Julia Ioffe
Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy

Monday, July 6, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, July 7, 11:00 AM

NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 BY THE WASHINGTON POST • A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2025

Motherland tells the story of modern Russia through the lives of its women. With clarity and empathy, Ioffe reveals how one of the twentieth century’s most audacious social experiments promised women liberation but failed them profoundly, giving shape to the Russia of today.

Sponsored by Barbara J. Cooperman

Mark Braude
The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, Paris on the Eve of WWII

Monday, July 13, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, July 14, 11:00 AM

The Typewriter and the Guillotine is the untold story of Janet Flanner, an American journalist in Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s who defies editorial expectations to sound the alarm about the rise of fascism—even as she becomes absorbed in the sensational case of a German serial killer whose crimes and trial mirror the continent’s gathering darkness.

Sponsored by Robert A. Ouimette

Martha Ackmann with Anastasia Stanmeyer
Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton

Monday, July 20, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, July 21, 11:00 AM

A captivating portrait of a true American original, Ain’t Nobody’s Fool traces Dolly Parton’s journey from an impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom, exploring Dolly’s defiance of industry gatekeepers, her resilience in the face of personal struggle, and her extraordinary impact—from reshaping country music to building Dollywood and changing lives through her philanthropy.

Sponsored by Linda Saul-Sena and Mark Sena

Carla Kaplan
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford

Monday, July 27, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, July 28, 11:00 AM

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR’S CHOICE • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • FINALIST FOR THE 2026 PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD

Troublemaker tells the story of Jessica Mitford, a British aristocrat who shocked her world by trading wealth and privilege for a life of radical activism in America. Jessica Kaplan reveals how Mitford’s joyful defiance and groundbreaking journalism reshaped American culture.

Sponsored by Mary Copeland and José A. Gonzalez, Jr, and Carol and Eric Haythorne

Jeff Chang
Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America

Monday, August 3, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, August 4, 11:00 AM

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR • VOGUE • KIRKUS REVIEWS • ALTA JOURNAL

Drawing on newly available personal archives, in-depth interviews, and striking photographs, Water Mirror Echo moves beyond the myth to reveal the complex man behind the global icon. Jeff Chang’s biography traces how Bruce Lee’s singular presence reshaped culture, challenged Hollywood, and helped define what it meant—and still means—to be Asian in America.

Sponsored by Sheila Parekh Blum and Christopher Blum

Amanda Vaill
Pride & Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

Monday, August 10, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, August 11, 11:00 AM

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR’S CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD IN BIOGRAPHY

In Pride and Pleasure, Amanda Vaill explores America’s Founding Era through the intertwined lives of Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, two women as formidable as the men they loved, married, and mothered. Drawing on archival research and never-before-published letters, Vaill evokes a world of revolution and refinement, ambition and sacrifice.

Nicholas Boggs
Baldwin: A Love Story

Monday, August 17, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, August 18, 11:00 AM

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TIME AND ATLANTIC TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025 • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025

Baldwin: A Love Story draws on newly uncovered archival material, original research, and interviews to trace the relationships—from mentors and collaborators to lovers and muses—that sustained Baldwin and shaped his writing. Nicholas Boggs follows Baldwin across continents—from Harlem and Paris to Switzerland, the American South, Istanbul, Africa, and southern France—revealing how he transformed lived experience into novels and essays that spoke truth to power, reshaped Black and queer literary history, and continue to resonate with force today.

Peter S. Canellos
Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement

Monday, August 24, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, August 25, 11:00 AM

Journalist Peter S. Canellos examines the personal convictions, political grievances, and institutional forces that shaped Samuel Anthony Alito’s judicial career and culminated in his authorship of Dobbs v. Jackson, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. In Revenge for the Sixties, Canellos shows how Alito’s worldview has driven transformative rulings on religion, gun rights, affirmative action, and the limits of government power—and why understanding Alito’s story is essential to understanding the future of American law and democracy.

Jodi Kantor
Pulitzer Prize–Winning Journalist and Author

Thursday, July 16, 5:00 PM

Jodi Kantor’s is a New York Times investigative reporter whose work reveals hidden truths about power, law, gender, technology, and culture. In 2017, she and journalist Megan Twohey broke the story of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, spurring the #MeToo global reckoning. She went on to coauthor the book She Said about the Weinstein investigation, which was adapted into a 2022 film. In this conversation, Kantor discusses her #MeToo and Supreme Court reporting as well as her new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work.

Sponsored by Perri and Michelle Petricca

Max Boot
Historian, Foreign Policy Analyst, and Author

Thursday, July 30, 5:00 pm

Max Boot’s most recent books include Reagan: His Life and Legend, named a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2024; The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. Born in Moscow in 1969 and raised in the United States, Boot is the Jeane J. Kirpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post.

Sponsored by Inge Heckel

General David H. Petraeus
Retired U.S. Army General, Former CIA Director, and Author

Thursday, August 6, 5:00 PM

David H. Petraeus is a retired four-star U.S. Army general whose career spanned over 37 years. Petraeus led the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq as commander of Multi-National Force–Iraq, then served as commander, U.S. Central Command, and later oversaw NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In 2011, he was confirmed by the Senate to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and resigned the following year. He is the author of the bestseller Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza, coauthored with Andrew Roberts.

Sponsored by Robert Salerno and Margaret Skaggs, and Barbara J. Cooperman

Kiran Desai
Booker Prize-Winning Novelist

Thursday, August 13, 5:00 pm

Join us for an unforgettable conversation with writer Kiran Desai, celebrating her Booker Prize–shortlisted novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. A story of two young people navigating the forces that shape their lives—country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds between generations—the novel is at once a love story, a family saga, and a rich work of ideas. This onstage discussion will explore the creative process behind the book, offering rare insight into the mind of one of our greatest contemporary novelists. Desai is the bestselling author The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Sponsored by Sheila Parekh Blum and Christopher Blum

Lawrence Wright
Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author, Screenwriter, Playwright, and Journalist

Thursday, August 20, 5:00 PM

Since 1992, Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work has earned three National Magazine Awards. He is the author of eleven nonfiction books, most notably The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Going Clear, a bestselling investigation of Scientology adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO documentary. Wright has written four novels as well as numerous acclaimed plays and one-man shows.