Our Events

Past Events

  • Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Whitridge Room | For young members only | Recommended for children in Kindergarten and up | Free of charge

    We will meet IN PERSON for our final session of Young Poets Society. Our 2021-22 elementary age program explores the rhymes, rhythms, and pizzazz of poetry.

  • Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    A 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Adam Van Doren, In the Founders' Footsteps: Landmarks of the American Revolution
  • Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    A "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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Dr. Kinari Webb, Guardians of the Trees: A Journey of Hope Through Healing the Planet: A Memoir, with Anna Gibb Hallemeier
  • Thursday, April 28, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    The 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Quincy Troupe, Duende: Poems, 1966-Now, with Willie Perdomo
  • Tuesday, April 19, 2022 - 12:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    A playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives.
    Embedded thumbnail for Dennis Duncan, Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
  • Thursday, April 14, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages

    Join us on YouTube at the time above for our virtual storytime for all ages!

  • Thursday, April 14, 2022 - 11:00 AM | Whitridge Room Event | Whitridge Room | for members only | $60 for the four sessions | registration required
    This novel about Isabel Archer, a young American woman visiting extended family in England, has had admirers ever since its publication in the late 19th century - and the start of the 21st century has accorded an extraordinary degree of attention to the book and to its Manhattan-born author. Within a period of thirteen years have come a biography of the novel, a sequel to the novel, and a novel about the life of the author! Let’s read them all.
  • Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | Recommended for children in Kindergarten and Up

    Let's meet on Zoom at the time above for a face-to-face storytime. Our 2021-22 elementary age program explores the rhymes, rhythms, and pizzazz of poetry.

  • Tuesday, April 12, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public | $30 for the remaining two sessions | registration required

    When Ricardo Reyes took the name of Pablo Neruda, he started the most brilliant career in modern world poetry. He lived for 69 years and left more than 3,000 pages of published poems.

  • Tuesday, April 12, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    A 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Hawa Allan, Insurrection: Rebellion, Civil Rights, and the Paradoxical State of Black Citizenship
  • Thursday, April 7, 2022 - 2:00 PM | Online Event | on the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public; free for members | separate sessions | registration required
    This National Poetry Month, join poet and teacher Esther Cohen to write the poems we've always intended to write.
  • Wednesday, April 6, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    To 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Jonathan Galassi and Robyn Creswell, The FSG Poetry Anthology, with dramatic readers
  • Thursday, March 31, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    Meet the incredible Mrs. Frank Leslie, scandalous Gilded Age celebrity, publishing tycoon, and unsung suffrage hero who changed the world for women.
    Embedded thumbnail for Betsy Prioleau, Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age
  • Sunday, March 27, 2022 - 3:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration required
    A 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War
  • Wednesday, March 23, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration required
    This “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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, with James Pawelski
  • Monday, March 21, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    A daring, category-confounding, and ruthlessly funny novel from National Book Award-honored author Edmund White that explores polyamory and bisexuality, aging and love.
    Embedded thumbnail for Edmund White, A Previous Life, with Bill Goldstein
  • Wednesday, March 16, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members’ Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    Library members read from their own short stories, novels, poetry, criticism, memoir, and plays.
  • Monday, March 14, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration required
    An 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."
    Embedded thumbnail for Tom Chaffin, Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World
  • Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | Recommended for children in Kindergarten and Up

    Let's meet on Zoom at the time above for a face-to-face storytime.

  • Thursday, March 3, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room/Livestreamed | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    An 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Erin L. Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments
  • Friday, February 25, 2022 - 10:00 AM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    Libraries, Reading Communities and Cultural Formation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic is a three-year project based in the History Department at the University of Liverpool, investigating the contribution of books to social, cultural, and political change in the eighteenth century. The project's online team, together with partner libraries, will be running a Book of the Month Club throughout 2022, drawing attention to books that appealed to eighteenth-century library goers. This month, the team has selected Henry Fielding's groundbreaking novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Read the book or an excerpt for discussion, and learn about this book's popularity and impact.
  • Thursday, February 24, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration required
    In 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Carl Bernstein, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, with Lance Morrow
  • Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration required
    A 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.
    Embedded thumbnail for Anna Pitoniak with Jonathan Darman, Our American Friend: A Novel
  • Thursday, February 10, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages

    Join us on YouTube at the time above for our virtual storytime for all ages!

  • Wednesday, February 9, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | Recommended for children in Kindergarten and Up

    Let's meet on Zoom at the time above for a face-to-face storytime.

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