Mercantile Library Events

The 1835 Lecture
2023-04-13 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | 414 Walnut St., #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
Cincinnati native and National Book Award Winner Tiya Miles delivers the 1835 Lecture.

The Albert Pyle Urban Lecture
2023-05-16 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut St., #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
Journalist Henry Grabar discusses his book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World as the 2023 Albert Pyle Urban Lecturer.

2035: An Evening with Means Cameron
2023-08-10 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut St., Cincinnati, OH, 45202
This has been rescheduled from the original date of July 27.

The Science & Nature Lecture: Angela Saini
2023-09-19 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut St., Cincinnati, OH, 45202
Award-winning journalist Angela Saini delivers the Science & Nature Lecture based on her book The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality
About the book: The end products of male power are well documented – in the greater proportion of men in positions of authority, in the preference for sons in many parts of the world, in rates of sexual harassment, in statistic after statistic – but that in itself isn’t an explanation for how men came to rule to begin with. How did patriarchy become embedded in societies all over the globe? Journalist and author Angela Saini explores the gradual clamping down of women’s rights and freedoms over thousands of years, and how developments in science and archaeology can help paint this complex history.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to Mercantile members/$20 nonmembers. Registration required.

Copies of The Patriarchs will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
About Angela Saini: Angela Saini is an award-winning journalist and author. She has presented science programmes on BBC radio and television, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, Wired, the Lancet and Nature.
She is the author of four books, including Superior: The Return of Race Science, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Her latest book, The Patriarchs, is a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Angela has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Oxford and has been a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. This year she was made an honorary fellow of Keble College, Oxford.

The Annual Meeting
2024-01-16 16:00 - 18:00 | 1301 Western Avenue, Cincinnati, OH, 45203
The Annual Meeting & Cincinnati History LectureThe Outsider: The Life and Work of Lafcadio HearnDelivered by Steve KemmeAGENDA4:00 pm DOORS4:30 pm BUSINESS MEETING and 2024 SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT4:50 pm CINCINNATI HISTORY LECTUREFree to members. Reservations required.R.S.V.P. by January 15 via ticketing or emailFor more information: 513.621.0717
Join us to hear about our 2024 Season, 12th Story Expansion, ANDCincinnati’s most enigmatic and controversial figure, Lafcadio Hearn.
Author Steve Kemme will have you step into the extraordinary life of the man who made an impact as an observer wherever he lived, and went on to become the leading western interpreter of Japan and Japanese culture--a position he still occupies today.
Born in Greece and abandoned as a child, Lafcadio Hearn lived the life of an exile. He travelled the world and became a famous writer but always felt like an outsider--in Dublin, London, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and French-speaking Martinique. To him, none of these places felt like home.
Steve Kemme is president of the Lafcadio Hearn Society/USA and a former reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, where Hearn formerly worked. He is a member of the Japan Research Center of Greater Cincinnati and has spoken at Hearn symposiums worldwide.

The Modern Novel Lecture
2024-02-01 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave. , Cincinnati, OH, 45203
Pulitzer Prize Winner Andrew Sean Greer delivers the 2023 Modern Novel Lecture.

The Science & Nature Lecture
2024-07-11 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
Music & Memory with Stefan Fiol & Rhonna Shatz
University of Cincinnati Professors Stefan Fiol (CCM) & Rhonna Shatz (College of Medicine) will discuss their groundbreaking collaboration on Dementia and the Arts, a joint effort between UC’s College of Medicine and the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).
The program pairs music and medical students with people in the community with cognitive impairment and dementia, along with their care partners to explore the benefits of musical collaboration.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required
Stefan Fiol joined the CCM faculty in 2010 and is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Studies. He researches music, dance, ritual practice, media and the histories of commercial and folkloric cultural representation the Uttarakhand Himalayas and North India. Professor Fiol’s monograph, Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media and Social Mobility, was published by University of Illinois Press in 2017 and received the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Jim Fisher Book Award (Honorable Mention). His current research explores drumming as a historiographic tool in the central Himalayas, specifically through mapping drumming practice and reading shifts and continuities against insights from oral history, archaeology and sociolinguistics.

