Please register for this free event on Eventbrite. Registered attendees will receive a link to join the Zoom webinar hosted by Simon & Schuster. Registration will close at 3pm ET on October 14.

We’re excited to participate in Simon & Schuster’s inaugural AuthorFest, a seasonal author series in partnership with book festivals and literary series. Join # 1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa as they discuss Peril, the extraordinary story of the end of one presidency and the beginning of another. Mindy Marqués, vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster and the former executive editor of The Miami Herald, will moderate.

Our opening session spotlights the profound effects of the pandemic and what we must do to shore up the very foundation of our society to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future. In the highly lauded Apollo’s Arrow, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis discusses what it means to live with plague. In The Contagion Next Time, physician, epidemiologist and bestselling author Sandro Galea argues that poor public health, economic inequalities, and racism are largely to blame for our inadequate preparation and response to the crisis. Our host for this timely session is Vanessa Kerry, director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Sometimes, the more you try to ignore or deny something, the more it asserts itself in your psyche. In the collective American psyche, that buried issue is slavery. Poet, scholar, and Atlantic Monthly staff writer Clint Smith, in his revelatory book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, investigates how nine Civil War historic sites memorialize or distort their subject. Smith’s interviews, scholarship, and personal anecdotes about these sites poignantly and, at times, shockingly reveal the scars on the American psyche. Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed, whose works include the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello, blends a fascinating memoir of growing up in Texas with a history of slavery in that state in her latest, On Juneteenth. It turns out that slaveholding was central to the economy of the state best known for cowboys and BBQ. Join us for a rare opportunity to see these two stellar scholars together for an exploration of what has been buried for far too long. Moderated by WBUR’s Meghna Chakrabarti. Sponsored by the Krupp Family Foundation.

This session takes a wide-ranging look at women and work. Danielle Dreilinger’s The Secret History of Home Economics traces the history of this misunderstood field and its surprising role in creating opportunities for women in careers like chemistry, engineering, psychology, and business. Colleen Ammerman, in Glass Half-Broken, asks why women, who make up the majority of college educated workers in the United States, are still underrepresented in positions of power and status. As an exception that proves the rule, Dominique Mielle, in Damsel in Distressed, brings humor to her description of life as a very successful woman in the mostly male world of hedge funds. Minda Harts, professor of public service at NYU Wagner and founder of The Memo, offers actionable advice for women of color to cope with everything from the wage gap to microaggressions in Right Within. Our host is Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of the social impact agency, Women Online, host of the HBR podcast The Anxious Achiever, and author of Hiding in the Bathroom. Join this group of kick-ass, powerful women for an eye-opening and provocative session about work. Sponsored by Western Governors University.

Have you considered liquid soap lately? You know, the kind in a plastic bottle with a pump? Laurie David, documentary filmmaker, activist, and author of Imagine It: A Handbook for a Happier Planet, explains that liquid soap was a solution in search of a problem, and if we all switched back to bar soap, the world would be a better place. Turns out that ubiquitous plastic bottle is depositing microplastic in our bodies, the ocean, and everywhere else. This, and many other ideas on how we can all become environmental activists, will be the topic of the conversation between Laurie and Tatiana Schlossberg, whose book Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have won first place in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award. The time for personal and collective action is now, so tune in and join these engaging and engaged women for a lively discussion of what you can do, sponsored by Cambridge Trust.

Join Nate Powell and Andrew Aydin, two masters of the art of visual storytelling, for a discussion of their powerful recent work. Both Aydin, as co-writer, and Powell, as artist, produced the landmark trilogy, March, about the early days in the movement of civil rights icon and congressman John Lewis. The story continues in Run, about the years following the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The stories of police brutality, voter suppression, and segregationist rhetoric in this critically lauded volume resonate today. Nate Powell will also share Save It for Later: Promises, Protest, and Parenthood, his poignant memoir in graphic essays of living and parenting in the Trump era, which Booklist called a “virtuoso work of artistry” in its starred review. Boston Public Library’s President, David Leonard, will lead the conversation. Sponsored by the Boston Public Library.

Three authors, themselves leaders, put out a call to their friends, neighbors, and countrymen and women: it’s time to wake up and DO something. Tracy Swinton Bailey, in Forever Free: A True Story of Hope in the Fight for Child Literacy, makes an impassioned plea for literacy as the scaffolding on which success is built and describes how she started Freedom Readers, a nonprofit whose one-to-one tutoring model has succeeded in the rural South and has the potential to succeed across the United States.  Drawing on thirty years of coaching Fortune 500 executives,  Priscilla H. Douglas gleans inspiring stories of those who lead with consciousness and compassion in Woke Leadership: Profits, Prophets and Purpose. Former Harvard Business School professor Steven S. Rogers, in A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues, uses historical research, case studies, and personal anecdotes to illustrate the causes of racial wealth disparity in the United States and presents practical solutions. You won’t want to miss this inspiring and important discussion, moderated by Steve Grossman, CEO of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. Sponsored by Other Press.

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the three thousand preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “The Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? Join us for a discussion of these definitive cultural and political movements which impact us to this day, featuring two remarkable authors and experts—Mae Ngai (The Chinese Question) and Jia Lynn Yang (One Mighty and Irresistible Tide)—on the topics of Chinese American history and immigration. This session is hosted by our partners at New England Historic Genealogical Society and presented in partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library, and GBH Forum Network.

Menstruation: honored, celebrated, revered, feared, ignored, misunderstood. Anita Diamant (The Red Tent) charts the flow of period history in her new book Period. End of Sentence., including generations of misinformation and silence. But it's not all bad news! A new generation of activists are committed to breaking the cycle of period stigma, and popular culture seems to be following suit. The Boston Globe's Meredith Goldstein moderates.

After screening the documentary film A Reckoning in Boston at 7pm, join us on Crowdcast for a live Q&A with filmmakers James Rutenbeck, Carl Chandler, and Kafi Dixon, moderated by Rep. Liz Miranda. This screening and discussion are sponsored by Mass Humanities.

The history of the Black liberation movement has been rooted in the organizing and mobilizing capabilities of Black institutions. This session will examine the legacy, power, and potential of Black institutions and how they have empowered communities, launched social movements, and produced activists who have served on the frontlines of America’s ongoing struggle for social, political, and economic justice. The panel will highlight the work of three scholars who have increased our understanding of the significant local and national impact that institutions have played in advancing the freedom dreams of Black folks in America and how this spirit of agency and “building up our own” has evolved into the present day. Panelists include Martha S. Jones (Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All), Kate Masur (Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction), and Eddie R. Cole (The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom). The moderator for this session, developed in partnership with Boston’s Museum of African American History and sponsored by the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation, is Jelani M. Favors, author of Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, winner of the 2020 MAAH Stone Book Award.

In All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, Harvard historian and MacArthur Fellow Tiya Miles tells the unforgettable story of an antique piece of fabric, a sack that was given by an enslaved woman to her young daughter, Ashley, before the child  was sold away from her. In 1921, Ashley’s granddaughter told Ashley’s story in 53 powerful words that she embroidered on the sack. Now housed at the Smithsonian, it stands as a unique artifact, a synecdoche, as Miles says, of American slavery. In the absence of written records of the lives of slaves, objects become the bearers of information. Miles brilliantly explores what Ashley’s sack says not only about the inhuman, twisted institution of slavery and the paucity of histories about Black women and families, but also about the meaning of love. Join Tiya Miles and Lee Pelton, President and CEO of the Boston Foundation, for a discussion of this moving and highly readable work of social history. Sponsored by the Wagner Foundation.