Event Recordings
-
Thursday, June 2, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredWith more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds―and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. The historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy gives us the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park.
-
Thursday, May 19, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | for Library members and guests | reception at 6:00 PM, presentation at 6:30 PM | free of charge | advance registration requiredThe New York City Book Awards, founded in 1996, honor each year’s best books about the city. This annual ceremony honors the winning authors and publishers.
-
Monday, May 16, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | for members and guests | free of chargeAward winners and participants are honored at a ceremony, with writing advice and inspiration from the author judges.
-
Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA fascinating, epic exploration of who gets to record the world’s history—from Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burns—and how their biases influence our understanding about the past.
-
Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredA tour through the original thirteen colonies in search of historical sites and their stories in America’s founding. Obscure, well-known, off-the-beaten path, and on busy city streets, here are taverns, meeting houses, battlefields, forts, monuments, homes which all combine to define our country—the places where daring people forged a revolution.
-
Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA "magnificent, empowering" (Bill McKibben) memoir about a woman spearheading a global initiative to heal the world’s rainforests and the communities who depend on them: Dr. Kinari Webb in conversation with Dr. Anna Gibb Hallemeier.
-
Thursday, April 28, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredThe great poet and biographer and friend of Miles Davis shares selected poems from over fifty years, in conversation with New York City Book Award-winning poet Willie Perdomo.
-
Tuesday, April 19, 2022 - 12:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives.
-
Tuesday, April 12, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA brilliant debut by lawyer and critic Hawa Allan on the history of the 1807 Insurrection Act and the paradoxical state of Black citizenship in the United States.
-
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredTo honor the 75th anniversary of Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2021, here is a unique anthology celebrating the riches and variety of its poetry list―past, present, and future. FSG chairman and executive editor Jonathan Galassi and consulting editor Robyn Creswell illuminate the poems, with dramatic readings by actors Sarah Rose Kearns and Andrea Terrasa.
-
Thursday, March 31, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredMeet the incredible Mrs. Frank Leslie, scandalous Gilded Age celebrity, publishing tycoon, and unsung suffrage hero who changed the world for women.
-
Sunday, March 27, 2022 - 3:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredA riveting account of the five most crucial days in twentieth-century history: from Pearl Harbor to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States.
-
Wednesday, March 23, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredThis “fascinating” (Malcolm Gladwell) examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs—rivaling scientific inventions and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind. Angus Fletcher talks with Dr. James O. Pawelski of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
-
Monday, March 21, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredA daring, category-confounding, and ruthlessly funny novel from National Book Award-honored author Edmund White that explores polyamory and bisexuality, aging and love.
-
Monday, March 14, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredAn illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and his adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin said, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career."
-
Thursday, March 3, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room/Livestreamed | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredAn urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Why do we care so much about statues? Which ones should stay up and which should come down? Who should make these decisions, and how? Erin L. Thompson, the country’s leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues involved in such battles, brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues.
-
Thursday, February 24, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn his triumphant memoir, Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation’s capital—a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam. In this special event, Mr. Bernstein converses about the book with essayist and journalist Lance Morrow.
-
Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA mysterious first lady. The intrepid journalist writing her biography. And the secret that could destroy them both. Anna Pitoniak discusses her propulsive Cold War-era thriller with presidential biographer Jonathan Darman.
-
Tuesday, February 8, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredA practical guide to "narrative thinking," and why it matters in a world defined by data. Building on insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Frank Rose shows us how to see the world in narrative terms, not as a thesis to be argued or a pitch to be made but as a story to be told.
-
Thursday, February 3, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredAn exploration of NYC and America in the burgeoning moments before the start of the Civil War through the eyes of a young, biracial girl. In this one-time-only event, the winner of the Center for Fiction' First Novel Prize converses with beloved fiction writer Meg Wolitzer.
-
Thursday, January 27, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredFrom one of today’s most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War - the story of novelist Thomas Mann.
-
Thursday, January 20, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestreamed | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredA winner of the Lincoln Forum Book Prize, LINCOLN ON THE VERGE tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic.
-
Thursday, December 9, 2021 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredRonald Koury and writers from The Hudson Review celebrate a treasury of unique and wide-ranging contributions, all establishing a sense of place, its history and significance. Light refreshments will be served.
-
Wednesday, December 1, 2021 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room and Livestreamed | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn this unique event, author and journalist Barbara Ascher and celebrated bandleader Peter Duchin share memoirs reflecting on love, family, grief, and what comes after the life one expected.
-
Thursday, November 18, 2021 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredThe untold story of how America’s beloved first president, George Washington, borrowed, leveraged, and coerced his way into masterminding the key land purchase of the American era, which led to the creation of the nation’s capital city.
