Biblio File

August Author @ the Library Programs at Mid-Manhattan

I've made my plans for summer / words and music by John Philip Sousa., Digital ID G00C34_001, New York Public LibraryWe hope your summer plans will include some of our great free programs and classes!What is it like to be a convicted murderer just released from prison? What company was the Apple of the 1960s and 70s? Can you forage for edible plants in New York City? How much do you know about life in Palestine? What does America owe to its obsessive-compulsives? Why was Webster's Third dictionary denounced by everyone from The New York Times to the American Bar Association? Has one artist really drawn all the buildings in New York?

What's been happening in the Village for the last 400 years? How are love, war and genius written in our genetic code? How much do animals and plants matter? What's the story behind the greatest real estate deal ever made? What is it like to be a hearing person raised by deaf parents? How has psychoanalysis taken hold in every aspect of American culture? Who is the man behind the SS United States, one of the great ocean liners of its time? Can you make art from Legos®? What is the current state of healthcare in the world?

Would you like to hear some informed answers to any of these questions? If so, please join us at the Mid-Manhattan Library to hear these non-fiction authors from many disciplines discuss their work during the month of August. You can also reserve copies of their books using the links to the catalog included below. Author talks take place at 6:30 p.m. on the sixth floor. No reservations are required.

 

 

Thursday, August 1: Sabine Heinlein, author of Among Murderers: Life after Prison explores the injustices and idiosyncrasies of American life through her immersion in the lives of those living on its fringes.

Monday, August 5: Christopher Bonanos, senior editor at New York magazine tells us about the coolest tech company of the 1960s and 1970s: Instant: The Story of Polaroid.

Tuesday, August 6: Did you ever wonder which wild plants were safe to eat? Ellen Zachos, an educator at The New York Botanical Garden and author of Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn't Know You Could Eat will show you.

Wednesday, August 7: Pamela Olson, author of Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland and former writer and editor at The Palestine Monitor, offers a powerful account of life in Palestine, from the daily events universal to us all to the violence, trauma, and political tensions particular to the country.

 

 

 

 

Thursday, August 8: Joshua C. Kendall, author of America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy that Built a Nation, examines the inner lives of seven obsessive-compulsive personalities: Charles Lindbergh, Thomas Jefferson, H.J. Heinz, Melvil Dewey, Ted Williams, Alfred Kinsey, and Estée Lauder.

Monday, August 12: David Skinner, author of The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, depicts the controversy of Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, the so-called permissive dictionary denounced by The New York Times and many others.

Tuesday, August 13: Artist James Gulliver Hancock, author of All the Buildings in New York: That I’ve Drawn So Far takes us on a quirky, illustrated tour of New York’s neighborhoods.

Wednesday, August 14: John Strausbaugh, journalist and cultural commentator, presents The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village

 

 

 

 

Thursday, August 15: Sam Kean, author of The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code, gives a visual presentation exploring the wonders of DNA and how geneticists strive to unlock the secrets of the universe within us.

Monday, August 19: Professor Nicholas P. Money explores the flowering of microbial science in an illustrated lecture The Amoeba in the Room: Why Animals and Plants Don’t Matter. This lecture is taken from his new book,The Amoeba in the Room: The Majesty of Life Unseen, which will be published by Oxford University Press in early 2014.

Tuesday, August 20: Charles V. Bagli of The New York Times, author of Other People's Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made, explains how Tishman Speyer and BlackRock overpaid for the Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town building complex and then skipped away while the investors lost millions.

Wednesday, August 21: In an illustrated talk from her memoir, Burn Down the Ground, Kambri Crews shares her unconventional childhood living with deaf parents in a tin shed in rural Texas. This program will be simultaneously interpreted into American Sign Language.

 

 

  

 

Thursday, August 22: Lawrence R. Samuel, author of Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America, traces psychoanalysis in America and explores how psychoanalysis is taking hold in virtually every aspect of American culture.

Tuesday, August 27: Steven Ujifusa, author of A Man and His Ship: America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the SS United States, describes naval architect William Francis Gibbs and his mission to build the finest, fastest and most beautiful ocean liner of his time.

Wednesday, August 28: Discover The Art of Nathan Sawaya. The New York artist shows us how he creates works of art, such as 3-dimensional sculptures and oversized portraits, out of LEGO® bricks.

Thursday, August 29: Ibis Sánchez-Serrano, author of The World’s Health Care Crisis: From the Laboratory Bench to the Patient’s Bedside, provides a comparative analysis of healthcare systems throughout the world and addresses major issues within biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries in an illustrated talk.

You can find lists of non-fiction books from current and past Author @ the Library programs in the BiblioCommons catalog. These lists include only authors discussing their recent non-fiction books at the Mid-Manhattan Library. We have lots of other free programs and classes on our August calendar. If you enjoy fiction, check out our short story readings, too! This month's Story Time for Grown-ups theme is New York Shorts: Stories by New York Writers, part of our NYC Summer reading program. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Print a program flyer.