Events
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Graphic Novel Discussion Group
Saturday, February 11th 2012 (1:00 PM)
Reading Room
No charge.
Book for discussion: Refresh, Refresh by Danica Novgorodoff, James Ponsoldt and Benjamin Percy.
Discussion Leader: Jeff Suess
Literary Evening with Eric Goodman
Tuesday, February 28th 2012 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
No charge. Reservations Requested
Life takes a strange turn when Richard Allan Gordon, thirty years old and as white as they come, discovers that, as a result of identity theft, five-year-old Jada Reece Gordon bears his name. The product of a middle-class Jewish upbringing, Richie finds himself completely in love and lust with Jada’s mother, LaTisha, a twenty-five-year-old African American nursing student, and longs to be a father to her child.
Richie and LaTisha’s story takes place at the intersection of love, race, and identity, as the couple is forced to examine their relationship in light of the terrible event that takes the life of a young black father and catapults their midwestern city into chaos. As riots erupt around them and Richie discovers a secret about his own past that challenges his long-held ideas, he and LaTisha must come to grips with the forces that threaten to tear their relationship apart. A novel that doesn’t shy away from the racism that dwells within the unexamined hearts of so many Americans, Twelfth and Race may shock or outrage some readers, yet its story is ultimately timely, honest, and hopeful.
Eric Goodman’s fifth novel, Twelfth and Race, will be published in March, 2012, by the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction series. Previous novels include In Days of Awe and Child of My Right Hand. His work has been awarded three Ohio Arts Council fellowships and residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, Ragdale and the MacDowell Colony. Goodman has also published more than 150 articles and essays, with work appearing in the L.A. Times Sunday Magazine, GQ, Travel & Leisure, Saveur, and several anthologies. For the past decade, Goodman has directed the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Copies of Twelfth and Race will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of The Bookshelf.
Six @ Six: Breaking Enigma
Thursday, March 1st 2012 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
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$6. (Free to students with valid ID)
x@Six is a community lectures series sponsored by Northern Kentucky University’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. The Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement is a department at NKU that works to connect the canpus and the community. Think of this as your chance to go to college, minus the tuition, the morning classes and the pressure of grades.
Breaking Enigma: An Example of World War II Codebreaking
Presenter: Dr. Chris Christensen, professor, Department of Mathematics and Science, Northern Kentucky University
The breaking of the German Enigma cipher machine was one of the greatest achievements of the Allied codebreakers during World War II. Dr. Christensen's lecture will explore the operation and cryptanalysis of Enigma beginning in Warsaw, Poland, moving to Bletchley Park, England and ending in Dayton, Ohio.
Kamholtz Course: Alternative Worlds and Artificial Realities
Friday, March 2nd 2012 (12:30 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Members: $50 series, $15 individual session; others $55 series, $20 individual session
Thomas More, Utopia.
One of the most important of our culture’s portraits of an alternate world, folks who haven’t read it before are often surprised by how little time they think they would want to spend on More’s magical island. Dismayed by the rise in the value the early sixteenth century was placing on human individualism, More invents a world that tries to counter-balance Europe’s infatuation with the self and its acceptance of social divisiveness. Utopia allows us to wonder how important privacy is to us and whether we can imagine a private self without the support of private property.
Words & Music:Stravinsky and Auden
Sunday, March 4th 2012 (2:00 PM)
Reading Room
Free. Reservations requested
Join us for a delightful afternoon concert.
Presenters: Mischa Santora, (conductor),Daniel Ross (tenor), Gustav Andreassen (bass), and Christina Haan, (accompanist)
The creation of the opera “The Rake’s Progress” brought together two of the twentieth century’s genuine artistic titans, Igor Stravinsky and W. H. Auden. Members and friends of the Mercantile Library and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra are invited to attend an in-depth introduction to this mid-century masterpiece in the Library’s reading room. The event is intended to enhance the pleasure of the full concert version to be presented by the CCO on March 18. CCO artistic director Mischa Santora will be joined by Gustav Andreassen (Tom Rakewell) and Daniel Ross (Nick Shadow).
“The Rake's Progress”, an opera inspired by William Hogarth's engravings, is the result of four years of collaboration between Stravinsky and his librettists, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. It premiered in 1951 during the Venice Biennale. The story concerns the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for the delights of London in the company of Nick Shadow, who turns out to be the Devil.
