The Department of Education has announced Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases by Lydia Kang, MD, and Nate Pedersen, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Three of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “Can the Center Hold? – A Question for Our Moment.”

Winner of the 2022 Nebraska Book Award in the category of Nonfiction Popular History, Patient Zero is the second nonfiction book by Lydia Kang, MD, and Nate Pedersen.

As the title suggests, Patient Zero tells the curious stories of 21 of the most well-known diseases to our species and their patient zeros. Each chapter focuses on one disease’s origin story, its impact, and plenty of other interesting facts. Through this amalgam of stories, the book traces the fascinating history of disease outbreaks – how they start and spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to contain them.

The stories are gripping and instructive. Amy Stewart, the author of The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Bugs, writes that “some of these stories read like gripping crime novel, some like Victorian tragedies, and some like futuristic thriller. Patient Zero is essential and entertaining reading.”

Lydia Kang is an author of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. She graduated from Columbia University and New York University School of Medicine and is a practicing physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center where she is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

Her poetry and non-fiction have been published in JAMA, The Annals of Internal Medicine, and Great Weather for Media. Along with Nate Pedersen, she is the co-author of the 2023 CLSC selection Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases, which received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and a Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction. Their first book, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, was an NPR Science Friday Best Science Book of 2017. Her adult historical fiction includes the bestselling novels A Beautiful Poison, The Impossible Girl, Opium and Absinthe, and The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding. Her young adult novels include Control, Catalyst, Toxic, and The November Girl, a 2018 Nebraska Book Award winner. She is also the author of the recently released Star Wars: Cataclysm, set in the era of the High Republic. 

The Department of Education has announced Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Six of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “A Life of Literature.” 

As we consider the life of literature, we look to the classic Pride and Prejudice and its persistent relevance. Actor and playwright Kate Hamill — who wrote a stage adaption of the novel that will be produced by Chautauqua Theater Company this summer — will present Austen’s work for the CLSC and discuss Pride and Prejudice’s influence on her as a writer and an actor. 

Pride and Prejudice retains a fascination for modern readers, often appearing near the top of countless lists of “most-loved books.” Since its publication in 1813 it has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, selling over 20 million copies, and receives considerable attention from literary scholars. Likewise, it has paved the way for archetypes that abound in many contemporary literary works of our time. Modern interest in the book has resulted in several dramatic adaptations, including Hamill’s.

Set in England at the turn of the 19^th century, Pride and Prejudice is the story of the Bennet family — Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and their five unmarried daughters — whose lives in the Hertfordshire countryside are changed with the arrival of two new neighbors. The rich and eligible Mr. Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, while his status-conscious friend — the even more rich and eligible Mr. Darcy — is disdainful of local society and repeatedly clashes with the Bennets' lively second daughter, Elizabeth.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist whose penchant for witty social commentary, celebrated romantic plots, and feminine perspective make her one of the most celebrated authors in British literature. Her novels deal primarily with the social lives of English landed gentry, especially the expectations of and about women, and the necessity of securing a good marriage. Although Austen herself never married, novels like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma are considered classics of the early 19^th-century romantic genre and are still widely read today.

Kate Hamill is an American actor and playwright. As playwright, she is known for her innovative, contemporary adaptations of classic novels for the stage, including Sense and Sensibility (in which she originated the role of Marianne) and Pride and Prejudice (in which she originated the role of Lizzy Bennet). CTC’s production of Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice runs July 22-30, 2023, in Bratton Theater.

The Department of Education has announced Dr. No by Percival Everett, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Two of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastimes.”

Winner of the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, Dr. No is the latest novel from the prolific, genre-bending, experimental writer, Percival Everett.

Dr. No, which borrows its title from the early James Bond story and subsequent film, tells the “unhinged” story of a brilliant professor of mathematics, Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.” His parents, he says, were mathematicians and believed that two negatives yielded a positive.) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. 

In this novel, nothing is real, and it is worth breaking into Fort Knox to steal it. Or at least, this is what Wala Kitu’s employer and eccentric billionaire John Sill, who wants to become a literal James Bond villain, believes.

Dr. No is a wildly mischievous novel from one of our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. It is a caper, a play on concepts, and a dizzying literary game about nothing. That it is about nothing isn’t to say that it’s not about anything.

Mr. Everett will offer a masterclass talk on craft followed by an audience Q&A before his presentation. The time and location will be announced soon.

Percival Everett is the author of more than thirty novels and story collections, including Dr. No, The Trees, Telephone, So Much Blue, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, I Am Not Sidney Poitier and Erasure. Everett has won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, the Dos Passos Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, The 2010 Believer Book Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, a Creative Capital Award, BS the Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Everett is currently Distinguished Professor of English at University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

The Department of Education has announced One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World by Michael Frank, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week One of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “On Friendship.”

One Hundred Saturdays is the remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale.

 Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived.

 Michael Frank is the author of What Is Missing, a novel, and The Mighty Franks, a memoir, which was awarded the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Telegraph and The New Statesman.  One Hundred Saturdays received the Jewish Book Council’s Natan Notable Book Award and was one of the Wall Street Journal’s top ten books of 2022.  Frank is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and lives with his family in New York City and Camogli, Italy. 

The Department of Education has also announced The Lincoln Highway  by Amor Towles as both a Chautauqua Lecture Series confirmation and Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Five: “Infrastructure: Building and Maintaining the Physical, Social and Civic Underpinnings of Society.”

Amor Towles’ beloved novels — translated into more than 30 languages — have each been New York Times bestsellers, collectively selling more than 6 million copies. His latest, 2021’s The Lincoln Highway, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, was a “Today Show” Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2021 and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. A propulsive, road-trip novel set in 1950s America, it is this book that Towles returns to the grounds to discuss in a joint Chautauqua Lecture Series and Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle presentation, uplifting the legacy of the first transcontinental highway in the United States and its place in both our country’s legacy and its infrastructure. 

Having worked as an investment professional for over 20 years, Towles published his first novel, Rules of Civility, in 2011. Named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011, its French translation received the 2012 Prix Fitzgerald. His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, which was a CLSC selection in 2018 and saw Towles take the podium at the Hall of Philosophy that summer, was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. Both Bill Gates and President Barack Obama included A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway on their annual book recommendation lists.  

Sleigh (or wagon) rides are back!

Rides are expected every Saturday and Sunday in January and February, beginning on New Year's Eve, December 31.

Rides will begin at 1pm, leaving from the parking lot next to the Bookstore roughly every half-hour.  The last ride leaves around 3pm.  Rides are approximately 40 minutes long, so please dress for the weather.  Rides may be cancelled due to rain, ice, or unsafe temperatures.

There are no reservations.  Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for children, and may be purchased at the Bookstore on the day.  We do not start selling tickets until rides for the day are confirmed, which is sometimes when the horses arrive!

We hope to see you there!

Chautauqua Institution's Department of Education has announced Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, by Linda Villarosa, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Four of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “The State of Believing.”

Named a best book of 2022 by 6 publications, including NPR, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, Under the Skin is “perhaps the most important and thought-provoking publication of the year,” (Oprah Daily).

 Under the Skin is a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America by revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and public health. Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely.

In addition to being a CLSC Selection, Under the Skin has been selected in collaboration with Chautauqua’s African American Heritage House as the Mirror Project Reading Circle selection for April 2023, and the Chautauqua County Book Read selection in partnership with Chautauqua’s IDEA office, the YWCA of Jamestown, and other local organizations. More information about the county wide book read will be available at https://www.ywcajamestown.com/chqbookread around mid-February. All Chautauquans are invited to participate in either book read options as both in-person and online discussion groups will be available.

 Author and New York Times Magazine journalist, Linda Villarosa is the author of 2023 CLSC selection, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, which was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022. As a contributor to The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, she traced the race-based physiological myths that have endured since slavery and continue to plague medicine today. A former executive editor of Essence Magazine, Villarosa is a member of the Association of LGBTQ Journalists (NLGJA) Hall of Fame, and has been recognized with numerous awards from organizations including the American Medical Writers’ Association, the New York Association of Black Journalists, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and many others. Villarosa is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. She teaches journalism, English and Black Studies at the City College of New York.

Stop by, say hello, have a cookie, run Santa's Train!  Thank you for your support throughout the year.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season.

Thursday, December 15th 10am -3 pm

Chautauqua Institution's Department of Education has announced The Wild Fox of Yemen, by Threa Almontaser, as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for Week Nine of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season: “The Global South: Expanding the Scope of Geopolitical Understanding.”

 The winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, The Wild Fox of Yemen won both the 2021 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, among other distinctions.

 Threa Almontaser’s debut collection of poems asks how mistranslation can be a form of self-knowledge and survival. A love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before, Almontaser’s polyvocal collection sneaks artifacts to and from worlds, repurposing language and adapting to the space between cultures. 

During a week when we will turn our focus to the global south for what we have too often overlooked or misunderstood from these parts of the world, we will consider, through The Wild Fox of Yemen and Almontaser’s presentation, the role of language and what might lay beyond the limits of the American imagination.

 Threa Almontaser is the author of the debut poetry collection The Wild Fox of Yemen (CLSC 2023), nominated for the National Book Awards and winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American poets, the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and the Arab American Book Award. She is a recipient of writing fellowships from Duke University and the Fulbright Program. She earned her MFA from North Carolina State University and teaches English to immigrants and refugees in her area.