Zinzi Clemmons discusses and signs copies of her debut novel, What We Lose. 

From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love. 

In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. A graduate of Brown and Columbia, her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. She has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Dar al-Ma’mûn in Marrakech, Morocco. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband, where she teaches at The Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome notable Penn Staters Harry H. West and Lee Stout to discuss their new book on the history of Beaver Stadium, Lair of the Lion. 

Written by two longtime Penn Staters, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering Harry H. West and Librarian Emeritus Lee Stout, Lair of the Lion shows how Beaver Stadium came to be. It includes a look at its predecessors, “Old” Beaver Field, built in 1893 on a site centrally located northeast of Old Main, and “New” Beaver Field, built on the northwest corner of campus in 1909, and details the many expansions made to the current field, including the feat of engineering undertaken in 1978 when hydraulic jacks were used to lift the stadium and add 16,000 seats along the inner lower ring of the structure.

Featuring over 200 photos, Lair of the Lion is a celebration both of the ways in which Penn State fans, students, and athletes have experienced home games from the 1880s to the present day, and of the monumental structure the Nittany Lions now call home.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome ESPN Reporter Kate Fagan as she discusses her new book, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen. 

About the book:

Madison Holleran embodied having it all: A top student, star athlete, gorgeous and popular, with a loving family. Shockingly, Madison died by suicide in 2014, in her sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was running track. In WHAT MADE MADDY RUN: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen by ESPN on-air commentator and espnW columnist Kate Fagan explores Madison’s struggles and reveals with haunting detail and uncommon understanding the story of young people, and especially young athletes, suffering with mental illness today.

Kate Fagan is a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She is also a regular panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and can also be seen on Outside the Lines, First Take and His & Hers. Previously, Fagan spent three seasons covering the 76ers for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She is the author of a memoir, The Reappearing Act, and co-host of the espnW podcast, Free Cookies. Kate lives in Brooklyn, New York with her girlfriend Kathryn Budig, and their two dogs.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome journalist Dave Levitan to Harrisburg, as he presents his new book, NOT A SCIENTIST: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science. 

About the book:

You can be sure of one thing in politics: politicians always have scientific facts on hand—sometimes with their fingers crossed. No matter the complexities of climate change, infectious diseases, pollution, or vaccines—it’s easy to justify almost any position with the help of infallible scientific experts. The recent election season was no exception: every candidate claimed deep expertise on specialized subjects from fisheries to fracking. Trouble is, as journalist Dave Levitan demonstrates in his book NOT A SCIENTIST: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science there are many ways to misread the data—and our friends in Washington turn out to be very creative readers indeed. It was Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator himself, who made famous the disingenuous humblebrag “I’m not a scientist, but…” And thus, a rhetorical monster was born.

In friendly, fair-minded prose for layperson and science buff alike, Levitan breaks down lawmakers’ questionable takes on scientific research into cleverly worded categories worthy of Dr. Seuss. There’s the ‘Oversimplification’, the ‘Cherry-Pick’, the ‘Butter-Up and Undercut’, the ‘Demonizer’, the ‘Blame the Blogger’, the ‘Ridicule and Dismiss’, the ‘Literal Nitpick’, the ‘Credit Snatch’, the ‘Certain Uncertainty’, the ‘Blind Eye to Follow-Up’, the ‘Lost in Translation’, and last—but definitely not least—the ‘Straight-Up Fabrication’. In each case, Levitan provides succinct and persuasive examples from recent decades and all the way up to today’s headlines. Not only is NOT A SCIENTIST a vital guidebook for the thickets of political rhetoric, it would make a pretty good drinking game. What’s more, while he’s deftly sketching the skewed science of decades of political skullduggery, Levitan is also writing trenchant and entertaining social history. Readers will find plenty of familiar characters, from Reagan to Bush to Palin to Obama (and everyone in between), and can instantly apply his handy taxonomy to our current political menagerie.

While certain figures and politic parties showup more than others, confusing science is a bipartisan occurance. As Levitan is quick to point out, there have been plenty of examples of Democrats skimming convenient facts for special agendas—while, in fairness, Republicans are the most reliable culprits. But Levitan’s mission is to get the facts right, not to point fingers.NOT A SCIENTIST will give everyone invested in the political process (and with any luck, that’s all of us) the tools to identify the whoppers in the stump speeches and diatribes on the Senate floor. Most important, beyond the talking points and tweets of any given election year, he gives us more reasons than ever to keep scientific research and education at the forefront of our national values. It’s funny, but our survival depends on it.

About the author:

Dave Levitan is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Scientific American, Slate, and many other outlets. He lives near Philadelphia with his wife.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome renowned author Salman Rushdie to Harrisburg as he discusses his new novel, The Golden House.  Please join us for an evening to remember!  

Ticket required

Receive free standing-room admission when you PRE-ORDER a Signed Copy of Rushdie's new novel:  $32.00 (includes tax)

Doors open at 6pm for general admission seating (SOLD OUT) | Standing-room-only entry begins at 6:30pm (limited quantity!) | Reading at 7pm

Each advance purchase of a pre-signed hardcover copy of The Golden House includes one free ticket for standing-room admission, only while supplies last! Standing-room-only entry begins at 6:30pm. ARRIVE BY 6:45 PM to guarantee standing-room admission. Your email order-confirmation will serve as the admission ticket and book-purchase receipt. Please bring your ID and a printed copy of the email order-confirmation for entry to the event and to receive your book! 

If you are pre-ordering multiple copies of Rushdie's book to reserve admission for multiple people, your entire party must be together and present for entrance to the venue.

