Books
Ralph Ellison's Three Days Before the Shooting
The Harvard Book Store hosted a conversation with John Callahan and Adam Bradley about Ralph Ellison's posthumously-published second novel Three Days Before the Shooting. At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly two thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible Man. Three Days Before the Shooting gathers together in one volume, for the first time, all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published.
A Comedy of Political Errors
Such insider information would be most valuable if not for the minor disadvantage of it being entirely fabricated. The book is in fact a work of fiction, as is the character of Martin Eisenstadt himself.
Arguing For Existence
The Harvard Book Store and Harvard Hillel welcomed award-winning novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein yesterday to read from her new novel "36 Arguments for the Existence of God."
A Call to Arts
Although the Task Force Report has had minimal concrete impact thus far, the administration’s open support for the arts has caused a wave of optimism among the student body.
'Happiness' Without Substance
Middle-aged women are supposed to love Alice Munro almost as much as they love yogurt.
Meditations Of a Midwesterner
In her newest novel, “A Gate at the Stairs,” Moore enters completely into the mind, heart and skin of a dynamic and perceptive college student, and in doing so, has created an incisive portrait of life in America immediately after September 11th.
Nabokov's 'Original of Laura' Remains Unpolished
Nabokov’s writing process as glimpsed here seems to have involved piling together neat phrases in the hope that there would be time later to arrange them into a plot.
Thomas Ricks speaks about the US military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Thomas Ricks discusses the future of United States military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Harvard Bookstore yesterday.
Stiglitz Faults Fed, Banks For Crisis
Columbia economics professor and Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz chastised regulators, bankers, and economists for their role in the ongoing financial crisis before a full audience at Brattle Theatre last night.
Nobel Prize Winner speaks on new book
Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz (left) speaks about his new book "Freefall" at the Brattle Theater yesterday.
Rent a Mankiw (Book) for the Semester
With spring semester fast approaching, the time has come to revisit a number of unfortunate but inevitable facts about life at Harvard, ranging from the dreary New England weather to the fact that some of your TFs this semester might not speak understandable English. And new classes mean that, once again, we will all have to spend a sum of cash that could probably feed a small Third World community for a year on textbooks that we'll never look at again once the semester has ended.
Let's Go Turns 50
Let’s Go, the organization that publishes budget-friendly travel guide books, is turning the big 5-0 this year.
Harvard, LSD, and the 1960s
According to Don Lattin’s The Harvard Psychedelic Club (HarperCollins, $24.99), which goes on sale today, there was apparently a time at Harvard when it was perfectly hunky-dory for professors to give LSD to their students—for purely scientific purposes, of course.
Books to Read Over J-Term
J-Term will officially begin on Jan. 4, but we at FlyBy know better than anyone that it will be difficult to make the coming three weeks into anything other than a colossal waste of time. So, in the spirit of genuine or—who are we kidding?—feigned intellecutalism, we've compiled a list of reading recommendations from several campus mailing lists. (We've also provided, of course, the requisite value judgment on each title.)
The Topography of Hell: Roberto Bolaño’s ‘2666’
“The Savage Detectives,” Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s greatest novel, is a kaleidoscopic fictional autobiography—a treatise on youth, love, literature and ...
The Bookstore Express
Writer Steve Almond reads from his new collection, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey, at the Harvard Bookstore yesterday. The book is being printed on demand on the store's espresso book machine. Because the book has multiple covers and it is being printed on demand, Almond takes a show of hands from audience members to see how many book with each cover to print.
The Hemingses of Monticello
Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed discusses her book, The Hemingses of Monticello, a work that provides a glimpse into one of America's first families, yesterday in Austin Hall. CORRECTION An earlier version of this Dec. 3 photo caption erroneously implied that the Jeffersons were one of the first families of Harvard.
Harvard Quidditch
CRIMSON VIDEO: Harvard students have formed the College's first Quidditch team, The Horntails. They compete against other teams from other colleges including Yale.