Lectures

Books

Twice Roosevelt: Eldest grandchild of Franklin and Eleanor writes about the pitfalls of privilege

April 19, 2010

John Stephen Dwyer interviews Curtis Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor on his memoir “Too Close to the Sun.”

Books

Wolff at the Door: A Foray into the Boston Athenæum

March 6, 2010

John Stephen Dwyer reviews Katherine Wolff’s new history of the Boston Athenæum.

Lectures

Boston’s Lecture Scene: Not John Stoddard Anymore

October 21, 2009

If BSO tickets or the MFA’s new prices are draining your entertainment budget, Boston’s gamut of free lectures, often followed by receptions with free food and even a little free booze, offer engaging and educational relief. The MFA’s Shapiro Celebrity Lecture Series may fetch $30+ for a ticket, but Boston’s universities rarely charge even a […]

Lectures

Stanley Donen at the HFA

October 10, 2009

I caught the Stanley Donen appearance at the HFA‘s screening of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) on Friday night. The film represents MGM’s first foray into CinemaScope, which produced a picture about twice as wide as the then current standard Academy format. Donen used every inch of it by the way, seven brides + […]

Lectures

Opera, from the Future?

October 8, 2009

Elly Jessop, a master’s student in Tod Machover’s MIT Media Lab research group, gave a talk Wednesday night at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the upcoming production Death and the Powers, billed the opera of the future. Set to premier in Monaco September 2010, and tour internationally with a stop at the A.R.T., […]

Books

Six Norton Lectures by Orhan Pamuk

September 26, 2009

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel laureate and critically acclaimed novelist, gave the first of a series of six lectures this past Tuesday to a densely packed crowd at Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The Norton lectures were first endowed in 1925 as a yearly lectureship pertaining to poetry, in the broadest sense of the word. Past lectures have been […]