Music at the Mercantile is made possible by a grant from The Elise Eaton Allen Performing Arts Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation
Literary Lunch with Amy Waldman
Monday, March 5th 2012 (12:00 PM)
Reading Room
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No charge. Reservations requested
Amy Waldman, author of The Submission, will talk about her intriguing first novel that is the 2012 city-wide reading selection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
Amy Waldman was a reporter for The New York Times for eight years. She spent three years as co-chief of the South Asia bureau after covering Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the aftermath of 9/11. She was also a national correspondent for the Atlantic, where her stories included this look at Islam in the courts.
She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and at the American Academy in Berlin. Her fiction has appeared in the Boston Review and the Atlantic, and was anthologized in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2010. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
The Submission is her first novel.
Copies of The Submission will be avaiable for purchase and signing courtesy of The Bookshelf.
Book Launch and Lecture
Tuesday, March 6th 2012 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
No charge
Dale Patrick Brown will discuss her latest book, Literary Cincinnati: The Missing Chapter, an entertaining look at some of the great literary personalities of the Queen City.
The history of Cincinnati runs much deeper than the stories of hogs that once roamed downtown streets. In addition to hosting the nation’s first professional baseball team, the Tall Stacks riverboat celebration, and the May Festival, there’s another side to the city — one that includes some of the most famous names and organizations in American letters.
In Literary Cincinnati Dale Brown takes the reader on a joyous ride with some of the great literary personalities who have shaped life in the Queen City. Meet the young Samuel Clemens working in a local print shop, Fanny Trollope struggling to open her bizarre bazaar, Sinclair Lewis researching “Babbitt”, hairdresser Eliza Potter telling the secrets of her rich clientele, and many more who defined 19th and early 20th--century Cincinnati.
Dale Patrick Brown is also the author of Brilliance and Balderdash: Early Lectures at Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library. She worked as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch before beginning a career in advertising. She retired as CEO of the Cincinnati office of the global ad agency young & rubicam in 1998 to devote herself to writing.
Copies of Literary Cincinnati will be available for purchase and signing.
First Wednesday Book Discussion
Wednesday, March 7th 2012 (12:00 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Reservations requested. No charge for members; $5 for nonmembers. A box lunch is available by advance reservation for $8.
Book for discussion: The Submission by Amy Waldman.
Discussion Leader: tba
The Submission is the "On the Same Page" selction of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for 2012. We are happy to be partnering with PLCH in the OTSP program. The author, Amy Waldman, will be at the Mercantile Library for a discussion of the novel on March 5th.
The Big Shake
Thursday, March 8th 2012 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
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Free to Mercantile members, Betts House members, Colonial Dames.
Seismologist and author, Susan Hough, will discuss her research on the 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes as well as the life of Ohio native Charles Richter.
Susan Hough is a senior research scientist at the United States Geological Survey in Pasadena, California. A former board member of the Seismological Society of America and an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Hough has published of over 100 scientific articles, including a March 2011 article reassessing the estimated magnitude of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes. Hough is also the author of five books including Richter’s Scale, a biography of seismologist Charles Richter, and Earthshaking Science, an accessible introduction to issues in seismology.
This program will be held in conjunction with The Betts House exhibit The Big Shake – How the 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes Rocked the Ohio River Valley. The exhibit explores the history and causes of earthquakes, taking a close look at seismic activity in the Midwest and highlights the building technologies that can help structures withstand seismic forces. The Big Shake will be on view at the Betts House through May 31, 2012.
ABOUT THE BETTS HOUSE
Built in 1804, Ohio’s oldest brick house is located in the Betts-Longworth Historic District near downtown Cincinnati. The Betts House is a museum of the built environment, offering exhibits and programs exploring architecture, historic preservation, building trades, construction technologies, and building materials. The Betts House is located two blocks west of Music Hall at 416 Clark Street. The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. and the second and fourth Saturdays of each month, 12:30 – 5 p.m. Other days and times are available by appointment. Admission is $2 per person.
Kamholtz Course: Alternative Worlds and Artificial Realities
Friday, March 9th 2012 (12:30 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Members: $50 series, $15 individual session; others $55 series, $20 individual session
Octavia Butler, Dawn (Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood, Bk 1).
