The centrality of sunshine… the most fascinating New York Times obits of the year… the riddle of the labyrinth… America’s signs, streets and storefronts… the Central Park Five… global weirdness… how to look with expert eyes… how food stopped being food… a slave plantation on Long Island… the New Deal… 

If you're interested in any of these topics, then we hope you'll join us for an Author @ the Library talk this month at Mid-Manhattan to hear these accomplished non-fiction authors discuss their work. If you'd like to read the books mentioned, you can request copies using the links to the catalog included below. Author talks take place at 6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor. No reservations are required. 

Tuesday, September 3: Daniel Freund, author of American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light, surveys the centrality of sunshine to an array of social reform and public health efforts in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s, with a quick glance at the present day.

Monday, September 9: New York Times Obituaries editor William McDonald tells us all about The Socialite Who Killed a Nazi with Her Bare Hands and 143 Other Fascinating People Who Died This Past Year: The Best of the New York Times Obituaries, from August 2011 to July 2012.

Tuesday, September 10: Margalit Fox, author of The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code, tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, blending history, linguistics, and cryptology. 

Thursday, September 12: Martin Treu, author of Signs, Streets, and Storefronts: A History of Architecture and Graphics along America's Commercial Corridors, gives an illustrated lecture exploring the architectural history and signage of Main Street and the strip—from painted boards nailed over crude storefronts to sleek cinemas topped with neon glitz.

Tuesday, September 17: Writer and filmmaker Sarah Burns tells the tragic story of the wrongful convictions of five teenagers who were sent to prison for a combined 40 years, describes how the book and documentary film, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding, came into being, and explains the ongoing legal drama surrounding the case. This lecture will also include clips from the film, which she co-directed with David McMahon and Ken Burns.

Wednesday, September 18: Michael D. Lemonick of Climate Central gives a visual presentation summarizing everything we already know about the science of climate change, explain what is likely to happen to the climate in the future and lay out in practical terms what we can and cannot do to avoid further shifts. Climate Central’s recent book is Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future. 

Thursday, September 19: At any given moment we filter out the bulk of the information streaming around us. Psychologist and animal behaviorist Alexandra Horowitz, author of On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, gives a visual presentation that offers ways to tune into myriad sights, sounds, and smells. 

Monday, September 23: Food journalist Frederick Kaufman, author of Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food, follows the trail from Big Pizza to square tomatoes to exploding food prices to Wall Street in an attempt to figure out why we can't all have healthy, delicious, affordable food.

Tuesday, September 24: In The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island, Mac Griswold portrays a uniquely American place as he tells both the story of Sylvester Manor, a house which had been held in the same family for eleven generations, and the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery. 

Wednesday, September 25: Professor Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, redefines our traditional understanding of the New Deal and examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like fascism and communism.

Print a pdf flyer for the September 2013 programs.

You can find lists of non-fiction books from current and past Author @ the Library programs in the BiblioCommons catalog.

The Author @ the Library posts include only authors discussing their recent non-fiction books at the Mid-Manhattan Library, but we have many other interesting readings and talks on our calendar, including art lectures and discussions, monthly panel discussions featuring authors from the Mystery Writers of America, New York Chapter, short story readings at Story Time for Grown-ups, and on September 26th, the Triangle Theater Company will perform "A Celebration of T. S. Eliot."  We hope to see you sometime soon at one of our great free programs!