Yale Library Book Talks

The Yale Library Book Talk series lineup for 2023–2024 is here! This library event features authors with connections to the Yale and New Haven communities and those who have conducted research in Yale Library collections. Selected books range in topics and genres, and authors share their research and writing processes. Subscribe to Yale Library Book Talk mailing list to learn about future events.

All events are free and open to the public and will be held on Wednesday afternoons in the lecture hall at Sterling Memorial Library. After the presentation, authors will be available to sign copies of books that participants have purchased in advance. Books will not be sold at the event.

September 13 4–5:30 pm		My Egypt Archive by Alan Mikhail Alan Mikhail, Chace Family Professor of History at Yale, will be in conversation with Robin Dougherty, librarian for Middle East Studies, about his new book—a contemporary history of authoritarian politics.
October 11 4–5:30 pm		G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage Beverly Gage, John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History, will discuss her 2023 Pulitzer Prize–winning book about the complex life and career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
November 1 4–5:30 pm		Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons by Jill Newmark Historian Jill Newmark will discuss her research on Richard Henry Greene, the first African American to graduate from Yale University—a key figure in her new book Without Concealment, Without Compromise.
December 6 4–5:30 pm		Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture by Caleb Smith Literary critic and Yale professor Caleb Smith explores nineteenth-century archives and shows that distraction—“the wandering mind”—is not just a 21st-century problem but was also a serious concern in American culture two centuries ago.