Jane Hirshfield reads from her new volume of poetry Ledger, a book of personal, ecological, and political reckoning from the internationally renowned poet named "among the modern masters" (Washington Post). From one of our most celebrated contemporary poets--long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and England's T.S. Eliot Prize--comes Jane Hirshfield's Ledger, her most important work yet. From its already much-quoted opening lines of despair and defiance ("Let them not say: we did not see…

Bonnie Tsui presents Why We Swim, "a beautifully written love letter to water and a fascinating story" (Rebecca Skloot). To reserve your seat, please purchase a copy of Why We Swim by speaking to a bookseller or clicking on the cover below. Humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now in the twenty-first century we swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits.…