2018 was another busy and exciting year at The Society Library. This numbers-based snapshot reveals some recent goings-on.
Event Recordings
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Thursday, January 17, 2019 - 5:00 PM | Children | Members' Room | open to the public | for grades 3-8 | $10 per person | registration requiredMeet the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Ella Enchanted and Ogre Enchanted! Gail Carson Levine offers a glimpse into the magic behind her numerous books and her writing process.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | advance registration requiredA spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world, by the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University.
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Thursday, January 10, 2019 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | advance registration requiredIn this occasional series, writers and patrons interested in the publishing world are invited to insightful discussion with its stars. Brenda Bowen represents books for young readers and for adults at Greenburger Associates. John Silbersack of The Bent Agency is a publishing professional with a deep experience as editor, publisher, and agent. Emma Sweeney is president and owner of Emma Sweeney Agency LLC.
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Thursday, December 13, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | advance registration requiredGlobal warming is no longer a mere prediction. It’s here, now, and having catastrophic effects on our planet. So why aren’t more people talking about it? Writers and critics Jeremy Deaton, Omar El Akkad, Roy Scranton, Ashley Shelby, and Michael Svoboda, with moderator Amy Brady from Guernica Magazine, explore how climate change is fundamentally framed in popular culture—and how, in turn, popular culture helps shape our national conversations about the issue.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn this fresh, authoritative version―the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman―this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, this engrossing translation matches the number of lines in the Greek original, thus striding at Homer’s sprightly pace and singing with a voice that echoes Homer’s music. An Oxford University graduate, Emily Wilson is a Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 5:00 PM | Children | Members' Room | open to the public | kindergarten-grade 5 | $10 per person, payable at the door | registration requiredBring your heart and imagination with you to meet award-winning author and illustrator Peter Sís. He will describe his unique art techniques and share his newest book, Robinson.Event Recording
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Thursday, November 1, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredA startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, and a National Book Award finalist, Never Caught is the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave who risked everything to escape the nation’s capital and reach freedom.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredFrom the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: an extraordinary memoir and blistering meditation on fatherhood, race, addiction, and ambition.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredJane Sherron de Hart brings us the first full life—private, public, legal, philosophical—of the 107th Supreme Court justice, one of the most profoundly transformative minds of our time; a book fifteen years in the making, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and her associates.
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Thursday, October 11, 2018 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | Members' Room | open to the public | $20 per person | registration required
Uptown at Night returns to the Members’ Room with a vibrant new lineup of humorous storytellers and comedians: Meghan Daum, C.S. Hanson, Micah Stratton, Henry Alford, Karen Chee, and Martin Dockery.
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Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredMemoirists Susan Buckley, Dawn Drzal, and Giulia Melucci discuss food as personal history, consolation, metaphor, and organizing principle, based on their recent books.
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Friday, September 28, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA lighthearted evening of music and more from the era that brought us the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, celebrating (Head of Events) Sara Holliday's new novel A Thousand Dances.
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Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn this new occasional series, writers and patrons interested in the publishing world are invited to an insightful discussion with one of its stars. Jonathan Galassi has served as publisher at Farrar, Straus & Giroux since 1986 and president since 2002.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn the first edition of this visionary book, Maggie Jackson sounded a prescient warning of a looming crisis: the fragmentation of attention that is eroding our abilities to problem-solve, innovate, and care for one another. Now she offers both a renewed wake-up call and a path forward as we reckon with one of the most pressing problems of our time.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
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Thursday, May 31, 2018 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Open to the public | Members' Room | Free of charge; advance registration requiredIn our occasional series, experts on a current-events topic bring their knowledge to an informal presentation and discussion with readers who want to get beyond the headlines. Join us for a special live recording of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research’s Podcast for Social Research, as three experts on Middle Eastern culture, history, and politics consider the relationship between religion and mass politics in the modern age.
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Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe story of how one woman's long love affair with New York's Central Park led her to organize its rescue from a state of serious decline, returning it to the beautiful place of recreational opportunity and spiritual sustenance that it is today.
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Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the public | Members' Room | free of charge | advance registration requiredClimate change is already happening. Authors Amitav Ghosh and Helen Phillips talk with photographer and filmmaker Nathan Kensinger about the role novelists and artists play in helping others to better imagine its effects.
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Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - 6:00 PM | Reception | For members and guests | Members' Room | 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.
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Monday, April 23, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $20 per person | Advance registration requiredEach month, Theater of the Apes production company plucks a long-forgotten volume from the Library’s shelves and resurrects it as a low-budget variety show - visual art, skits, music, and surprises. This month: My Country by Marie of Romania (1916).
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Thursday, April 19, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the public | Members' Room | free of charge | advance registration requiredClimate change is already happening. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy, speaks with visual artist Zaria Forman, and conservation biologist Gleb Raygorodetskyabout “transitional environments”—that is, regions of land undergoing change so dramatic they’re barely recognizable.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the public | Members' Room | free of charge | advance registration requiredClimate change is already happening. Author William T. Vollmann, playwright Chantal Bilodeau, and journalist David Wallace-Wells approach its dialogues through different mediums—book-length and magazine journalism, and through theatre. They’ll discuss their approach to gathering stories, their thoughts on why those stories matter, and the challenges they’ve faced when shaping issues of climate change into digestible narratives for the public.
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Thursday, March 22, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the public | Members' Room | $15 per person | advance registration requiredThe mysterious, highly influential hidden world of Yale’s secret societies is revealed in a definitive and scholarly history.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the public | Members' Room | $15 per person | advance registration requiredThe spectacular true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’ most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica.
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Monday, February 26, 2018 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the public | Members' Room | $15 per person | advance registration requiredTwo leading scholars discuss their research into Willa Cather’s books and letters and the influence of New York City on her work.
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