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

< September 2019 >

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

Unless noted otherwise all events are free & open to the public.

Noontime Book Conversation Join the monthly reading group for a discussion, this month, of Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady.   Meeting ordinarily on the second Tuesday of every month from 12:00pm until 1:00pm, the group has no fixed members (although quite a few regulars).   Readers are urged to nominate a book to be read, especially if they are willing to lead the discussion.   We focus on fiction & drama with occasional foray into the graphic novel.   We limit the length of our selections to about 200 pages, although this is a guideline rather than a fixed rule.   We believe in the joy of re-reading, so some of our selections are works that many have already read at least once.   The noontime book group is under the general oversight of Michael Greenebaum (mlgreenebaum33@gmail.com) who selects the books & leads the discussions.   He is happy to hear from those with ideas or questions.   Amherst Books offers a 10% discount on the month’s book for those who plan to join the group.

(October’s book will be Melville’s Billy Budd.)
Renowned author & National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee will read from recent work.   Lee is author of the acclaimed novel Pachinko.   She is beginning a three year term as a writer in residence at Amherst College.  Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
Madeline ffitch will read from her new novel, Stay & Fight.   Ffitch, who received her MFA from the UMass MFA Program, is also author of a collection of stories, Valparaiso Round the Horn.
Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College, will talk about his new book, The Death Penalty on the Ballot: American Democracy & the Fate of Capital Punishment.   Sarat’s academic publications are voluminous; some of his recent books include Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions & America's Death Penalty; as well as the edited volumes, Final Judgments: The Death Penalty in American Law & Culture, & Human Rights & Legal Judgments: The American Story; & co-edited, with colleagues Lawrence Douglas & Martha Umphrey, Criminals & Enemies, & Guns in Law.
Help us celebrate the publication of a new book, The Anthropology of Dragons: A Global Perspective by Jean Forward, Rachel Keeffe & Virginia McLaurin.
Yael Zerubavel will talk about her new book, Desert in the Promised Land: Memory, Space & the Counterplace in Israeli Culture at the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, & Memory Studies, 758 North Pleasant Street, UMass, Amherst.   Zerubavel is professor emerita of Jewish studies & history; & founding director, The Allen & Joan Bildner Center for the study of Jewish Life.   Her previous books include, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition.
Simone White will read from recent work.   White is author of numerous collections of poetry, including Of Being Dispersed & Dear Angel of Death.   She is a Cave Canem fellow & was selected as a New American Poet for the Poetry Society of America n 2013.  Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Visiting Writers Series.
Opening reception for: ”A Short History of Portraiture: Robert Seydel” Hampshire College Art Gallery, Johnson Library, Hampshire College, Amherst with Seydel curator Sura Levine & special guest Gail Seydel.   For information, go here.
Help us celebrate the publication of a new book by Amherst College professor Ronald Rosbottom, Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945.   Rosbottom is also author of the acclaimed When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944, which was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Join the discussion!   Amherst College professors Nusrat Chowdhury, author of Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh, & Robert Samet, author of Deadline: Populism & the Press in Venezuela, will respond to issues such as populism, crowds, & popular democracy, in their two books.
Roy Scranton will talk at the Olver Design Building, 551 N Pleasant Street, UMass, Amherst, about his new book, We’re Doomed. Now What?: Essays on War & Climate Change.   Scranton is also author of the recent novel, I ❤️ Oklahoma, & Total Mobilization: World War II & American Literature.   Part of the Phillip Glass weekend.   For more information see here.
jubilat/Jones Reading Series at the Jones Library, Amherst.   Melanie Maria Goodreaux & Alicia Mountain will read.   Meet the poets at an informal Q & A session that follows the reading.
Join Stanley Rabinowitz in celebrating the publication of his new book, And Then Came Dance: The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom.   Rabinowitz, who edited Akim Volynsky’ Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925, is Henry Steele Commager Professor of Russian, Emeritus, & was director of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture for many years.
Valley author, Stephen Billias will read from his new collection of stories, A Book of Fields: Tales from the Pioneer Valley.   As Tinky Weisblat writes in the Greenfield Recorder, “Billias deftly paints portraits of places & people in them that are full of color — and often full of humor & heartbreak.   His characters are fictional yet they will seem true & familiar to the reader.”

Janna Levin will read from recent work at the Commonwealth Honor College’s Events Hall, UMass, Amherst,   Levin is a professor of physics & astronomy, & director of sciences at Pioneer Works, a center for arts & sciences in Brooklyn.   She has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, & gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime.   Her most recent book is Black Hole Blues & Other Songs from Outer Space.
Hosted by Amherst College professors Alexander George & Nishi Shah, Jill Lepore & Ross Douthat will talk in the Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College, as part of this year’s Point/Counterpoint series.   For more information go here.


Visiting MFA program writers André Alexis & Mona Awad will read from recent work.   Awad’s debut novel, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, won the Amazon Best First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award & was shortlisted for the Giller Prize & the Arab American Book Award.   Her new novel, Bunny, has been optioned by AMC Networks to develop into a TV series.   Alexis’ most recent novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize & the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.   His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, & was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.   Sponsored by UMass MFA’s Visiting Writer Series.
A reception & book launch will be held in Room N151 & the lobby nearby, Integrated Learning Center, UMass, Amherst, for Waging Peace in Vietnam: US Soldiers & Veterans Who Opposed the War.   Based on the exhibition by Ron Carver, the exhibit & book show how the GI movement unfolded, from the numerous anti-war coffee houses springing up outside military bases, to the hundreds of GI newspapers giving an independent voice to active soldiers, to the stockade revolts & the strikes & near-mutinies on naval vessels and in the air force.   The book presents first-hand accounts, oral histories, & a wealth of underground newspapers, posters, flyers, & photographs documenting the actions of GIs & veterans who took part in the resistance, as well as fourteen original essays by leading scholars & activists.
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