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Amherst Books
8 Main Street  Amherst, MA 01002  ·   413.256.1547  ·  800.503.5865  ·  books@amherstbooks.com
Events

< April 2008 >

Events listed in white are at the bookshop; events listed in yellow are elsewhere.

All events are free & open to the public.

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Joseph Stiglitz & William Easterly will discuss “Reducing Global Povery” in Converse Hall’s Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College.   Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, is professor at Columbia University. He is author of, among other books, The Three Trillion Dollar War (with Linda Bilmes), Making Globalization Work, & Globalization & Its Discontents.   Easterly, who now teaches at NYU, has been at the World Bank & at the Institute for International Economics & the Center for Global Development. & He is author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill & So Little Good & The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics.   For more information, see the Amherst College press release.
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Alice Notley will read in Memorial Hall at the University of Massachusetts as part of the M.F.A. Program’s Visiting Writers Series.   Notley’s most recent books are Grave of Light: New & Selected Poems & In The Pines.   Overall, she is the author of more than 20 books of poetry.  Notley was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize & winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.   In the spring of 2001 she received an Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters as well as the Poetry Society of America’s Shelly Memorial Award.
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Paul Fattaruso will read from his new book, Bicycle.   Somewhere between prose poem & sacred incantation lies Bicycle.   In spare, comically surreal & beautiful prose, Fattaruso does for bicycles what Richard Brautigan did for trout—he elevates them to the status of an idol.   An intimate, inventive, and vibrant book.   Paul Fattaruso is the author of Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf.   His work has appeared in Volt, Jubilat, Fence, Black Warrior Review, Another Chicago Magazine, & The Tiny, among other journals.
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Retired General Wesley Clark & Andrew Bacevich will discuss “Reinstating the National Draft” in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College.   Clark served 34 years as an officer in the U. S. Army.   As a captain, he led an infantry unit in Vietnam, where he was seriously wounded.   Over the next 30 years, he helped train, organize & equip the U.S. Army, participated in the negotiations which ended conflict in Bosnia &, in his final duty as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, led the forces of 19 nations in a successful military campaign to end Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.   He is currently Chairman & CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory & consulting firm he started in 2004.   He is author of A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor & Country, & Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism & The American Empire.   Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University & former director of BU’s Center for International Relations.   A graduate of West Point, he received his doctorate in American diplomatic history from Princeton University.   Before joining the faculty of BU in 1998, he taught at West Point & Johns Hopkins University & served for over two decades in the U. S. Army.   During his time in the service, he participated in tours in Vietnam & the Persian Gulf, achieving the rank of Colonel before retiring in the early 1990s.   He is author of numerous books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, & American Empire: The Realities & Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy .   For more information, see the Amherst College press release.
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Robert Jensen, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, will talk about his latest book, Getting Off: Pornography & the End of Masculinity.   Jensen blends personal anecdotes from his years as a feminist anti–pornography activist with scholarly research.   In his trademark conversational style, he shows how mainstream pornography reinforces social definitions of manhood & influences men’s attitudes about women & how to treat them.   In his research, Jensen draws on a variety of critical approaches to media & power.   Much of his work has focused on pornography & the radical feminist critique of sexuality & men’s violence.   In more recent work, he has addressed questions of race through a critique of white privilege & institutionalized racism.   In addition to teaching & research, Jensen writes for popular media, both alternative & mainstream.   His opinion & analytic pieces on such subjects as foreign policy, politics, & race have appeared in papers around the country.  He also is involved in a number of activist groups working against U.S. military & economic domination of the rest of the world.   Aside from Getting Off, Jensen is the author several books, including, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism & White Privilege; & Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity.
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"Eric Schocket Memorial Talk"   Cora Kaplan will talk on “‘Like Love’: Class & Feeling in the New Millennium” in the Main Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall, Hampshire College.   Kaplan is Visiting Professor in the School of English & Drama at Queen Mary, University of London & Emerita Professor of English at the University of Southampton.   A feminist cultural critic with a focus on class & gender from the 19th century forward, her work includes Sea Changes: Essays in Culture & Feminism & Genders (with David Glover).   Her most recent book is Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism.

