March 25, 2009 — Gerda Lerner shined at EWG conference today

EXECUTIVE WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT (EWG) threw quite a bash today when they hosted their 2009 conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Among the highlights was a speech by the founder of Women's History Month, Gerda Lerner.

At 88, Gerda is an amazing, formidable embodiment of 20th century history. Armed with her ever-present cup of tea, she enthralled us with her stories of her early days as a prisoner in the Austrian jail, her experience with the McCarthy-era black list, women's activism, and more. Gerda has seen and survived it all and we were honored to listen as she shared her wisdom with the dynamic crowd of top women in government.

We felt honored to be able to bring her to the conference, and we thank our friends at Accenture for underwriting the purchase of Gerda's book, Living with History Making Social Change. Each attendee took home a copy - along with copies of the books by the other powerful women leaders who spoke that day:

• Diane MacEachern, author of Big Green Purse
• Rosemary O'Leary, author of The Collaborative Public Manager
• Carolyn Maloney, author of Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
• Nell Merlino, author of Stepping Out of Line

We also loved meeting the fabulously energetic and inspirational keynote speaker Vernice Armour, America's first African-American female combat pilot (www.vernicearmour.com). This event was filled with incredible networking opportunities, good conversations, and of course, great books. Learn more about EWG and be sure to sign up for next year's event: www.execwomeningov.org.

March 2, 2009 — “Animal Spirits” authors George Akerlof and Bob Shiller at the Greater Washington Board of Trade

More than 50 local executives tonight joined world-class economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, co-authors of the book “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism.” The professors were invited to share their insights and ideas on the economy at the Greater Washington Board of Trade (pictured here with BOT president and CEO Jim Dinegar and Perry Hooks). Afterward they responded to questions about their forecasts on the future of the economy.

About the Authors: Akerlof is the Daniel E. Koshland Sr. Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics. Shiller is the best-selling author of “Irrational Exuberance” and “The Subprime Solution.” He is the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and the co-creator of the Case-Shiller index.

About the Book: The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, “animal spirits” are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity.

Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery.

Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government—simply allowing markets to work won’t do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life—such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes—and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.

Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits—the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today.

March 1, 2009 — 50th Birthday Bash Salon with Adam Gopnik, “Angels and Ages”

Famed New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik (pictured here with HBE owners Perry and Loretta), author of the new book, “Angels and Ages: A short book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life,” was the celebrity author who spoke tonight at our second Salon — a birthday bash book party!

The event was hosted by our good pal Marcia, who had a big birthday on February 12. She thought it was especially fitting that Adam come to speak about the two men also born on that day.

The birthday girl opened her home to nearly 100 people. Like us, she feels giving back is crucial and chose to have the event catered by New Course Catering, part of 3rd & Eats Restaurant, which provides culinary arts training to homeless and chronically unemployed individuals. For details visit: NewCourseCatering.com.

Hooks Book Events also donated a portion of the sale of Adam Gopnik’s book to Crossway Community, an entrepreneurial, non-profit organization run by Kathleen Guinan. “Our mission is to promote learning, creativity, and community for all families,” Kathleen says. For information visit www.crossway-community.org.

What the guests said:

Sunday’s event was the most intellectual experience I have had in a long time. Thanks so much for inviting me.

This was a Bohemian salon of deep thoughts and noble causes.

Adam’s knowledge and passion were incredibly impressive.

Many writers can write but are not good speakers — I was impressed with Adam’s ability to do both. When is the next salon?

To book your own Salon, send us an email: perry@hooksbookevents.com / loretta@hooksbookevents.com

About Adam Gopnik: A writer for The New Yorker since 1986, Adam is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism and the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. From 1995 to 2000, he lived in Paris and now lives in New York City with his wife and children. About Angels and Ages: On a memorable day in human history, February 12, 1809, two babies were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin; Charles Darwin on an English country estate. It was a time of backward-seeming notions, when almost everyone still accepted the biblical account of creation as the literal truth and authoritarianism as the most natural and viable social order. But by the time both men died, the world had changed: ordinary people understood that life on earth was a story of continuous evolution, and the Civil War had proved that a democracy could fight for principles and endure. And with these signal insights much else had changed besides. Together, Darwin and Lincoln had become midwives to the spirit of a new world, a new kind of hope and faith.

February 26, 2009 — Our first Salon!

We are happy to announce a new offering from Hooks Book Events — the Salon. We envision these to be intimate gatherings of friends who are thirsty for knowledge and want to hear the thoughts and ideas of some of the bestsellers who are launching their new books.

Refreshments are certainly part of the party, and often reflect the theme of the book. A case in point is our first Salon, when our friend Joy invited 50 of her closest friends to gather in her cottage office to hear the fabulous *Flora Fraser” (pictured left, with Perry) discuss her latest book on Pauline Bonaparte (Napoleon’s favorite sister). French wine and appetizers and a very intimate conversation about Pauline’s European escapades.

