Géraldine Schwarz’s riveting account of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II is an urgent warning against forgetting the lessons of history in the dangerous rise of […]

In this special Saturday afternoon lecture, Julie Flavell will present her book The Howe Dynasty, the first biography of a British "First Family." The Howe family had as much at […]

Women's History Month lecture.

Lecture.

Joint book launch. From Sophie Ward, the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Love and Other Thought Experiments, comes a masterful and gripping thriller about truth, silence, and the weight of the […]

An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City, written by Phillip James Dodd with photography by Jonathan Wallen, is a sumptuous book on an era – roughly from the […]

For this month's Non-Fiction/Fiction conversation series Join Sarah Schulman and K.M. Soehnlein in commemorating the 30-year anniversary of ACT UP.

John Sibley Williams, Barbara Graham, and Sergio Troncoso read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

With its gleaming shopping centers and refurbished row houses, today’s Harlem bears little resemblance to the neighborhood of the midcentury urban crisis. In The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and […]

In this lecture, Ken Scarlett will discuss the British Southern Strategy for conquering America and extinguishing the American Revolution. He will discuss the role of a quisling in the framing […]

Brooklyn born novelist, poet, educator and international speaker, Ellease Ebele N. Oseye, whom Maya Angelou described as "a seer of the interior landscape," has been teaching literature of African peoples […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can […]

Reading and discussion. A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious […]

The Sassoons, known as “the Rothschilds of the East,” were one of the richest families in the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Baghdadi Jewish family built a […]

In this program, poet David Mills will read from and reflect upon the research behind his poetry collection, Boneyarn, a book of poems about slavery in New York City. For […]

Dr. Gisella Perl was a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist who was imprisoned at Auschwitz. While there, she acted to address the terrors that were visited upon women by the Nazi regime, […]

Book discussion group. All are welcome.

Delve into the events leading up to the Alhambra Decree and what happened to the Jewish community in the wake of the edict in this panel discussion. On March 31, […]

Lecture. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North and […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world—banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform, and with such transformation comes disruption. What is […]

Livestreamed. Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history – originally titled We're Still Here in a 1986 first edition – Jill Jonnes continues to chronicle the rise, fall, rebirth, and ongoing revival of the South Bronx. The once-thriving New York City borough, ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically […]

Lecture. China’s growth over the past four decades has positioned state capitalism as a durable foil to the orthodoxy of free markets, to the confusion of many in the West. […]

Founded in 1420, the Forbidden City in Beijing had served as the center of Chinese royal power for five centuries. Following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the […]

Abdul Ali, Hananah Zaheer and Rosalia Scalia read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

In the summer of 1781, after spying on the British troops in Manhattan for six weeks, General Washington and General Rochambeau made a critical decision. They would not attack the British in New York but instead would take their troops across the Hudson River and march to Yorktown, Virginia to confront General Cornwallis’ army in […]

In Our Shoes: On Being a Young Black Woman in Not-So "Post-Racial" America is a memoir in essays about young Black women and the stereotypes and preconceived notions they are expected to live up to, examined through the lens of Brianna Holt’s lived experience and pop culture to help readers unlearn their biases and expand […]

Inspired by the adventurous spirit of The NYRB Classics series, NYRB Poets features the work of poets from around the world, classical and modern, ancient and contemporary, in elegant, pocket-size editions. We’re celebrating their 10th anniversary by highlighting the many works of poetry in translation published by NYRB Poets. We will be joined by some […]

The 80th anniversary of the beginning of the momentous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is on April 19th this year. In this talk, Dr. Zachary Mazur will reflect on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a powerful example of Jewish resistance and action in the face of Nazi oppression during the Holocaust. Mazur’s presentation draws upon never-before-seen sources […]

In May 1923, when Shanghai publisher and Chicago Tribune reporter John Benjamin Powell bought a first-class ticket for the Peking Express, he pictured an idyllic overnight journey on a brand-new train of unprecedented luxury—exactly what the advertisements promised. Seeing his fellow passengers, including the mysterious Italian lawyer Giuseppe Musso (a confidante of Mussolini and lawyer […]

Screenwriter Lu Wei, often referred to as “China’s top screenwriter,” is the mastermind behind the initial drafts and storylines of some of the most iconic films in Chinese cinema, including “Farewell My Concubine,” “To Live,” “Qin Song,” “Shuangqi Zhen Daoke,” and “Red Cherry.” Despite his instrumental contributions to these films, Lu Wei has remained relatively […]

Art Spiegelman’s Maus remains as poignantly relevant today as it was when it was first published serially beginning in 1980, and then in two book volumes in 1986 and 1991. Among many other reasons for Maus’ present cultural impact, Hillary Chute argues that Spiegelman’s comics narrative reveals the capacity of the medium as a form […]

Maritime-themed book club. In partnership with McNally Jackson Books—located at 4 Fulton Street, just a few doors down from the Museum entrance—Seaport Museum staff and special guests will stir up lively discussions informed by our shared love of literature, history, and preservation. Our literary selections will be announced one month in advance.

Economists endlessly debate the nature of legal tender monetary systems—coins and bills issued by a government or other authority. Yet the origins of these currencies have received little attention. Dror Goldberg tells the story of modern money in North America through the Massachusetts colony during the 17th century. As the young settlement transitioned to self-governance […]

Reading and discussion. Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world,” which will consider the poet’s biography, the global influences on his work, as well as the art of translation, and the process […]

Livestreamed. Constructed in eleven months, the 1250-foot Empire State Building, the world's tallest skyscraper from 1931 to 1971, was a marvel of modern engineering. The frame rose more than a story a day; no comparable building since has matched that rate of ascent. The construction was orchestrated by general contractors Starrett Brothers & Eken, premier […]

A moving and wickedly funny memoir about one woman’s life as the daughter of a Warhol superstar and the intimate bonds of mother-daughter relationships.

Emanuel Rosen, author of If Anyone Calls, Tell Them I Died, and Noah Lederman, author of A World Erased: A Grandson’s Search for His Family’s Holocaust Secrets, both reflect on the Holocaust in their writings as descendants of Holocaust survivors. They each explore how losses suffered by one generation, and the holes left by the […]

Reading and discussion. Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world,” which will consider the poet’s biography, the global influences on his work, as well as the art of translation, and the process […]

Reading. After years away from her family's homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach […]