Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett headlined this year's National Book Festival, promoting her book "Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and the Constitution," in an onstage conversation with festival co-Chairman David Rubenstein.
How well do you understand your dog? Probaly not quite as well as you think. Alexandra Horowitz is the author of "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in 2009. An updated version of the book has just been released and she'll be at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6 to discuss her work. We caught up with her for a few questions beforehand.
Journalist, author and historian Clay Risen spent six years working on “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America,” a narrative history of the anti-Communist panic that consumed the country in the decade after World War II. He'll be discussing the book at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6, but we caught up with him for a conversation beforehand.
We're talking today with David Baron, author of “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America,” who will be at this year’s National Book Festival on Sept. 6. It’s about the public fascination between 1890-1910 with what looked to be the very real possibility of life of Mars. The main cultural artifact of this belief might be H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, “The War of the Worlds,” which imagined hostile Martians invading Earth in spectacular fashion. But as Baron writes, most of the views were utopian, picturing Martians as a far advanced, heroic people.
The National Book Festival’s 25th edition returns to D.C. on September 6 with a stellar list of novelists, historians, poets, young-adult and childrens authors, more than 90 in all. You’ll see novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Scott Turow and Jess Walter; non-fiction authors such as Ron Chernow, Jill Lepore and Geraldine Brooks; and Academy …
"On Saturday, Jan. 4, Library of Congress James Madison Council chair David M. Rubenstein was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House. This is a crowning achievement for his passionate support of our nation’s history and culture and the arts." -- A special blog from Librarian Carla D. Hayden