Her title “Like Love” is a reference to the writings of British historian E.P. Thompson who argued in The Making of the English Working Class that class was not an identity but a relationship—like love.  

The Eric Schocket Memorial Talk is named in memorial for Eric Schocket who taught American Literature at Hampshire College from 1996 until his death in 2006.   A much–admired teacher and colleague, his courses inspired a decade of students.   Nationally, he was a leading figure in working–class studies.  His writings on figures like Herman Melville, Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells & Langston Hughes engaged the important relationship between class & culture.   His book, Vanishing Moments: Class & American Literature, was published posthumously in 2007.

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Conservation biologist & author Laura Williams will talk at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture (Webster Hall, second floor), Amherst College, about her life & work in remote nature preserves in central Russia & on the Kamchatka peninsula, in the Russian Far East.   She will illustrate her talk with photographs taken by her husband, Igor Shpilyonok, an internationally–known nature photographer, & discuss her new book, The Stork’s Nest: Life & Love in the Russian Countryside.
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Stephen Yenser will read at Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), Amherst College, as part of the Amherst College Writing Center's Visiting Writers Series.   Yenser is the author of two volumes of poetry—Blue Guide & The Fire in All Things, which was selected by Richard Howard to receive the 1992 Walt Whitman Award.   He has also published a collection of essays, A Boundless Field: American Poetry at Large, as well as The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill & Circle to Circle: The Poetry of Robert Lowell.   With J. D. McClatchy, he edited James Merrill’s Collected Poems, Collected Novels & Plays of James Merrill, & The Changing Light at Sandover.
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Philip Weimerskirch will give the keynote address at the dedication of the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies’ Stansbury Press.   The public is invited to the dedication & those in attendance will be given a souvenir broadside, the first work to come off the press in its new location.   Weimerskirch was, most recently, Special Collections Librarian at Providence Public Library in Rhode Island, & is a noted historian of printing in America.   He is the leading authority on the printing press invented in America by Abraham Ogier Stansbury.   The Center’s own Stansbury Press, one of the few preserved & still in operation, works in the same way as Renaissance presses & will be used to train students & the public in Renaissance printing.   Caxton’s Corner is a gift to the Center by James & Carol Kelly.   The press itself was a gift to the Center from the New England Printing Museum in Andover, Massachusetts.   (The Renaissance Center is at 650 East Pleasant Street in Amherst.)
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Join University of Massachusetts professor Raymond La Raja in celebrating the publication of his new book, Small Change: Money, Political Parties, & Campaign Finance Reform.   Tracing the history of the U.S. campaign finance system from the late nineteenth century through the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, La Raja proves that legislators intentionally design regulations to gain advantage over their partisan rivals.   Drawing upon a wealth of historical & recent evidence, he offers recommendations for reforming campaign finance in ways that actually promote fair competition among candidates & guarantee their accountability to voters.
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“Live Lit”   Students in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Massachusetts will read from their recent work.   Evenings usually include a mix of poetry & fiction.   Tonight’s readers are Ashwati Parameshwar, Janel Nockleby, Emily Renaud.
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Madeleine Kunin will be talking about her new book, Pearls, Politics, & Power: How Women Can Win & Lead.   Kunin looks at women’s leadership & the role of gender stereotyping for women Congresswomen, Governors, Corporate CEOs & for President.   She interviews Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, analyzes her campaign, & asks the question: “Is the country ready?”   She interviews a wide variety of women in elected office, U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez, Deborah Pryce, & Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Senators Susan Collins, & Amy Klobuchar, among other women leaders at various levels of elective office.   Robert Reich writes, “Here’s the book we’ve been waiting for—an insider’s view of the role of women in politics by one of America’s most distinguished public servants.   Governor, federal executive, ambassador, Madeleine Kunin has seen it all.   And her keen eye & her deep understanding of the challenge of gender in wielding power has produced a wonderfully insightful book that should be read by every women, & man, who wants to lead.”   Kunin was the Governor of Vermont from 1985 until 1991, as a member of the Democratic Party.   She also served as United States Ambassador to Switzerland from 1996 to 1999.   She was Vermont's first &, to date, only female governor as well as the first Jewish governor of Vermont.   She was also the first Jewish woman to be elected governor of any U.S. state.