Lilith is saved from mankind’s self-destruction by the alien race the Oankali, intergalactic gene traders who are laboring to prepare humans to return to the earth. Humans fascinate but puzzle them. On the enormous Oankali spaceship—part theme park, part housing project, part laboratory—humans learn new skills so they can recolonize their planet and start civilization anew. It turns out that one of the survival skills the Oankali insist humans learn is taking on new sexual arrangements.
Cinema Eleven: " The Maltese Falcon"
Tuesday, March 13th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
Free. Reservations requested
Three classic movies from the heyday of the film noir period, based on works by Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler, will be on offer at the next Cinema Eleven series. Plan to spend three dark evenings in the Reading Room lost in the highly stylized world of hard-boiled crime fiction.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Show time: 7 p.m.
FREE admittance
Exorbitantly priced refreshments will be on offer.
Thanks to Peter Niehoff for curating the series.
Kamholtz Course: Alternative Worlds and Artificial Realities
Friday, March 16th 2012 (12:30 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Members: $50 series, $15 individual session; others: $55 series, $20 individual session
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
In this startling work of alternate history, Sitka has been designated as the homeland for post-holocaust Jews. But as the novel begins, the reversion of Sitka is imminent. Meyer Landsman is the novel’s hardboiled cop (of both the past and the future) who must investigate the murder of Mendel Shpilman, a chess-playing genius and just possibly the messiah.
Cinema Eleven: "Double Indemnity"
Tuesday, March 20th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
Free. Reservations requested
Three classic movies from the heyday of the film noir period, based on works by Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler, will be on offer at the next Cinema Eleven series. Plan to spend three dark evenings in the Reading Room lost in the highly stylized world of hard-boiled crime fiction.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Show time: 7 p.m.
FREE admittance
Exorbitantly priced refreshments will be on offer.
Thanks to Peter Niehoff for curating the series.
Kamholtz Course: Alternative Worlds and Artificial Realities
Friday, March 23rd 2012 (12:30 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Members: $50 series, $15 individual session; others: $55 series, $20 individual session
Muriel Spark, The Comforters.
In Muriel Spark’s first novel, Caroline Rose, while writing a study of contemporary fiction, encounters the Typing Ghost, who seems to be able to narrate Caroline’s life while she is living it. Is she haunted? Is she mad? Or has she run into her own author?
Literary Evening with Stephanie Deutsch
Monday, March 26th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
No charge. reservations requested.
Stephanie Deutsch, author of You Need A Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald and the Building of Schools in the Segregated South, will discuss the partnership that led to a historic act of philanthropy.
Copies of You Need a Schoolhouse will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of The Bookshelf.
Cinema Eleven: "The Big Sleep"
Tuesday, March 27th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
Free. Reservations requested
Three classic movies from the heyday of the film noir period, based on works by Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler, will be on offer at the next Cinema Eleven series. Plan to spend three dark evenings in the Reading Room lost in the highly stylized world of hard-boiled crime fiction.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Show time: 7 p.m.
FREE admssion
Exorbitantly priced refreshments will be on offer.
Thanks to Peter Niehoff for curating the series.
Kamholtz Course: Alternative Worlds and Artificial Realities
Friday, March 30th 2012 (12:30 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Members: $50 series, $15 individual session; others: $55 series, $20 individual session
Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark.
Two parallel, and just possibly intersecting, stories about people and the spaces they occupy. One strand follows Taimur Martin who is taken hostage in Beirut and must find a way to keep from going out of his mind in the single room in which he is imprisoned. The other strand follows Adie Klarpol, an artist who finds herself employed by a very high tech company in Seattle devoted to creating virtual reality versions of famous paintings and, possibly, virtual versions of everything else.
First Wednesday Book Discussion
Wednesday, April 4th 2012 (12:00 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Reservations requested. No charge for members; $5 for nonmembers. Box lunches available by advance reservation for $8
Book for discussion: Dancer by Colum McCann
Discussion leader: Annette Gallagher-Weisman
1835 Lecture with Peter Cozzens
Wednesday, April 18th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$15 for members; $20 for others
Peter Cozzens is the author of sixteen critically acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West. He is also a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Cozzens’s 1835 Lecture will highlight the role of Cincinnati generals such as Rutherford B. Hayes and William Starke Rosecrans in the Civil War. Mr. Cozzen’s books include: No Better Place to Die, The Terrible Sound, named one of the 100 best books on the Civil War by Civil War Magazine, and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes.
