The true account of the most severe nuclear power accident in the history of the United States.

This July, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Erik Fasick to Harrisburg as he signs copies of his book, Three Mile Island.

About the Book:

Construction of the Unit 1 reactor began on Three Mile Island in May 1968, with the production of commercial electricity beginning in 1974. Approval for the construction of the Unit 2 reactor was granted in November 1969, and it was only producing commercial electricity for less than 90 days when on March 28, 1979, a loud roar erupted from the nuclear power plant that shook windows and awakened residents in the communities on both sides of the Susquehanna River.

This loud warning was the result of a series of mechanical and human errors that contributed towards a partial meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor and the most severe nuclear power accident in the history of the United States. In the days that followed, many residents of the surrounding communities left their homes and possessions out of fear of radioactive plumes, meltdowns, and exploding hydrogen bubbles. Those who remained behind faced anxiety and uncertainty, as information flowing from the power plant circumvented the truth and lacked credibility. As the Unit 2 reactor cooled, protests and court battles ensued as attempts were made to restart the power plant's dormant Unit 1 reactor. The Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station symbolized the fight over nuclear power as a safe and viable energy source in the late 20th century.

About the Author:

Erik V. Fasick is the president of the board of trustees for the Historical Society of Dauphin County and holds a master's degree in American Studies from Penn State Harrisburg.

An exhilarating novel about a trailblazing mathematician who unearths her own extraordinary family story and its roots in World War II. A recommended book of 2019 from Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, and the Rumpus.

This July, the Midtown Scholar is pleased to welcome acclaimed novelist Catherine Chung to Harrisburg as she presents and signs copies of her new historical novel, The Tenth Muse. Chung will be in conversation with Dickinson College’s Adrienne Su. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she must face the most human of problems—who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?

On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II in Germany. Forced to confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, she strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and finds kinship in the stories of the women who came before her—their love of the language of numbers connecting them across generations.

In The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung offers a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.

About the Author:

Catherine Chung is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Director's Visitorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She was a Granta New Voice, and won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country, which was a Booklist, Bookpage, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2012. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before going to Cornell University for her MFA. She has published work in The New York Times and Granta, and is a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine. She lives in New York City.

About the Interviewer:

Adrienne Su is the author of four books of poems, Middle Kingdom, Sanctuary, Having None of It, and Living Quarters. Her poems have been featured on websites such as Poetry Daily and Poem-a-Day and could turn up on your mobile device if you use the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry app. They also appear in anthologies such as The Hungry Ear; The New American Poets; Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation; Best American Poetry (2000, 2013, 2016); and The Norton Introduction to Literature. Su's awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, The Frost Place, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She studied at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges (AB, 1989) and the University of Virginia (MFA, 1993). Since 2000, she has taught creative writing at Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where she is Poet-in-Residence.

Essential reading for anyone who cares about maintaining an accountable government and the individual freedoms that the Constitution enshrines for everyone in America—regardless of political party.

This July, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Kim Wehle to Harrisburg as she presents her new book, How to Read the Constitution -- And Why. Book signing to follow discussion. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

An insightful, urgent, and perennially relevant handbook that lays out in common sense language how the United States Constitution works, and how its protections are eroding before our eyes—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and parse the constantly breaking news about the backbone of American government.

The Constitution is the most significant document in America. But do you fully understand what this valuable document means to you? In How to Read the Constitution and Why, legal expert and educator Kimberly Wehle spells out in clear, simple, and common sense terms what is in the Constitution, and most importantly, what it means. In compelling terms, she describes how the Constitution’s protections are eroding—not only in express terms but by virtue of the many legal and social norms that no longer shore up its legitimacy—and why every American needs to heed to this “red flag” moment in our democracy.

This invaluable—and timely—resource covers nearly every significant aspect of the Constitution, from the powers of the President and how the three branches of government are designed to hold each other accountable, to what it means to have individual rights—including free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to an abortion. Finally, the book explains why it has never been more important than now for all Americans to know how our Constitution works—and why, if we don’t step in to protect it now, we could lose its protections forever.

About the Author:

Kim Wehle is a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she teaches and writes on the constitutional separation of powers, administrative law, and civil procedure. She was formerly an Assistant United States Attorney and an Associate Counsel in the Whitewater Investigation. Professor Wehle is also an On-Air and Off-Air Legal Expert, Analyst and Commentator for CBS News, as well as a Contributor for BBC World News and BBC World News America on PBS, an Op-Ed Contributor for The Bulwark, and an Opinion Contributor for The Hill. She has been a regular guest legal analyst on various media outlets regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election and other issues regarding the structural Constitution and the Trump Administration, including on CNN, MSNBC, NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS NewsHour, and Fox News. Her articles have also appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the L.A. Times, and NBC News Think. She is regularly interviewed and cited by prominent print journalists on a range of legal issues. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her children.

A guided tour through the strange science of hormones and the age-old quest to control them.

This June, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Randi Hutter Epstein to Harrisburg as she presents her new book, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

A guided tour through the strange science of hormones and the age-old quest to control them.

Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles.

Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research, and humorous details, Aroused introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies. Epstein exposes the humanity at the heart of hormone science with her rich cast of characters, including a 1920s doctor promoting vasectomies as a way to boost libido, a female medical student who discovered a pregnancy hormone in the 1940s, and a mother who collected pituitaries, a brain gland, from cadavers as a source of growth hormone to treat her son. Along the way, Epstein explores the functions of hormones such as leptin, oxytocin, estrogen, and testosterone, demystifying the science of endocrinology.

A fascinating look at the history and science of some of medicine’s most important discoveries, Aroused reveals the shocking history of hormones through the back rooms, basements, and labs where endocrinology began.

About the Author:

Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., the author of Aroused and Get Me Out, is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, a lecturer at Yale University, and writer in residence at Yale Medical School. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Psychology Today blog, among others. She lives in New York.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Celtic Wood and Wires to Harrisburg for June's Third in the Burg!

About the Band:

Celtic Wood and Wires is described as a Celtic band with a modern flair. Their music is fiddle forward with flute and whistle additions. The guitar and bodhran add rhythms. There are always some songs thrown in for good measure. The band hails from Lycoming and York Counties. Come and get your foot a tapping at the very least and also learn a little history about the tunes they play.

The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird.

This June, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Casey Cep to Harrisburg as she presents her new book, The Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. This event is free and open to the public:

About the Book:

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.

About the Author:

Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among other publications. This is her first book.

An indispensable window into the changing shape of the American working class and American politics.

In conjunction with the Harrisburg DSA, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Eric Blanc to Harrisburg as he presents his new book, Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of “the white working class,” a strike wave—the first in over four decades—rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.

Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics as usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived.

Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizer, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education—and redrawing the political map of the country at large.

About the Author:

A former high school teacher, Eric Blanc has covered the strike wave for Jacobin, The Nation, and The Guardian.

"Deeply thought provoking, Anti/Vax is an excellent book and a surprising intellectual journey into and across the cultural underpinnings of contemporary vaccination skepticism. Bernice Hausman, as author and narrator, is a masterful guide."

This June, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome the Chair of the Department of Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine Bernice Hausman to Harrisburg as she presents her new book, Anti/Vax: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

Antivaxxers are crazy. That is the perception we all gain from the media, the internet, celebrities, and beyond, writes Bernice Hausman in Anti/Vax, but we need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism and its implications.

Hausman argues that the heated debate about vaccinations and whether to get them or not is most often fueled by accusations and vilifications rather than careful attention to the real concerns of many Americans. She wants to set the record straight about vaccine skepticism and show how the issues and ideas that motivate it―like suspicion of pharmaceutical companies or the belief that some illness is necessary to good health―are commonplace in our society.

Through Anti/Vax, Hausman wants to engage public health officials, the media, and each of us in a public dialogue about the relation of individual bodily autonomy to the state's responsibility to safeguard citizens' health. We need to know more about the position of each side in this important stand-off so that public decisions are made through understanding rather than stereotyped perceptions of scientifically illiterate antivaxxers or faceless bureaucrats. Hausman reveals that vaccine skepticism is, in part, a critique of medicalization and a warning about the dangers of modern medicine rather than a glib and gullible reaction to scaremongering and misunderstanding.

About the Author:

Bernice L. Hausman is Chair of the Department of Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.. She is the author of Viral Mothers, Mother's Milk, and Changing Sex.

What's the most effective path to success in any domain? It's not what you think.

This June, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome New York Times bestselling author David Epstein to Harrisburg as he presents his new book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

About the Book:

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But if you take a closer look at the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, you'll find that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene, studied the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't spy from deep in their hyperfocused trenches. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

Our obsession with getting a head start is understandable; early specialization feels efficient. But Epstein marshals an enormous body of scientific research to argue that we should all actively cultivate inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range explains how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.

About the Author:

David Epstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Sports Gene. He has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism, and has worked as an investigative reporter for ProPublica and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He lives in Washington, DC.

"To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius." ― Claudia Rankine

In conjunction with the Bowers Writers House at Elizabethtown College, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Jericho Brown to Harrisburg as he reads from his new poetry collection, The Tradition. This event is free and open to the public.

This reading is made possible through a generous gift from from Helen and Elvin Hurst.

About the Book:

The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we’ve become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive.

Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown’s mastery, and his invention of the duplex―a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues―is testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.

About the Author:

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets; the collection was also nominated for the NAACP award for poetry and made The Believer’s top 5 Books of the Year. Brown is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

From the iconic character actor who starred in such films and shows as Blade Runner, True Blood, Newhart, and Deadwood — I’m That Guy is an indelible rags-to-riches story that demonstrates the power of perseverance and fortitude in overcoming one's struggles.

This May, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Hollywood Actor William Sanderson’s new book, I’m That Guy: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Character Actor. Book signing to follow discussion. This event is free and open to the public.

Book signing will immediately follow discussion. Books must be purchased through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore to gain entrance to the signing line. Books purchased in-store will be the only items available to be signed. One photo per-person will be allowed, and photos will only be permitted for attendees who purchase the book.

About the Book:

William Sanderson has enjoyed a prosperous career in Hollywood as a highly successful character actor whom everyone seems to recognize - but they aren't always certain from what. Spanning a variety of genres over nearly a half-century performing in TV, film and stage, Sanderson has inhabited such high-profile roles as E.B. Farnum in the HBO western "Deadwood," Sheriff Bud Dearborne in the HBO vampire series "True Blood," Larry in the classic CBS sitcom "Newhart" and J.F. Sebastian in the sci-fi film masterwork "Blade Runner."

Yes, I'm That Guy takes readers behind the scenes of these productions and many more including "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Lonesome Dove," "Lone Wolf McQuade" and "The Client," showcasing Sanderson's knack for making a memorable mark in each of his projects.

As you will learn in his memoir, Sanderson is far more than merely the sum of his characters. His tumultuous rags-to-riches story is instructive in demonstrating the power of perseverance and fortitude in overcoming one's struggles with self-doubt and self-sabotage and - thanks to the love of a good woman - ultimately carving out a positive, contented life.

About the Author:

William Sanderson is a beloved veteran character actor of film and television with a plethora of iconic roles to his credit. He lives in Harrisburg, PA with his wife, Sharon. "Yes, I'm That Guy" is his first book.

In Ladysitting, Cary captures the ruptures, love, and, perhaps, forgiveness that can occur in a family as she bears witness to her grandmother’s 101 vibrant years of life.

This May, we’re pleased to welcome award-winning author Lorene Cary as she presents her new memoir, Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century. This event is free and open to the public!

About the Book:

Lorene Cary’s grandmother moves in, and everything changes: day-to-day life, family relationships, the Nana she knew―even their shared past.

From cherished memories of weekends she spent as a child with her indulgent Nana to the reality of the year she spent “ladysitting” her now frail grandmother, Lorene Cary journeys through stories of their time together and five generations of their African American family. Brilliantly weaving a narrative of her complicated yet transformative relationship with Nana―a fierce, stubborn, and independent woman, who managed a business until she was 100―Cary looks at Nana’s impulse to control people and fate, from the early death of her mother and oppression in the Jim Crow South to living on her own in her New Jersey home.

Cary knew there might be some reckonings to come. Nana was a force: Her obstinacy could come out in unanticipated ways―secretly getting a driver’s license to show up her husband, carrying on a longtime feud with Cary’s father. But Nana could also be devoted: to Nana’s father, to black causes, and―Cary had thought―to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Facing the inevitable end raises tensions, with Cary drawing on her spirituality and Nana consoling herself with late-night sweets and the loyalty of caregivers. When Nana doubts Cary’s dedication, Cary must go deeper into understanding this complicated woman.

In Ladysitting, Cary captures the ruptures, love, and, perhaps, forgiveness that can occur in a family as she bears witness to her grandmother’s 101 vibrant years of life.

About the Author:

Lorene Cary is the author of the memoirs Ladysitting and Black Ice, three novels, including The Price of a Child, and one book for young readers. She founded Art Sanctuary and SafeKidsStories.com, teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, and has written a one-act opera of Ladysitting. She lives in Philadelphia.

Twenty years after Columbine, a leading gun control activist offers a radical argument for the gun control movement our country desperately needs.

This May, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Igor Volsky to Harrisburg as he presents his new book, Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future with Fewer Guns. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

Ninety-six people die from guns in America every single day. Twelve thousand Americans are murdered each year. The United States has more mass shootings, gun suicides, and nonfatal gun injuries than any other industrialized country in the world. Gun-safety advocates have tried to solve these problems with incremental changes such as background checks and banning assault style military weapons. They have fallen short. In order to significantly and permanently reduce gun deaths the United States needs a bold new approach: a drastic reduction of the 390 million guns already in circulation and a new movement dedicated to a future with fewer guns.

In Guns Down, Igor Volsky tells the story of how he took on the NRA just by using his Twitter account, describes how he found common ground with gun enthusiasts after spending two days shooting guns in the desert, and lays out a blueprint for how citizens can push their governments to reduce the number of guns in circulation and make firearms significantly harder to get. An aggressive licensing and registration initiative, federal and state buybacks of millions of guns, and tighter regulation of the gun industry, the gun lobby, and gun sellers will build safer communities for all. Volsky outlines a New Second Amendment Compact developed with policy experts from across the political spectrum, including bold reforms that have succeeded in reducing gun violence worldwide, and offers a road map for achieving transformative change to increase safety in our communities.

About the Author:

Igor Volsky is the co-founder and executive director of Guns Down America, an organization dedicated to building a future with fewer guns. He made headlines in 2015 for shaming lawmakers who took money from the NRA and sent “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings. A lively interlocutor, he has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, CNBC television, and many radio shows. He lives in Washington, DC.