft World” with clues to personal happiness and global healing.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Daniel J. Carlat: The Trouble with Psychiatry

Wed, Jun 2, 2010

Noted psychiatrist and mental health journalist Daniel J. Carlat holds a discussion about the current state of the field of psychiatry and his new book, *Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis*. In *Unhinged*, Daniel Carlat exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession, revealing the ways it has abandoned its essential purpose: to understand the mind, so that psychiatrists can heal mental illness and not just treat symptoms. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans

Fri, Jun 11, 2010

Award-winning writer and teacher Philip Gambone holds a discussion of his new book, *Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans*, a snapshot of the variety of gay lives and culture in America today. For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives. In addition to interviews with David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin, *Travels in a Gay Nation* brings us lesser-known voices--a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and "drag king," a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers. In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual. For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life's work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant. But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone's subjects have managed--despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference--to construct passionate, inspiring lives.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Stephen Kinzer: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future

Tue, Jun 8, 2010

Foreign correspondent and Boston University professor Stephen Kinzer discusses his book *Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future*, which examines the complex state of Middle East politics. What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? In *Reset*, Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran. Besides proposing this new "power triangle," Kinzer also recommends that the United States reshape relations with its two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. In *Reset*, Kinzer introduces us to larger-than-life figures, like a Nebraska schoolteacher who became a martyr to democracy in Iran, a Turkish radical who transformed his country and Islam forever, and a colorful parade of princes, politicians, women of the world, spies, oppressors, liberators, and dreamers.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store
Kathryn Schulz on Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Fri, Jun 18, 2010

Journalist and "wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz holds a conversation about mistakes (and admitting them), and her new book, *Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error*. To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at imagining that our beliefs could be mistaken, and why do we react to our errors with surprise, denial, defensiveness, and shame? In *Being Wrong*, Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude toward error corrodes relationships--whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations. Along the way, she takes us on a tour of human fallibility, from wrongful convictions to no-fault divorce; medical mistakes to misadventures at sea; failed prophecies to false memories; "I told you so!" to "Mistakes were made." In the end, *Being Wrong* is not just an account of human error but a tribute to human creativity--the way we generate and revise our beliefs about ourselves and the world. At a moment when economic, political, and religious dogmatism increasingly divide us, Schulz explores the seduction of certainty and the crises occasioned by error.

Forum Network

Partner:

Harvard Book Store