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This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. The author discusses "The Lost Baker of Vienna," a sweeping saga about survival, loss, love and the reverberating effects of war inspired by her family's experiences after the Holocaust.

About the Books (from the publisher):
In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war.

Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe.

Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?

The Lost Baker of Vienna affirms the unbreakable bonds of family, shining a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart.

About the Author:
Sharon Kurtzman worked in television marketing before pursuing her dream of becoming a writer. She earned her MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. The Lost Baker of Vienna was inspired by the war and postwar experiences of her own family, who were Holocaust survivors. Kurtzman lives in North Carolina with her husband; they have two adult children.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. The author, joined in conversation by Flora Champy and Murielle Perrier, presents his new book, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson."

About the book (from the publisher):
An engaging investigation of how thirteen key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the "Art of Thinking Freely."

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment natural historians and classifiers redefined what it meant to be human. By 1800, they had recast the very idea of humankind, sorting the world’s peoples into rigid biological categories for the first time in history. Prize-winning biographer Andrew S. Curran retraces this often-misunderstood story by plunging into the lives and ideas of the most influential individuals behind this reconceptualization, among them Louis XIV, Voltaire, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson.

Moving from the gilded halls of Versailles to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, from the court of the Mughal Empire to the drawing rooms of Monticello, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea" not only reveals the Enlightenment’s entanglement with empire and oppression—it offers a bold reassessment of the era’s most celebrated luminaries.

In conversation:
Andrew S. Curran is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University. A scholar and biographer, his writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, TIME, the Paris Review, and the Wall Street Journal.

Flora Champy is associate professor of French in the department of French and Italian at Princeton University. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century French political literature and philosophy, blending literary analysis with political theory. Her first book, "L’Antiquité politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, entre exemples et modèles" (Classiques Garnier, 2022), explores the role of classical Greece and Rome in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political philosophy.

Murielle Perrier is senior lecturer and associate director of the French program at Princeton University. Her teaching and research interests include eighteenth-century literature, contemporary Madagascan culture and literature, and the literacy approach as a pedagogical method. She is the author of "Utopie et libertinage au siècle des Lumières" and she is currently working on another book project that deals with the representation of the body in contemporary Madagascan culture and literature.

Public Humanities programs are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Princeton Classics, the Princeton University Department of English, and the Princeton University Humanities Council.

Classicist and translator Emily Wilson is joined in conversation by Sophie Gee and Pasquale Toscano to explore how epic confronts rising populism, nation-building and authoritarian rule.

Why does epic—the most ancient of all genres—seem to be everywhere right now? And why is it especially needed in this moment of rising populism, nation-building, and authoritarian rule? These are the questions Sophie Gee and Pasquale Toscano discuss with Emily Wilson, a classicist and renowned translator of Homer. Please join us to grapple with how this unmodern form helps us confront the challenges of today.

In Conversation:
Emily Wilson is the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, an award-winning translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient.

Sophie Gee is a professor of English at Princeton University, the Vice-Chancellor Fellow at the University of Sydney, and a co-host of the hit podcast "The Secret Life of Books."

Pasquale Toscano (*24) is an assistant professor of English at Vassar College who's written about epic, Milton, and disability for a range of venues, both academic and public-facing.

This event was recorded on February 17, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and the Princeton University Humanities Council, the Program in Humanistic Studies, the Department of English at Princeton University and Labyrinth Books and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The author, joined in conversation by Simon Gikandi, presents his new book “Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe.”

About the book (from the publisher):
Virgil. Chaucer. Petrarch. These names resonate with many as cornerstones of European culture. Yet, in "Atlas’s Bones," D. Vance Smith reveals that much of what is claimed as European culture up to the Middle Ages—its great themes in literature, its sources in political thought, its religious beliefs—originated in the writings of African thinkers like Augustine, Fulgentius, and Martianus Capella, or Europeans who thought extensively about Africa. In fact, a third of Virgil’s Aeneid takes place in Africa. Francis Petrarch believed his most important achievement was his epic "Africa;" while Geoffrey Chaucer wrote repeatedly about the figures of Scipio Africanus, actually two different men who defeated and destroyed Carthage.

Smith tells the story of how Europe created a false “medieval” version of Africa to acquire resources and power during the era of imperialism and colonialism. The first half of the book, “Reading Africa,” traces Egypt’s, Libya’s, and Carthage’s influence on classical and medieval thinking about Africa, highlighting often ignored literary and legendary traditions, for example, that Alexander the Great named himself the son of an African god. The second part, “Writing Africa,” focuses on how the different cultures of the two great African cities—Carthage and Alexandria—shaped modern literary criticism and political theology and examines the cross-influences of modern anthropology, medieval studies, and colonial law.

"Atlas’s Bones" firmly re-establishes the significance of Africa in European intellectual history. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how much of Africa informs our artistic and cultural world.

In Conversation:
D. Vance Smith is a professor in the English Department at Princeton University. His research bridges African and decolonial literature and theory, Africanfuturism, the history of anthropology, and the medieval roots of colonial structures, governance, and thought. His work also centers community engagement, community building, and radical pedagogy in Trenton, New Jersey, where he serves as the Board Chair of Trenton Artworks and as the Board Vice-President of Passage Theater. In Fall 2025, Smith co-taught the Humanities Sequence “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture” in the Program in Humanistic Studies.

Simon Gikandi is the Class of 1943 University Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Princeton University, where he is also affiliated with the Departments of Comparative Literature and African American Studies and the Program in African Studies. Gikandi’s major fields of research and teaching are Anglophone literatures and cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and postcolonial Britain; literary and critical theory; the black Atlantic and the African diaspora; and the English novel. His current research projects are on slavery and modernity, Decolonization and African Literature, and Global Modernism.

This event was recorded on February 05, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Labyrinth Books. The author presents and discusses her novel "And the Ancestors Sing."

About the Books (from the publisher):
In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, Lei and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.

Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work, navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When a powerful client offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.

Spanning decades of seismic change in post-Cultural Revolution China, "And The Ancestors Sing" is a sweeping, multigenerational novel of resilience, sacrifice, and the unbreakable pull of home, perfect for fans of "Pachinko" and "The Island of Sea Women."

In Conversation:
Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, she grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. After earning medical, law, and public health degrees, she and family have lived across the globe before settling in Philadelphia. Radha enjoys learning new Mandarin characters, tackling novice knitting projects, painting with watercolors and acrylics, catching a live, stand-up comedy show with husband Avery, trying out new recipes with daughters Yani and Ayo, and, of course, jotting down story notes for her next writing project.

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir "Cinderland" and the novel "Shiner," which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and an NPR Best Book of the year. Her latest novel, "Mercury," is a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times. Amy Jo’s next novel, "Wait for Me," is coming March 3, 2026.

This event was recorded on February 08, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Princeton Classics. The author and classicist, joined in conversation by Joshua Billings, presents her new book "Revolution: Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time."

An open access edition of this book is available through BibliOpen at the link below:
https://bibliopen.org/p/bopen/9780226843049

About the Book (from the publisher):
A consideration of how modern revolutions have employed tropes of classical antiquity.

Despite its Latin etymology, “revolution” in its modern understanding arguably did not exist in antiquity, and revolution as we know it today is considered by many theorists to be a term born in modernity. While they certainly had times of momentous political upheaval, the Greeks and Romans tended to understand such events as part of a narrative of political continuity rather than novelty or rupture. Nevertheless, modern revolutions have repeatedly appropriated tropes of classical discourse, such as freedom, tyranny, tragedy, and fraternity.

With this book, Miriam Leonard offers a conceptual history of revolution, unraveling modernity’s yearning for the new and questioning why ancient concepts continue to play such an important role in political uprisings. Leonard looks at examples of appeals to antiquity during the French and Haitian Revolutions, in anticolonial struggles, and feminist and queer movements and considers works of theorists such as Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Sigmund Freud that foreground an engagement with antiquity.

In Conversation:
Miriam Leonard is professor of Greek literature and its reception at University College London. She is the author of "Athens in Paris," "How to Read Ancient Philosophy," "Socrates and the Jews, "and "Tragic Modernities." She is the editor of "Derrida and Antiquity" and coeditor of "Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity" (with Joshua Billings) and "Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought" (with Vanda Zajko).

Joshua Billings researches ancient Greek literature and philosophy and modern intellectual history, with a particular concentration on tragedy. He has published two books: "Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy" (Princeton 2014) traces the emergence of modern conceptions of tragedy and the tragic in the 18th and 19th century; and "The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens" (Princeton 2021) explores how Greek drama can be understood as a form of philosophical thought before the discipline of philosophy. This interest in fifth-century BCE intellectual history is also the impetus behind the "Cambridge Companion to the Sophists" (co-edited, with Christopher Moore), which was published in 2023.

About the series:
This virtual conversation is the first event in the Public Humanities Initiative's author series on revolution, highlighting the connection between the American Revolution and other modern movements of national liberation or cultural revolution. By exploring the topic of revolution beyond the American context, this series investigates the history of the American Revolution and its consequences for our national history, even as that history is situated with respect to a more far-reaching history of revolutions in the modern period.

Public Humanities programs and resources at the library are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on January 25, 2025.