Author of the recently published novel The Triumph of Deborah, Etzioni-Halevy is professor emeritus of political sociology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and lives in Tel Aviv. She is the author of two additional novels that tell the stories of biblical women, The Song of Hannah and The Garden of Ruth. A native of Vienna, Etzioni-Halevy is a child Holocaust survivor and spent World War II in Italy, partly in an Italian concentration camp and partly in hiding. She is the author of 14 academic texts and numerous articles.

Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris A transplanted media executive who has started a gardening business finds a mummified body while restoring the gardens at a local landmark.

Pecha Kucha Night
Pecha Kucha, the Japanese phrase for the sound of conversation, is a phenomenon that is spreading across the globe in a variety of venues. Join the PPL Tech Team and several invited guests for an evening of fast-paced presentations in the 20 by 20 format, in which panelists have exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds along with 20 images to cover a current technology trend or topic of their choosing. See if they can do it and then join in the conversation about Web 2.0 and technology. Confirmed panelists for the evening include Peter Bromberg, Romina Gutierrez, Janie Hermann, Bob Keith, John LeMasney, and Julie Strange. To learn more about Pecha Kucha, visit http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

Lawyers will be at the library for free private consultations on immigration and general legal issues. No appointments necessary; service on a first-come, first-served basis. Spanish translators available.

Festival singers Jennifer Zetlan and Marcello Guzzo will be accompanied by pianist Linda Saponara in arias from the festival's production of Puccini's La Boheme and other operas. Artistic Director Richard Tang Yuk will present an overview of the 2008 program and Stage Director Stephan La Cosse will share his experiences with preparing an opera in three weeks.

Grandmaster Sergey Kudrin will take on 25 challengers in a simultaneous chess event on the plaza outside the library or, if it rains, in the Community Room. Throughout the afternoon, pick-up chess matches will be available. Kudrin was born in the Soviet Union and came to the U.S. in 1977. He became a grandmaster in 1984 and represented the U.S. in world competitions. He finished sixth in the 2007 U.S. Championship.
Please register by calling 609.924.9529, ext. 240

This playful, game-like alternative to ordinary conversation is designed to enrich interpersonal relationships. Moderated by Alan Goldsmith, Noodle Talks begin with a container filled with 400 fettuccini-like paper strips being passed around. On each strip, there are one or two questions covering the full gamut of life experience. Some questions refer to the past, others to the future; some are concrete, others metaphorical; some invite us to laugh at our foibles while others bring us to tears. There are no right or wrong answers, just the truth of our own inner or outer experience.

Worshiping Walt
Michael Robertson's book is believed to be the first to focus on Walt Whitman's disciples, the fascinating, eclectic group of 19th century men and women who regarded Whitman not simply as a poet but as a religious prophet. Long before Whitman was established in the canon of American poetry, feminists, socialists, spiritual seekers, and supporters of same-sex passion saw him as an enlightened figure who fulfilled their religious, political, and erotic yearnings. To his disciples Whitman was variously an ideal husband, radical lover, socialist icon, or bohemian saint. In this transatlantic group biography, Robertson, a professor of English at the College of New Jersey, explores the highly charged connections between Whitman and his followers, who included Canadian psychiatrist R.M. Bucke, American nature writer John Burroughs, British activist Edward Carpenter and Oscar Wilde. Robertson is the author of the award-winning Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature and the coeditor of Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present. A former freelance journalist, he has written for The Village Voice, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and numerous scholarly journals.

In his debut novel, The Sex Ed Chronicles, Nachbar tells the story of a young journalist who fights to save a teacher's career in the emotionally charged arenas of sex education and student free press rights in a New Jersey public schools in 1980. The author has been involved with education politics for more than four decades as a student, urban planner, government affairs manager, software executive and now as a writer. He produces Educated Quest, a blog that offers and invites commentary on education politics, policy and technology.