“The event was thoroughly engaging and enjoyable,” says Joy, who is dreaming up who she wants to have come for another Salon. “I was impressed not only by how elegant and articulate Flora is, but really enjoyed listening to my dearest friends ask smart, savvy questions of the author. I encourage everyone to host a Hooks Book Salon. It will open your mind and warm your heart.”

To book your own Salon, send us an email: perry@hooksbookevents.com / loretta@hooksbookevents.com

About Flora Fraser: The author of Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton; The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline; and Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III, Flora Fraser lives in London with her husband and three children. Her new book focuses on Napoleon’s favorite sister. Celebrated for her looks, notorious for her passions, immortalized by Antonio Canova’s statue, and always deeply loyal to her brother, Pauline Bonaparte Borghese is a fascinating figure in her own right. At the turn of the nineteenth century, she was considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. She shocked the continent with the boldness of her love affairs, her opulent wardrobe and jewels, and, most famously, her decision to pose nearly nude for Canova’s sculpture, which has been replicated in countless ways through the years.

February 19 — Grameen Foundation CEO Alex Counts speaks to Cornell alumns

A large group of Cornell University alumni had the opportunity to hear Alex Counts speak today about his book, Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World. Counts is the president and CEO of the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.–based organization that has grown from modest beginnings in 1997 to become a global network of forty-six microfinance partners in twenty-four countries. Under his leadership, the Grameen Foundation impacts an estimated eighteen million lives in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Arab World. Counts trained to be a catalyst for change under Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder and Managing Director of the Grameen Bank and corecipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

"Micro-financing is considered one of the most effective strategies in the fight against global poverty," Counts explained to the group. "It can be implemented on the massive scale necessary to respond to the urgent needs of the world’s poorest. And now, in Small Loans, Big Changes, author Alex Counts looks at the lives of micro-lending borrowers from the Grameen Foundation in Bangladesh and Chicago."

All of the borrowers profiled in his book are women of little-to-no means, each struggling to gain financial independence. Counts help readers discover how, in Bangladesh, these women face off against very poor living conditions and the prejudice of men, while in Chicago, they must overcome crime and other hurdles that come with life in the inner city. "My goal was to reveal how Muhammad Yunus and his concept of micro-financing has helped those living in poverty achieve real financial independence," Counts shared.

What the crowd said:

I really enjoyed Alex's presentation--it was the primary reason I came. He was very inspiring.

I thought that the speaker was marvelous. The people who also were attracted to this type of event were also those that I was looking to connect with.

I have attended many alumni events. I thought this speaker was one of the best I have heard.

The speaker's presentation was informative and interesting to me — especially considering I am a recent grad who is interested in microfinance as a future career.

Alex was fabulous! Very interesting, engaging, informative, and inspirational! Many thanks to him and to all who worked to set up this great program.

As I am going back to Cornell as a Masters student in International Agriculture and Rural Development with a two-year Peace Corps option this topic was absolutely important for my thesis. I was happy to meet Alex and learn about his experiences in development. I flew down from New York just for this event!

Alex Counts recounts a great story of his interst in micro-finance and how he returned to Cornell to learn Bengali. Kudos to Cornell for having such an extensive language program.

January 28, 2009 — In Memory of John Updike

Hooks Book Events acknowledges the passing of John Updike with this offering, “Requiem,” from his forthcoming collection, “Endpoint and Other Poems,” as shared in today’s Opinion section of the New York Times.

Requiem, by John Updike
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

January 20, 2009 — What is Barack Obama reading?

In his first book, “Dreams From My Father,” Barack Obama talks about how he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others. Some of his favorites are by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois. In college, he immersed himself in a spiritual-intellectual search and read the works of Nietzsche and St. Augustine.

What is he reading these days?

During a 60 Minutes interview in November Obama mentioned he’s reading two books about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Jonathan Alter’s “The Defining Moment: F.D.R’s Hundred Days,” and the Triumph of Hope, and Jean Edward Smith’s “FDR.”

The New York Times reported in May that he also was reading Doris Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World.”

And, here are some more titles Obama has read, according to McNally Jackson Books — a New York bookstore that opened in 2004 and describes itself as “a big, beautiful independent bookstore in New York’s Nolita, where Soho, Noho, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and Little Italy meet (it’s also a stone’s throw from Tribeca, the East Village, West Village, and Wall Street…. Not to mention a quick subway ride from Brooklyn, a bike ride from Harlem, and a PATH fare from the great state of New Jersey). In other words, we’re right in the middle of the criss-crossing currents of New York’s eclectic cultural life and we’re determined to capture that invigorating swirl in our mix of books, media, and events.

How many of these Obama faves have you leafed through?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
The Bible
The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
The Collected Writings of Thomas Jefferson
The Confessions of St. Augustine
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich
Exodus by Leon Uris
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
Gandhi: An Autobiography
Gandhi’s Truth by Erik H. Erikson
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
Gilead by by Marilynne Robinson
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr
King Lear by Shakespeare
Loon Lake by E.L. Doctorow
Mila 18 by Leon Uris
Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr
My Life as a Man by Philip Roth
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
The Outsider by Richard Wright
Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Working by Studs Terkel
World’s Fair by E.L. Doctorow
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon