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'authors@mit.edu' kicks off new season of readings

The MIT Press Bookstore and the Humanities and Dewey Libraries have announced their second full season of talks and readings in the "authors@mit" series.

The series begins on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 6pm in Rm 14E-304 with a talk and slide show presentation by Ann Pendleton-Jullian, associate professor of architecture. She will speak about her new MIT Press book entitled The Road That Is Not a Road and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In her book, Professor Pendleton-Jullian tells the story of the Open City, a designed city still in formation that has no master plan--a hauntingly beautiful site resulting from collaboration between painters, poets, architects and engineers who are more interested in process than the end result. They are influenced by surrealism, the legacy of LeCorbusier and other modern utopians, as well as the heritage of South American landscape and culture.

Next on the series schedule is a talk by Professor of Philosophy Irving Singer, author of the trilogy Meaning in Life (Johns Hopkins University Press), on Thursday, March 6 at 5:30pm in the Humanities Library reading room. On Wednesday, March 19 at 4pm, Michael Dertouzos, director of the Laboratory for Computer Science, will give a lecture to launch his new book, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives (HarperEdge). This event is co-sponsored by the Industrial Liaison Program as part of its "Infinite Corridors: Research Perspectives from MIT" video series produced by the Center for Advanced Educational Services.

In April, former Gay Community News editor Amy Hoffman will read from Hospital Time (Duke University Press), a moving memoir about her friend and colleague's struggle with AIDS (April 3). Also in the series: Professor of Economics Paul Krugman on Pop Internationalism (April 10), Canadian scholar Robert Barsky on his biography Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (April 17), and Dutch evolutionary biologist Tijs Goldschmidt on Darwin's Dreampond: Drama in Lake Victoria (April 24).

The series will culminate with a day-long symposium to celebrate the work of Professor Stanford Anderson, chair of the Department of Architecture, on May 3. MIT Press this spring will publish a tribute to Professor Anderson, The Education of an Architect. Locations of these later events will be announced. Signed copies of books will be available at each event.

The series is being organized by Teresa Tobin, Dewey and Humanities librarian, and Jeremy Grainger, MIT Press Bookstore manager. "We feel tremendously encouraged by the overflow crowds we had at our two events during IAP," Ms. Tobin said. A celebration of Hal's Legacy (MIT Press) on the birthday of the computer anti-hero of the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a theramin concert by MIT Press employee James Coleman to celebrate publication of a special issue of the MIT Press' Leonardo Music Journal, filled Wong Auditorium and Killian Hall last month. The series was inaugurated last fall.

A full schedule is available on the Web at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/bookstore/events.html> or by e-mail at <authors@mit.edu>. Those interested can also subscribe to the Bookstore's e-mail newsletter by e-mailing <listserv@mitvma.mit.edu> with the body of the message reading "SUBscribe BOOKNEWS yourfull_name" (no quotes).

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 26, 1997.

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