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Join Carl Oglesby in celebrating the publication of his memoir, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti–War Movement .   Oglesby, who recently retired to Amherst, was president of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) during its heyday; spoke on the same platform as Coretta Scott King & Benjamin Spock at the 1965 antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C.; traveled to war–ravaged Vietnam & to the international war crimes tribunal in Scandinavia, where he met with Jean–Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir.   Oglesby helped initiate the Venceremos Brigade, which dispatched thousands of American students to bring in the Cuban sugar harvest.   He participated in the protest outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention & was a witness for the defense at the trial of the Chicago Seven the following year.   Eventually, after extensive battles with those in SDS who saw its future more as a vanguard guerrilla group than as an open mass movement, Oglesby was drummed out of the organization shortly before it collapsed when key members of its leadership quit to set up the Weather Underground.   Oglesby is also author of Containment & Change, The Yankee & Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate & The JFK Assassination: The Facts & Theories.
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Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by Kathleen ScottTradition & Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts.   Based on Scott’s 2004 Lyell lectures at Oxford, Tradition & Innovation establishes criteria for genuine artistic originality in manuscript books.   (Read more)   Kathleen L. Scott is the author of, among other works, Later Gothic Manuscripts; Dated & Datable English Manuscript Borders c.1396-1499; & The Caxton Master & His Patrons.   She is also general editor of Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII.
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Amherst College political science professor Kristin Bumiller has a new book!   Join us in celebrating the publication of In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence.   About the book, Patricia Williams wrote, “Kristin Bumiller describes a sane, intelligent path through the cyclical race & gender passion plays that have spun out—and spun out of control—on the national media stage.   From the Central Park Jogger case to O. J. Simpson, Bumiller is never polemical.   This book provides much–needed perspective as she details the conscious & unconscious ingredients in how such polarization is choreographed, & how boundaries are subtly but intransigently marked.”   (Read more about the book here!)   Bumiller is also author of The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims.
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Gabriel Fried will read at Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), Amherst College, as part of the Amherst College Writing Center's Visiting Writers Series.   Fried’s poems have appeared in a number of journals, including The American Scholar, Drunken Boat, The Gettysburg Review, The Great River Review, & The Paris Review.   His new volume of poetry, Making the New Lamb Take, won the 2006 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.
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Meet M.P. Barker & Marissa Doyle, authors of two new novels for young adults.   Barker, who lives in East Longmeadow, is author of A Difficult Boy, a riveting historical novel about the friendship that grows between two young indentured servants, one of them Irish, as they struggle to survive their harsh master in nineteenth century New England.   It is 1839, Nine–year–old Ethan does not want to work for Mr. Lyman, the wealthy shopkeeper in their small Massachusetts’ town.   But Ethan has no choice—it is the only way to pay off his family’s debt to the man.   Ethan tries to befriend the Lymans’ other indentured servant, but Daniel, as everyone says, is a difficult boy.   Sixteen years old, Irish, & moody, Daniel brushes off Ethan as if he were a pesky gnat.   Ethan resolves to ignore the brusque older boy, but is then shocked to see how cruelly Mr. Lyman’s blows, & the two boys have only each other. Will Ethan be able to save his friend?   And will others finally have the courage to do what is right for this not–so–difficult boy?  

Doyle is author of Bewitching Season.   Set in 1837 London, young daughters of viscounts pined for handsome, titled husbands, not careers.   And certainly not careers in magic.   At least, most of them didn’t.   Shy, studious Persephone Leland would far rather devote herself to her secret magic studies than enter society & look for a suitable husband.   But right as the inevitable season for “coming out” is about to begin, Persy & her twin sister discover that their governess in magic has been kidnapped as part of a plot to gain control of the soon–to–be Queen Victoria.   Racing through Mayfair ballrooms & royal palaces, the sisters overcome bad millinery, shady royal spinsters, & a mysterious Irish wizard.   And along the way, Persy learns that husband hunting isn’t such an odious task after all, if you can find the right quarry....

