A Literary Salon Featuring
Four Books by Harvard Alumni

Including HLS Grads Angie Kim ('93) and
Jonathan Putnam ('92)

Please join us on August 1 to hear four terrific authors--all Harvard alumi--give brief book talks followed by a facilitated discussion, book signing, and reception with appetizers and drinks. The event will take place at Massey & Gail in the penthouse of a new office building at the Wharf with views of the monuments and river. 

HLSA-DC is pleased to co-sponsor this literary salon with the Washington Urban Debate League (WUDL). There is no charge to attend the event, but WUDL hopes that attendees will consider supporting its mission. In just its fourth year, WUDL is already annually serving more than 450 middle and high school debaters in D.C. and P.G. County. In 2018, WUDL was named the Outstanding Urban Debate League by the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues and is listed as “one of the best” local non-profits by the Greater Washington Catalogue for Philanthropy. Controlled studies show that participating in debate improves grades, test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment. It also fosters the kind of intellectual curiosity we hope to cultivate at this event. 

There is limited space, so please RSVP HERE as soon as you’re able. We hope to see you there!

The books are:

(1) A House Divided by Jonathan Putnam. This is the fourth installment in a historical-fiction series about Lincoln as a young lawyer that draws on Jon’s experience as a long-time trial lawyer and on what Pulitzer-Prize-winning Lincoln-biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin called “a historian’s understanding of character and context [combined] with a remarkable narrative drive.” 

(2) Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Regime to the Present Day by Sheri Berman. The book describes the long, tortured steps and regressions on the path to democracy in Europe. As described by William Galston, the Brookings Institutes’s Senior Fellow in Governance, in Sheri’s “able hands, democracy’s history counters the myopia of the present and offers hope for the future.” Sheri is a professor of comparative politics at Barnard.

(3) Knock on Wood: Luck, Chance, and the Meaning of Everything by Jeffrey Rosenthal. As a statistics professor at University of Toronto who plays music in improv comedy shows on the side, Jeff provides an entertaining look at the sort of luck in which a statistician believes, observes that statistics is a way of answering the question of whether something was the result of luck, and describes the various “luck traps” that often make us see causal connections that don’t exist. His first book, Struck by Lightning, was a best seller in Canada.   

(4) Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. Miracle Creek is a best-selling courtroom drama about a Korean immigrant family and a mother on trial for murdering her 8-year-old autistic son. It was a pick for best book of the month by Amazon, IndieNext, and Apple Books, as well as one of Time Magazine’s 11 Best Fiction Books of the Year (so far) and a Washington Post Summer Reads selection. It draws on Angie’s experience as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of three boys.

Thursday, August 1, 2019
6:00pm – 8:30pm

(book talks 6:30-7:30)
 

Massey & Gail

1000 Maine Ave. S.W.

Washington, D.C., 20024

Please share with fellow HLS alumni within your social media and other networks.