Copies of Mr. Cozzen's books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of The Bookshelf.
Six @ Six: The Science of Cycling
Tuesday, May 1st 2012 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
View Website
$6 (Free to students with valid ID)
Six @ Six is a new community lecture series sponsored by Northern Kentucky University's Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. Think of this as your chance to go to college, minus the tuition, the morning classes, and the pressure of grades.
The Science of Cycling: Bike Fit, Training Principles and Nutrition
Presenter: Dr. Will Peveler, assistant professor, Department of Kinesiology and Healt, Northern Kentucky University
The poularity of road cycling in the United States has grown dramatically in recent history and as a result research in the area of cycling performance has also increased. Dr. Peveler's lecture will examine the current cycling research concentrating on practical application of the research findings and discussing the importance of bike fit.
Hearth & Home Lecture with Jon Carloftis
Thursday, May 24th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$10 members; $15 others
In 2012 the Hearth & Home series turns its focus to the garden with award-winning garden designer Jon Carloftis. He is an author and charming lecturer whose 23 year career in gardening began far from his native Kentucky in New York City where he became one of America’s pioneers in small space and rooftop gardening. Carloftis regularly contributes to national garden and lifestyle publications. He is the recipient of a landscaping design award from the Museum of the City of New York City given for his overall body of work. His books include: First a Garden, Beyond the Windowsill, Beautiful Gardens of Kentucky and The Container Look-Book.
SPONSORS: DEBORAH & LOUIS GINOCCHIO
Harriet Beecher Stowe Lecture with Chris Abani
Thursday, June 14th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$20 for members;$25 for others
Writing to Change the World
Chris Abani is a Nigerian-born novelist and poet who was imprisoned in his homeland for his writing. His books include Masters of the Board, Song of A Broken Flute, Song For Night, a New York Times Editor’s Choice; GraceLand, and Santificum, a Pushcart nominee. Chris is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside, the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a Guggenheim.
SPONSOR: DANIEL CLAY HOUGHTON with additional support from EDWARD JAY WOHLGEMUTH
The Modern Novel Lecture with Cathleen Schine
Thursday, September 6th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$15 for members;$20 for nonmembers
Cathleen Schine is a wonderfully funny and witty novelist who writes about love, families, and relationships of all sorts. Her literary influences include Dickens, Trollope, Austen, Pym, and Munro. She is the author of the internationally best-selling novels The Love Letter, Rameau’s Niece, Alice in Bed, She is Me, The New Yorkers and, most recently, The Three Weissmanns of Westport. In addition, she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
The Modern Novel Lecture is sponsored by The Chic.Lits
Grandparents Day: A Program For Children
Saturday, September 8th 2012 (10:30 AM)
Reading Room
Reservations Required. $10 per Member adult/ $5 per accompanying child; $12 per Nonmember adult/ $8 for accompanying child. (Price i ncludes lunch)
Niehoff Lecture XXV with Seamus Heaney
Saturday, October 20th 2012 (7:00 PM)
Presidential Ballroom, The Westin Hotel
$175 members; $200 nonmembers
The Niehoff Lectures were inspired by Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow’s visit to the Library in 1985. For the twenty-fifth installment of the series we’ve invited another Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, to speak. Heaney is an Irish poet, writer, and lecturer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, as well as the Golden Wreath of Poetry, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and two Whitbread prizes. He was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry. This is a rare opportunity to hear a writer at the top of his form reading and discussing his work.
Past Events
First Wednesday Book Discussion
Wednesday, February 1st 2012
Book for discussion: Mozart's Last Aria: A Novel by Matt Rees.
Discussion leader: Sandra Geiser
Poetry Reading
Wednesday, January 18th 2012
In anticipation of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s appearance as the 25th Niehoff Lecturer in the Fall, the Walnut Street Poetry Society will focus on Irish poets and poetry in 2012.
Please join us for an entertaining hour of poetry with Irish natives Robert Smith, M.D. and Mary Margaret Rochford, as we kick off the 8th year of the Walnut Street Poetry Society.
And if this delightful hour of poetry whets your appetite for more, consider joining us monthly (on second Wednesdays) to continue reading, studying, and sharing poetry. Monthly sessions are moderated by Dr. Norman Finkelstein, poet and professor of English at Xavier University.