  1:15 P.M.   (Amherst Cinema Arts Center)   Film screening: Atacama, The Flowering Desert

  2:30 P.M.   (Amherst Cinema Arts Center)   Keynote Address by David Gessner.

Gessner is editor of Ecotone & author of Soaring with Fidel; Sick of Nature; & Return of the Osprey
    4:15 P.M.   (Emily Dickinson Homestead)   Roundtable: “Local Solutions, Intentional Living”

     8:00 P.M.   (Unitarian Church of Amherst)   Mini Readings by Many: from Pliny to Barry Lopez, Poetry & Prose.

12:30 P.M.   (Amherst Cinema Arts Center)   Seachange: Science, Poetry, & Whale Song: whale biologist Roger Payne & actress Lisa Harrow

  1:30 P.M.   (Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts)   Magazine & Book Fair opens

  2:00 P.M.   (Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts)   Roundtable: Activism & Art, Science & the Soul

  3:30 P.M.   (Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts)   Roundtable: Eco–literacy & Environmental Publishing

  5:00 P.M.   (Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts)   Reading: Derrick Jensen

Jensen is a writer, activist, small farmer, & bee keeper.   He is author of A Language Older than Words, & Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, & Eros.
     8:00 P.M.   (Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts)   Reading: Gretel Ehrlich.
Ehrlich is author of The Solace of Open Spaces; Questions of Heaven; John MuirNature’s Visionary; & The Future of Ice.

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Barbara Pearson will talk about her new book, Raising a Bilingual Child, in the Large Meeting Room at the Jones Library.   Pearson is a Research Associate in Linguistics & an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has over twenty years of research experience in the fields of language acquisition & bilingualism & did ground-breaking work on bilingual acquisition & assessment with her research group at the University of Miami.   Raising a Bilingual Child provides parents with information, encouragement, & practical advice for creating a positive bilingual environment.   It offers both an overview of why parents should raise their children to speak more than one language & detailed steps parents can take to integrate two languages into their child’s daily routine.   It dispels the myth that bilingualism may hinder a child’s academic performance & explains that learning languages at a young age can actually enhance a child’s overall intellectual development.   Thomas Roeper, Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, author of The Prism of Grammar, wrote that the book “is a wonderfully written, sparkling composite of research results, personal narratives, practical advice, & wise enthusiasm for the project of bilingualism.”
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“jubilat/Jones Reading Series”   Loren Goodman & Carol Ann Davis, will read at the Jones Library in Amherst.   Goodman, who has published poetry in many journals, is author of Famous Americans, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, & a new chapbook, Suppository Writing.   He currently teaches creative writing & English literature at Yonsei University in Seoul.   Davis, who recently published her first volume of poetry, Psalm, directs the undergraduate creative writing program at the College of Charleston & edits the literary journal Crazyhorse.   She recently won an NEA individual artist’s grant in poetry.

The reading will be followed by a Q&A.   For more information: jubilat.org
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Join us in celebrating the publication of a new book by Dean Nimmer.   Art from Intuition: Overcoming Your Fears & Obstacles to Making Art offers artists everywhere a unique system for freeing their own creative intuition, the sixth sense that directs an artist’s drive & work.   More than 50 practical exercises take the reader from the most basic intuitive art to more sophisticated techniques.   Each exercise, supported by step–by–step instructions, is accessible to artists at every level, & the exercises can be done in any order.   Works of art by students & contemporary artists exemplify how exciting & how productive a freer, more intuitive approach to making art can be.   Note: an original drawing will be included in each copy of the book sold at the reception!   Nimmer, a nationally respected artist, was the chair of the fine arts department at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston for 23 years.   He has been a guest lecturer & visiting artist at Harvard, Yale, MIT, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Art, Winchester College in Barcelona, Burren College of the Arts in Ireland, & many other institutions.   He lives in Holyoke.

Last updated 16 October, 2008Site Map