James Frey: July 16
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible
James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard and Bright Shiny Morning. About his current book: James Frey has been called a liar. A cheat. A con man. A revolutionary. A genius. Now he has written his greatest work, his most revolutionary, his most controversial. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible? What if the Messiah were alive today? Living in New York. Sleeping with men. Impregnating young women. Euthanizing the dying, and healing the sick. Defying the government, and condemning the holy.If you met him, and he changed your life, would you believe?
Hillary Thayer Hamman: July 23
Anthropology of an American Girl
This ambitious work explores the sexual and intellectual awakening of a young American woman struggling to remain true to herelf as she encounters love, passion, and death amid the challenges and heartbreaks of growing up. Newly edited and revised, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.The book is about the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood. It follows Evie Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places.
Carol Muske-Dukes: July 30
Twin Cities
Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of seven books of poetry, four novels, and two collections of essays. She is professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Southern California and was appointed Poet Laureate of California in 2008. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.Twin Cities is an emotionally rich book of poems about how things double-by reflection, by reproduction, by severance. The poems embark from the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, divided by a legendary river. Lit by loss, these moving poems navigate between the poles of love and grief, curse and blessing, abandonment and rescue-they are two, and they are one.
Gary Reiswig: August 6
The Thousand Mile Stare: One Family’s Journey through the Science and Struggle of Alzheimer’s
For generations Gary’s family has suffered the horrible fate of early on-set Alzheimer’s. Gary was one of less than a handful of family members who did not carry the gene. The Reiswig’s genetics are so meaningful to the study of the disease they became a study themselves to help understand the disease, the causes and hopefully help lead scientists to the direction of a cure.
Neal Gabler: August 20
The Art Of Biography
Neal Gabler is a distinguished author, cultural historian and television commentator who has been called ”one of America’s most important public intellectuals.” Author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality and Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, He is currently working on a book on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. His essays have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Fair, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek, and Vogue, and he has been the recipient of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Time magazine’s nonfiction book of the year, USA Today’s biography of the year, a National Book Critics Circle nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Public Policy Scholarship at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He has also served as the chief nonfiction judge of the National Book Awards.