2022 Nonfiction Author Series

Monday, January 17, 2022

What does it mean to be smart?  To be human?  What do we really want from life?  Genius Makers tracks the efforts of two very different men – a 64-year old computer science professor who couldn’t drive or fly because he couldn’t sit down, and a 36-year-old neuroscientist and chess prodigy – who were determined to answer those questions by creating a machine that could do everything the human brain could do.  The product of their unorthodox efforts unfolded in the world of Google, Facebook, and other social media.  The Los Angeles Times said you “don’t need a science or engineering degree to enjoy” Genius Makers, because it is “a snappily written book” that is “both entertaining and valuable.”  Forbes magazine said the book has a “breezy style that is easy and fun to read” and, more than that, provides “a ringside seat at what may turn out to be the pivotal episode in human history.”  And best-selling author Walter Isaacson said the book is a “colorful page-turner.”

Cade Metz, a technology correspondent in the San Francisco bureau of The New York Times, covers artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality, and other emerging areas in the world of technology.  Prior to working for the Times, he was a senior staff writer with Wired magazine.

Monday, February 14, 2022

The Daughters of Yalta presents a unique perspective on the February 1945 Yalta Conference – where British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Averill W. Harriman, FDR’s key advisor on Soviet relations, met with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to plot the post-war world.  We see the conference unfold through the eyes of three daughters who accompanied their famous fathers to the conference – Kathleen Harriman, a champion skier and war correspondent; Sarah Churchill, an actress-turned RAF officer who frequently advised her father on world affairs; and Anna Roosevelt, FDR’s only daughter and his most cherished confidante.  The Wall Street Journal called The Daughters of Yalta “an extraordinary work” that is “skillfully written and well researched.”  The New York Times Book Review agreed, saying that the book is “entertaining history” and “packed with vivid personalities, jockeying aides, and insider observations about a pivotal moment in history.”

Catherine Grace Katz is a writer and historian from Winnetka, IL.  She graduated from Harvard College in 2013 with a BA in History and received her MPhil in Modern European History from Christ’s College, University of Cambridge in 2014, where she wrote her dissertation on the origins of modern counterintelligence practices.  After graduating, Catherine worked in finance in New York City before a very fortuitous visit to the bookstore in the lobby of her office in Manhattan led her to return to history and writing.  She is currently pursuing a law degree at Harvard Law School.  The Daughters of Yalta is her first book.

Monday, March 7, 2022

Swing Kings unravels the seeming mystery behind the burst of home runs in baseball that began in 2017 and culminated with 6,776 homers being hit in 2019 – an increase of more than 1,000 from the number of home runs hit in 2000.  The explanation wasn’t steroids or the liveliness of the baseballs.  Instead, the revolution in home runs largely reflected a change in the most basic aspect of hitting:  the swing.  In a lively narrative, Swing Kings uses telling anecdotes to show how some of baseball’s biggest home run hitters – including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner – relied on the advice of private coaches to alter their swing so they could hit more home runs.  Publishers Weekly called Swing Kings “a rollicking account of the recent shift in that most joyous and elemental in sports: the home run.”  And Library Journal added that Swing Kings focuses “on a cast of characters worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.”

Jared Diamond has been the national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal since 2017.  Prior to that, he spent a season as the Journal’s Yankee beat writer and three years as the Journal’s beat writer for the Mets.  In his current role, he leads the paper’s baseball coverage.  This is his first book.

Monday, March 28, 2022

The Last Kings of Shanghai tells the remarkable story of two Jewish families – the Sassoons and the Kadoories – who devoted more than 175 years to the building and exploitation of financial opportunities in Shanghai, the hub of international business activity in China.  In a story that stretches from London to Baghdad to Hong Kong and to Shanghai, Kaufman penetrates the lives and minds of the families’ ambitious men and women to forge a tale of rivalry, opium smuggling, political intrigue, revolution, and war.  The LA Review of Books said The Last Kings is “a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China’s past.”  Forbes magazine said the book captures “a story that will excite readers.”  And Kirkus Reviews commended the book as “an absorbing multigenerational saga.”

Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who spent 30 years reporting on China for The Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News. He is the author of A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe, and Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is currently Director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.