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Author Series - A Meeting Ground for Science Book Authors and their Audience

The Science & the City Author Series introduces friends and members of the New York Academy of Sciences to the newest works of great science writers. The 2007-2008 season features lectures by Devra Davis, Michio Kaku, Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks and others on topics including cancer research, cosmology, energy and the environment, evolutionary economics, neuroscience, and theoretical physics. A book signing and reception follows each lecture.

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Upcoming Events  |  Past Events with Science & the City Podcasts

Jun 27, 2008 ARTSCIENCE: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation
Author: David Edwards, PhD
Scientists are famous for believing in the proven and peer-accepted, the very ground that pioneering artists often subvert; they recognize correct and incorrect where artists see only true and false. "ARTSCIENCE" is an attempt to show how innovation in the post-Google generation is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Past Events with Science & the City Podcasts

Mar 18, 2008 Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
Author: Michio Kaku, PhD
One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In "Physics of the Impossible," the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent technologies and devices deemed equally impossible today might become commonplace in the future.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Feb 26, 2008 The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule
Author: Donald Pfaff, PhD
Several recent books, using anthropology, psychology and evolution, have argued that our ethical or moral life evolved from nature. Now a distinguished neuroscientist takes that proposition a critical step farther, right to the basics: brain signals. Donald Pfaff, Ph.D., head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior at Rockefeller University, gives us the first book to describe how ethics may be a hardwired function of the human brain.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Jan 28, 2008 ZOOM:The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
Author: Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
We are living in the midst of a Great Awakening. People are seeking environmentally-sound alternatives to gas guzzlers. Detroit's reign is over. Oil companies, despite their billion-dollar profits, could be on the brink of extinction if they don't adapt. And citizens, all too aware that these industries have lobbied politicians into gridlock over energy policy, are mobilizing to support leaders who advocate new policies.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Jan 9, 2008 The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics
Author: Michael Shermer, PhD
Bestselling author and psychologist Michael Shermer explains how evolution shaped the modern economy - and why people are so irrational about money. In this eye-opening exploration, he uncovers the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Nov 29, 2007 The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, The Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Master's Fiction
Author: Lois Gresh
Human characters, not science, are the heart of King's fiction, but Gresh and her coauthor Robert Weinberg, The Science of James Bond, use these tales as a jumping-off point in their latest pop-sci tie-in.
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Nov 16, 2007 The Secret History of the War on Cancer
Author: Devra Davis, PhD, MPH
In her new book, cancer researcher and science author Devra Davis argues that we are fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, and that this major public health effort has been diverted and distorted for private gain.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM
Oct 16, 2007 Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Author: Oliver Sacks, MD
Oliver Sacks discussed his new book in which he the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people-from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with "amusia," to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music.
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Oct 5, 2007 The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Author: Steven Pinker, Harvard University
Steven Pinker spoke about language and human nature at the inaugural event of the new Science & the City Author Series. In "The Stuff of Thought," Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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