Harvard Book Store Channel |
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February 26, 2018
Fifty Years Since MLK
with Brandon M. Terry, Tommie Shelby, Elizabeth Hinton, and Cornel West -
November 14, 2017
Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič
discuss Incontinence of the Void and What IS Sex? with Mladen Dolar -
October 27, 2017
Worldwide Week with Transition Magazine
featuring Phanuel Antwi, David Chariandy, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Moses Kilolo, Danielle Legros Georges, Enzo Silon Surin, and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma -
September 7, 2017
Vanessa Grigoriadis
discusses Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus -
March 22, 2017
Chris Hayes
discusses a Colony in a Nation with Jabari Asim, Frank Rudy Cooper, and Anthony Brooks -
February 22, 2017
Yuval Noah Harari
discusses Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow with Michael Sandel -
February 17, 2017
James R. Valcourt
discusses Systematic: How Systems Biology Is Transforming Modern Medicine -
February 6, 2017
Gender and Color in Comics
A panel discussion featuring Mildred Louis, John Jennings, and Joel Christian Gill -
January 29, 2017
Melissa Fleming
discusses A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, & Survival -
January 9, 2017
Keramet Reiter
discusses 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement -
October 26, 2016
Sara Goldrick-Rab
discusses Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream -
October 24, 2016
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
discusses Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers -
August 29, 2016
An Evening with Pangyrus
Boston's new journal of literature, perspective, arts, and politics -
May 20, 2016
Malcolm K. Sparrow
discusses Handcuffed: What Holds Policing Back, and the Keys to Reform -
April 8, 2016
Thomas Frank
discusses Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? -
February 19, 2016
Hillary L. Chute
discusses Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form -
January 29, 2016
Roberto G. Gonzales
discusses Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America -
December 9, 2015
An Evening of Poetry with Boston Review
featuring Mary Jo Bang, Lucie Brock-Broido, Stephen Burt, and Major Jackson -
October 8, 2015
Roberta Kaplan
discusses Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA with Eric Lander -
September 18, 2015
Daniel Geary and Benjamin Hedin
discuss today's civil rights movement with Eugene Rivers -
June 19, 2015
City by City
featuring Stephen Squibb and contributors Greg Afinogenov, Dan Albert, and Annie Wyman -
June 16, 2015
The Nation’s First 150 Years
featuring Katrina vanden Heuvel, D.D. Guttenplan, and Chloe Maxmin -
March 24, 2015
Barney Frank
discusses Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage -
September 3, 2014
George Marshall
discusses Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change -
May 2, 2014
The Opposite of Loneliness
Essays and stories by Marina Keegan presented by Anne Fadiman, Ratna Gill, and Luke Vargas -
September 28, 2012
Steven Johnson
discusses Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age -
September 28, 2012
Natalie Hopkinson
discusses Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City -
September 21, 2012
Daniel Kantstroom
discusses Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora -
October 18, 2011
Ron Suskind
discusses Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President -
March 4, 2011
Maya Jasanoff
discusses Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
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December 20, 2013
Don’t Watch This If You Are a Bookseller’s Cousin or Mom
What is our discerning staff giving for the holidays? -
September 22, 2011
Minimum Paige: A Harvard Book Store Comic Anthology
A project this heroic could only be accomplished by the most dynamic of duos. -
September 16, 2011
Lucy the Wonder-Pup Picks the Booker
Can this adorable puppy predict the winner of the Man Booker Prize? -
January 21, 2011
HBTV Presents: Jurassic Books
A short film that ponders the possibilities of a large scale book printing robot... -
January 14, 2011
HBTV Is On The Air!
Cambridge's only local, fictional television station that's based out of an independent book store. -
September 8, 2010
Carole
recommends Wrestling with Moses and The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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Michael Waldman
Harvard Book Store welcomes MICHAEL WALDMAN, former Director of Speechwriting for President Bill Clinton, for a discussion of his book The Second Amendment: A Biography.
At a time of renewed debate over guns in America, what does the Second Amendment mean? This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers.
The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men—who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present. As the country spread to the Western frontier, violence spread too. But through it all, gun control was abundant. In the 20th century, with Prohibition and gangsterism, the first federal control laws were passed. In all four separate times the Supreme Court ruled against a constitutional right to own a gun.
The present debate picked up in the 1970s—part of a backlash to the liberal 1960s and a resurgence of libertarianism. A newly radicalized NRA entered the campaign to oppose gun control and elevate the status of an obscure constitutional provision. In 2008, in a case that reached the Court after a focused drive by conservative lawyers, the US Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual right to gun ownership. Famous for his theory of “originalism,” Justice Antonin Scalia twisted it in this instance to base his argument on contemporary conditions.
In The Second Amendment: A Biography, Michael Waldman shows that our view of the amendment is set, at each stage, not by a pristine constitutional text, but by the push and pull, the rough and tumble of political advocacy and public agitation.
Michael Waldman is President of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving the systems of democracy and the Constitution. He was Director of Speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995-99 and is the author of My Fellow Americans, POTUS Speaks and three other books. Waldman is a graduate of Columbia College and NYU School of Law. He comments widely in the media on law and policy.