McNally Jackson Books - The New York City Bookstore - How History Was Made: Books That Inspired A President

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Featured Event

Monday, September 6,

A.L. Kennedy

author of What Becomes

What Becomes

Don't miss out on this special Labor Day surprise. The internationally revered Kennedy shares with us her comedic repertoire. “Her stand-up is startlingly good. She works the audience and makes the most of her cleverness with words, her knack for seeing things freshly. She has a great riff about people scraping moss off each other every morning in Scotland, but the audience seems most to enjoy the material about pubic hair." - The Guardian

She's assertive, well-timed, and she will be at McNally Jackson Books for one night only.

Ongoing Events

•THE SPANISH LANGUAGE DISCUSSION GROUP• Led by Javier Molea, this group meets Saturdays at noon in the Spanish literature section downstairs. It's open to all who wish to practice their Spanish while discussing literature.

•OUR FICTION BOOK CLUB• Led by Sarah McNally, this discussion group meets the first Monday of every month, at 7pm downstairs. They'll be discussing The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya. Please note that due to Labor Day, the book club will be meeting on the second Monday of September, 9/13.

•OUR ART & BEAUTY BOOK CLUB• Led by Adjua Greaves, this discussion group meets the second Wednesday of every month, at 7pm downstairs. On September 8th the book club will be discussing A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World by Marcia Tucker.

•OUR GRAPHIC NOVEL BOOK CLUB• Led by Evan Narcisse, this discussion group meets the first Thursday of every month, at 7pm downstairs. At our next meeting on September 10th, the book club will be discussing Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams III. Please note that the book club will be meeting on Friday, September 10.

•KIDS STORYTIME• Resident storyteller Yvonne Brooks leads a storytime with with arts and crafts for kids ages 3 - 7, every Saturday at noon in the children’s section. Baby Storytime with storyteller Stewart Dawes takes place on Friday at 4:00 PM for ages 0 - 2.

NOTE All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. For more information about store events, email events coordinator Dustin Kurtz.

Events


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How History Was Made: Books That Inspired A President

Friday, February 13 2009, 7:00pm - 8:00pm

With panelists Eric Alterman, Susan Jacoby, David Samuels, and Colm Toibin

This in-depth panel discussion, inspired by our bookstore display of over 50 pivotal titles in Barack Obama's life, will put his presidency in a literary context. By examining the intense period of reading and scholarship Obama undertook in his early twenties, our panelists will explore the potential impact of Obama's love of reading on his presidency and on the world of books and ideas. The panel includes Eric Alterman, columnist for the The Nation and creator of the blog Altercation; Susan Jacoby, bestselling author of The Age of American Unreason; David Samuels, editor at Harper's Magazine; and Colm Toibin, award-winning novelist and author most recently of Mothers And Sons.

By popular request, below is the list of books discussed by panelists and featured on our in-store display. Click here to order any of these titles from McNally Jackson via email.

Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals

St.Augustine: The Confessions

James Baldwin: Go Tell It On the Mountain, Notes of A Native Son

Taylor Branch: Parting The Waters

Robert Caro: The Power Broker

E.L. Doctorow: The Book of Daniel, Loon Lake, Ragtime, World’s Fair

W. E. B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance

Erik Erikson: Gandhi’s Truth

Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth

Graham Greene: The Power and The Glory, The Quiet American

David Halberstam: The Best and The Brightest

Langston Hughes: Collected Poems

Thomas Jefferson: The Collected Writings

Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook

James Madison: The Federalist Papers

Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, Moby-Dick

Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon, Tar Baby

Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist, The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Reinhold Niebuhr: The Irony of American History, Moral Man & Immoral Society

Marilynne Robinson: Gilead

Philip Roth: Ghost Writer, My Life as A Man, Portnoy’s Complaint

Maurice Sendak: Where the Wild Things Are

William Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear

Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth Of Nations

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward

John Steinbeck: In Dubious Battle

Studs Terkel: Working

Paul Tillich: Courage To Be, Dynamics of Faith Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn

Leon Uris: Exodus, Mila 18

Robert Penn Warren: All The King’s Men

Richard Wright: The Outsider

Malcolm X: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Bible

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