Book purchase is required for advance tickets. This event will SELL OUT, so pre-order your signed copy today!

About The Golden House

A mesmerizing new novel from New York Times bestselling author Salman Rushdie, set in New York City against the backdrop of modern American politics and culture with dark glamour and intrigue reminiscent of The Great Gatsby.

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic, powerful billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in “the Gardens,” a sheltered, gated community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric Golden family. One of these said neighbors and our guide is René, an ambitious young filmmaker, who befriends the mysterious family in an artistic opportunity to make them the subject of what he hopes will be his career-making film.

Nero Golden lives with his three adult sons: agoraphobic, alcoholic Petya, a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind; Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous; D, the youngest son, who harbors an explosive secret even from himself; and a Russian beauty named Vasilisa, who comes along and seduces Nero with high aspirations of her own. René is quickly drawn into their inner circle, becoming privy to their tortured secrets, infidelities and crimes.

Outside “the Gardens,” America is facing radical political change—the rise of the Tea Party, identity politics, and backlash against political correctness. While on the brink of a new presidency, an insane, narcissistic presidential candidate known as only The Joker grows stronger and stronger, and the country is turned upside-down. 

Overflowing with inventiveness and humor that fans of Rushdie will recognize, THE GOLDEN HOUSE is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with an incomparable daring, elegant wit.

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve previous novels—Grimus, Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Barn Historian Greg Huber signs copies of his new book, The Historic Barns of Southeastern Pennsylvania. For anyone who has ever admired a barn on an old country lane, this is the story of that barn and many others in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

About the Book:

Huger’s work focuses on “the hearth,” the area east of the Susquehanna River and South of the Blue Mountains. One of the earliest-settled areas in North America, this region of the Keystone State, which includes eleven counties, is home to an astounding 20,000 standing barns, in various states of repair, built from the mid 1700s on. Discussed in this text are the primary factors that have determined the fundamental structures and appearances of the six great barn classifications, including forest resources. Other featured topics are architectural aspects and regionalisms, dates of construction, survival of 18th-century examples, mysterious decorations, and barn preservation. Completing this treatise are representative color photographs, building plan sketches, charts conveying the prevalence of types, and a glossary of barn terms.

About the Author:

Greg Huber is a barn and house historian, consultant, and owner of Past Perspectives and Eastern Barn Consultants – historic cultural resource companies. Huber has specialized in house and barn architecture of Holland Dutch and Pennsylvania Swiss-German culture areas that include more than 8,000 vernacular houses and barns. He has authored more than 230 articles on architecture and is co-author of two books – the second edition of The New World Dutch Barn (2001) and Stone Houses – Traditional Homes of Pennsylvania’s Bucks County and Brandywine Valley (2005). He has also led 60 tours and given more than 195 lectures on architecture in the past 25 plus years. He won the Alice Kenney award and the Allen Noble Book Award issued by the Pioneer America Society.

The Midtown Scholar is pleased to welcome Carmen Maria Machado to Harrisburg! Carmen will discuss and sign copies of her new short-story collection, HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES.

About the book:

In this electric and provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies: a wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck; a salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls-with-bells-for-eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

About the author: 

Carmen Maria Machado’s work has appeared in Granta, the New Yorker, NPR, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award, and was a finalist for the Calvino Prize. She lives in Philadelphia.

Friday, November 10, 2017  |  All ages, general admission.

Doors open at 7:15 PM, concert at 8 PM.

$25 in advance, $30 at the door.

~~~CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS~~~

“Superb songwriting . . .warm, intimate, yet texturally intricate.” — Vintage Guitar "Wry, slice-of-life observations reminiscent of Lyle Lovett and John Prine." — Associated Press

"The preeminent male singer-songwriter of the New Folk Movement.” — Rolling Stone

“With his wide-eyed lyrical honesty, and wistful, nice-guy baritone, he offers gentle, sharply observed songs that refuse to cliche their way around life’s tangles.” — Boston Globe

“It’s all there: the smooth baritone voice and thoughtful lyrics....he always delivers.” — Elmore

"Mr. Gorka mesmerizes." — New York Times

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome award-winning teacher at Northwestern University, Wendy Pearlman, to Harrisburg! Wendy will discuss and sign copies of her new book, WE CROSSED A BRIDGE AND IT TREMBLED: VOICES FROM SYRIA. 

About the book:

Reminiscent of the work of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an astonishing collection of intimate wartime testimonies and poetic fragments from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight.

Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy and human rights. The government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times.

Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard, while the stories told about them have been distorted by broad brush dread and political expediency. This fierce and poignant collection changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a breathtaking mosaic of first-hand testimonials from the frontlines. Some of the testimonies are several pages long, eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few sentences, poetic and aphoristic. Together, they cohere into an unforgettable chronicle that is not only a testament to the power of storytelling but to the strength of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.

About the author:

Wendy Pearlman is a professor and award-winning teacher at Northwestern University, specializing in Middle East politics. Educated at Harvard, Georgetown, and Brown, Pearlman speaks fluent Arabic and has spent more than twenty years studying and living in the Arab World. She is the author of numerous articles and two books, Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003) and Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome award-winning Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen to Harrisburg as she presents her new book, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.

About the book:

Putin’s bestselling biographer reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy.

Hailed for her “fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia” (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own—as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. 

Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today’s terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

About the author:

Masha Gessen is an award-winning Russian-American journalist who is the author of several books, including the national bestseller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, Slate, and many other publications, and she has received many awards, including a Carnegie fellowship. Her latest book, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia is forthcoming from Riverhead Books in October 2017. She lives in New York.