Tagged Humanities

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be The House of Broken Bricks , by Anna Quindlan. The group is open to all and new members are welcome.…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be After Annie , by Anna Quindlan. The group is open to all and new members are welcome. For more…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be the 2025 One Book, One Philadelphia title. The group is open to all and new members are welcome. For…

Jaap de Roode | Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves

The Author Events Series presents Jaap de Roode  | Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves  In Conversation with Bethany Brookshire Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were…

Jennifer Haigh | Rabbit Moon

The Author Events Series presents Jennifer Haigh  | Rabbit Moon Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in…

Katie Kitamura | Audition

The Author Events Series presents Katie Kitamura | Audition: A Novel In Conversation with Adam Dalva One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be Enemies: a Love Story, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The group is open to all and new members are…

Laurie Woolever | Care and Feeding: A Memoir

The Author Events Series presents Laurie Woolever | Care and Feeding: A Memoir  In Conversation with Reem Kassis In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to…

Lauren Francis-Sharma | Casualties of Truth

The Author Events Series presents Lauren Francis-Sharma | Casualties of Truth Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, D.C.; and the former glories of a successful career at McKinsey,…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be The Wide Circumference of Love, by Marita Golden. The group is open to all and new members are…

Rick Steves | On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer

The Author Events Series presents Rick Steves | On the Hippie Trail Stow away with Rick Steves for a glimpse into the unforgettable moments, misadventures, and memories of his 1978 journey on the legendary Hippie Trail. In the 1970s,…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be Mister Pip , by Lloyd Jones. The group is open to all and new members are welcome. For more…

The Phillypino Oral History Project: Exhibition

The Phillypino Oral History Project is an intergenerational, community-based oral history and photography project capturing the rich narratives of Filipino immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia, particularly in the 1980’s, after…

Falls Book Club

Join the Falls Book Club - one of the Free Library's longest running programs. The book selection for this month will be Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman. The group is open to all and new members are…

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an authoritative, comprehensive Web-based reference work about philosophy, useful to scholars of all levels as well as the general public. Published through Stanford University’s Center for the…

Gale Literary Sources (formerly Artemis)

Cross-search all of Gale’s literature databases from a single digital space to find biographies, primary sources, contextual reference, and criticism. Includes Dictionary of Literary Biography, Something About the Author, LitFinder,…

Beth Kephart | My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera

Renowned for her ability “to generalize from her personal experience to the greater human one” ( The Washington Post ), Beth Kephart is the author of more than 30 books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, young adult…

David Brooks | How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

Acclaimed for his ability to “elevate the unseen aspects of private experience into a vigorous and challenging conversation about what we all share” ( San Francisco Chronicle ), David Brooks has written an op-ed column for The New York…

Sarah Bakewell | Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

In conversation with Eric Banks Acclaimed for “wonderfully readable” fusions of “biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection” ( The Independent ), Sarah Bakewell is the author of At the Existentialist Café…

Adam Gopnik | The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery

Featuring magician, Justin Gilmore A staff writer at  The New Yorker  for more than three decades, Adam Gopnik is the author of  Paris to the Moon ,  The Table Comes First ,  At the Strangers’ Gate , and  A Thousand Small Sanities , a…

Mehdi Hasan | Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill British American journalist Mehdi Hasan hosts the eponymously titled  The Mehdi Hasan Show , a news and politics program that airs on MSNBC and NBC’s streaming channel Peacock. He is also the…

Anna Badkhen | Bright Unbearable Reality: Essays

In conversation with Airea D. Matthews, 2022-2023 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr With an artist’s perspective and a ground-level view of people in extremis across the world,…

Saidiya Hartman and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor| Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

One of academia’s leading authorities on African American literature, enslavement, gender studies, and the ways in which marginalized people are excluded in historical narratives, Saidiya Hartman is a University Professor at Columbia…

Howard Gardner and Wendy Fischman | The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be

The Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,  Howard Gardner  is the author of 30 books, including  A Synthesizing Mind ,  The App Generation , and  Responsibility at Work . He is…

Laura Raicovich | Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest

In conversation with Seph Rodney, PhD, opinions editor and managing editor of the Sunday Edition for Hyperallergic , author of The Personalization of the Museum Visit , and winner of the 2020 Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize. The interim…

Barry Lopez | Horizon

Barry Lopez won the National Book Award for Arctic Dreams , a “rich, abundant, vigorously composed” ( Boston Globe ) meditation on his travels in the barren but beautiful far North. His other work includes Of Wolves and Men , Crow and…

Adam Rutherford | Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature A New Evolutionary History

“A heady amalgam of science, history, a little bit of anthropology and plenty of nuanced, captivating storytelling” ( The New York Times Book Review ), Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived delves into the…

Lorrie Moore | See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary

In conversation with Jayne Anne Phillips , author of Black Tickets, Lark & Termite, Machine Dreams, and director of Rutgers University-Newark’s MFA Creative Writing Program “Fluid, cracked, mordant, colloquial” ( The New York Times Book…

Junot Díaz | Islandborn

Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , the “unruly, manic, seductive” ( Esquire ) multigenerational tale of a cursed Dominican family. He is also the…

Anna Badkhen | Fisherman’s Blues: A West African Community at Sea with Min Jin Lee | Pachinko

With an artist’s eye and a ground-level view of people in extremis across the world, writer  Anna Badkhen offers “rich and lucid prose [that] illustrates her journey as vividly as might a series of photographs” ( Christian Science…

Michio Kaku | The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

“Erudite and compelling” ( Chicago Tribune ), theoretical physicist and futurist Dr. Michio Kaku is a renowned popularizer of science and co-founder of String Field Theory, continuing Einstein’s quest to discover a unified field theory.…

Robert Darnton | A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution

Cultural historian Robert Darnton is the author The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History . His many other books include The Business of Enlightenment , Berlin Journal , The Case for Books , and The Devil in…

Walter Isaacson | Leonardo da Vinci

Watch the video here . Released just weeks after the tech guru’s death, Walter Isaacson’s “staggering” ( The New York Times ) portrait of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs instantly became an international bestseller. Isaacson has also penned…

Adam Gopnik | At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York

Watch the video here . In conversation with Meg Wolitzer , bestselling author of The Interestings among many novels. A writer for The New Yorker for more than three decades, Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon, Angels and…

Colum McCann | Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice

Watch the video here . In conversation with Jason Freeman, program associate, author events Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for  Let the Great World Spin , a tale of 1970s New Yorkers marveling at a tightrope walker’s…

Kory Stamper | Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

Watch the video here . A lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Kory Stamper discusses the subtleties of the English language in the venerable volume’s popular “Ask the Editor” video series. Her writing has appeared in The…