This new library database is an invaluable asset for those searching for timely, accurate and comprehensive global business information. OneSource provides key company, executive and industry information selected from more than 2,500 different sources, supplied by the world's premier information providers and seamlessly integrated into one, easy-to-use service that is accessible in the library or at home using your library card. Jane Brown, manager of the library's Reference and Adult Services Department, will demonstrate the capabilities of OneSource.

Princeton Senior Resource Center will describe its Engaged Retirement program, which explores the many facets of retirement that go beyond finances. The program reviews the key functions of work and how seniors can fulfill these functions after retiring through creating a vision and goals, and develop individualized retirement plans.

How to Start a Business Cary Kvitka , an attorney with Stark & Stark will lead this session exploring the pros and cons of three ways to start a business: buying an existing business, purchasing a franchise or building your own. Other topics to be covered include how to negotiate commercial leases and vendor contracts.

Timothy Urban, a local scholar with graduate degrees in music performance, early music performance practice, and music theory, and a doctorate in musicology, will examine music of the Belle Epoque era. Urban is an adjunct professor at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University and is also on the faculty of the Westminster Conservatory of Music.

Infamous People in Good Company Alan Kitty, Mary Greenberg, Julia Poulos, Lillian Israel and other members of Princeton Writers Block present readings of rarely performed plays and songs featuring Mark Twain, George Sand, Mae West and Sophie Tucker.

The Ice Queen by Anne Hoffman As an 8-year-old, the unnamed narrator makes a terrible wish that comes true. Remorseful for the next 30 years, she shuts down emotionally to become a self-proclaimed ice queen, until lightening strikes (literally).

A community of writers who are working to infuse true stories with emotional honesty, members of the group write memoir, essay and research-supported works in a flexible form that welcomes shifting voices and viewpoints, refined wordplay and the analytical modes of the essayist. The group publishes a journal, Solstice, to which members can contribute.
Registration required. Contact Janie Hermann: jhermann@princetonlibrary.org or call 609.924.9528 x228 for more information.

Students in an advanced jazz workshop at Westminster Conservatory will close out the series with a performance featuring a professional rhythm section: bassist Craig Thomas, a teacher at University of the Arts in Philadelphia who has toured and recorded with jazz greats Pat Martino and Jimmy Bruno, and drummer Joe Falcey, who has more than a decade of international touring experience. The students have studied with Tara Buzash, a pianist, composer and arranger who leads several jazz projects at Westminster.

Jim Murphy's illustrious music career started back in 1963 with radio program on WJLK, Asbury Park. He formed The Pine Barons in 1969 and has been performing his style of traditional country and bluegrass music ever since. Last summer, Murphy was the first New Jersey inductee into America's Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame, part of the Pioneer Music Museum in Anita, Iowa. Murphy will be the headliner for an evening of music, refreshments, door prizes and family fun as the library kicks off summer reading with a band that will be sure to delight all ages.

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby This unsparing indictment cites the American addiction to infotainment as the major element distinguishing our current age of unreason from earlier outbreaks of anti-rationalism. With reading on the decline and scientific and historical illiteracy on the rise, an increasingly ignorant public square is dominated by debased media-driven language and received opinion.

The Princeton Festival presents a screening of the 1952 film directed by John Huston and starring Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor. This film is a fictional account of the artist Toulouse-Lautrec, who becomes entangled in a relationship with a woman of the streets and struggles to balance his personal feelings, his artistic abilities and his family name and reputation.

Opera New Jersey will offer a preview of its summer series at its first public concert of the season. The concert will feature the singers performing excerpts from Verdi's La Traviata, Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Lehár's The Merry Widow.

The Princeton resident will be remembred in a public tribute and book release event for her memoir, Never Too Late, which chronicles her transformation from socialite to powerful politician and diplomat. Martindell, who died last week at age 93, did not become politically active until she was in her 50s, when she observed firsthand the injustices of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. After a stint as a no-nonsense politico in the New Jersey Senate, she became involved at the national level during the Carter administration, serving as director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Relief and as the first female ambassador to New Zealand. She is a former vice chairperson of the New Jersey Democratic Party and has an honorary doctor of laws degree from Smith College.
Sunday June 22, 3 p.m.

This two-week class is for people just beginning to research their families. You'll learn how to collect family information informally, organize what you know and identify the gaps in your information. We'll also take a brief look at some of the records you can use to fill in information and uncover earlier generations.

A master gardener and the author of the best-selling mystery Pushing Up Daisies, Harris will offer a fun look at mischief and mayhem in the garden, from the first garden pest (the serpent) to her own book, using examples from art, history, movies and books. Pushing Up Daisies is the first in the Dirty Business series featuring master gardener/amateur sleuth Paula Holliday. The next book, Dirt Nap takes place in a Connecticut casino and the third, Sub-Rosa, is set at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Harris was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has been a bookstore manager in Lawrence, a video producer, and a television executive. She and her husband split their time between New York City and Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Captivity, the author's second novel, is set in a South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary, where a primatologist and her troubled brother struggle to make sense of their childhood and the direction that their lives have taken. Wesselmann is the author of a previous novel, Trutor and the Balloonist, and a collection of short fiction, The Earth and the Sky. Her short stories have appeared in Other Voices, The Literary Review, Orchid, Florida Review and many others. She teaches English at Lehigh University.
Tuesday June 24,7:30 p.m.

In the spirit of Socrates' belief that the unexamined life is not worth living, participants pose questions, listen to others, raise challenges, and consider alternative answers. All are invited and no preparation is necessary.

This new library database is an invaluable asset for those searching for timely, accurate and comprehensive global business information. OneSource provides key company, executive and industry information selected from more than 2,500 different sources, supplied by the world's premier information providers and seamlessly integrated into one, easy-to-use service that is accessible in the library or at home using your library card. Jane Brown, manager of the library's Reference and Adult Services Department, will demonstrate the capabilities of OneSource.

Eloise Bruce and Angelo Verga "Rattle," Bruce's first book of verse, was published in 2004. She is a member of the poetry critique and performance group Cool Women and her poems have appeared in Sou'Wester , Blue Moon Review and American Letters and Commentary. She is on the staff of the Frost Place Center for Poetry and the Arts in Franconia, NH and works as a teaching artist for Young Audiences of New Jersey and Playwright's Theatre. Verga's poems have appeared in Rattle, Manhattan Review, New York Quarterly, Barrow Street, Heliotrope and numerous other journals. His most recent collection is "33 New York City Poems" and his work also appears in the thematic anthology "Birthday Poems." He is a founding member of Against the Tide: Poets for Peace, and is working on his sixth collection of verse, a book of love poems.

Quick Books to Help Your Business Grow Presented by two business and tax professionals, Alfred Stephens and Stacy Svendor of @ Home Tax Pros, this session will teach advantages of Quick Books to effectively manage and grow your business. This seminar is suitable for both new and existing businesses.

A community of writers who are working to infuse true stories with emotional honesty, members of the group write memoir, essay and research-supported works in a flexible form that welcomes shifting voices and viewpoints, refined wordplay and the analytical modes of the essayist. The group publishes a journal, Solstice, to which members can contribute.
Registration required. Contact Janie Hermann: jhermann@princetonlibrary.org or call 609.924.9528 x228 for more information.

Caregiver specialists discuss community resources for busy caregivers of older adults, featuring the role of Geriatric Care Manager. Speakers include Hilary Murray, Barbara Bristow, Jan McCurdy and Susan Hoskins.

This two-week class is for people just beginning to research their families. You'll learn how to collect family information informally, organize what you know and identify the gaps in your information. We'll also take a brief look at some of the records you can use to fill in information and uncover earlier generations.

Across the Universe In this psychedelic musical film that rolls to the beat of the Beatles, a young dockworker travels to America in the 60s and falls in love with a sheltered teenager whose brother has been drafted to fight in Vietnam. Together, they are swept up into the anti-war movement, the struggle for free speech and civil rights. 2 hours, 11 minutes