Rhonna Shatz is the Medical Director of the Memory Disorders Center and the Bob and Sandy Heimann Chair in Research and Education of Alzheimer’s Disease. She is a UCNS-certified (United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties) behavioral neurologist who came to Cincinnati after 25 years at Henry Ford Health Systems in Detroit, where she was the Clayton Alandt Chair of Behavioral Neurology.

Albert Pyle Urban Lecture
2024-07-15 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
JOHN JOE SCHLICHTMAN: SHOWROOM CITY
Showroom City is the nickname of High Point, NC, which was once the furniture capital of the world. It remains the furniture showroom capital of the world… but in 2011 the city sold ALL of the showroom space to a venture capital company. This is a story of how a city moves on from manufacturing…. And the mistakes to avoid.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required
Dr. John Joe Schlichtman is an urban sociologist who is motivated by the potential of equitable, just, and productive community development. A primary goal in his scholarship is to tether our understanding of seemingly huge processes like globalization and gentrification to the street level. His research examines how stakeholders resist or exploit transformation, the decisions residents make in navigating it, its influence on the urban landscape, and the various paths leaders chart forward in its midst. This interplay relates to issues as diverse as community development, housing, economic change, public health, policing practices, and education policy.

The Innovation Lecture: SOLD OUT
2024-08-07 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
SOLD OUT: to be placed on the wait list, please email Amy Hunter.
The Innovation Lecture: (Formerly Known as 2035) featuring Emily Wilson
Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate both The Odyssey and The Iliad into English joins us to talk about her groundbreaking work bringing Homer into modernity. Her pioneering and straightforward translations have won critical and popular acclaim.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required
Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Philadelphia with her family and pets.

The 1835 Lecture
2024-09-12 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
WILLIAM KRISTOL
Political Analyst and Network Television Commentator William Kristol joins us to offer his unique perspective on America, the Constitution and conservatism.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required
William Kristol is founder of The Weekly Standard, founder and Director of Defending Democracy Together, as well as a political analyst for ABC News. He is a regular on ABC's This Week and on ABC's special events and election coverage, and also appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows including CNN's Crossfire, MSNBC's Morning Joe and FOX's Special Report. Unafraid to criticize even those on his side of the political fence, Kristol draws on all aspects of his background in government and politics to analyze Congress, the Trump Administration and U.S. foreign policy at home and abroad. He has played a major role in the debate on American foreign policy since September 11th, and was the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The War over Iraq. A strategist who thrived at the hub of power before becoming an analyst, Kristol chaired the Project for the Republican Future where he helped shape the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, he served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and Education Secretary William Bennett. He also taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kristol is the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize for his commitment to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it.

The Memoir Lecture: Christian Cooper
2024-10-08 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
Christian Cooper delivers the 2024 Memoir lecture on his book, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from A Black Man in the Natural World
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required

Christian Cooper is a science and comics writer and editor and the host and consulting producer of Extraordinary Birder on National Geographic. One of Marvel’s first openly gay writers and editors, Cooper introduced the first gay male character in Star Trek, in the Starfleet Academy series, which was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. He also introduced the first openly lesbian character for Marvel and created and authored Queer Nation: The Online Gay Comic. Based in New York City, he is on the board of directors for NYC Audubon.

The Modern Novel Lecture: Jesmyn Ward
2024-10-16 18:00 - 20:00 | 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45203
Jesmyn Ward
Two-time National Book Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Jesmyn Ward delivers the 2024 Modern Novel Lecture.
Ward has been hailed as the standout writer of her generation, proving her “fearless and toughly lyrical” voice in novels, memoir, and nonfiction. She is the author of Salvage the Bones, winner of the 2011 National Book Award; Sing, Unburied, Sing, winner of the 2017 National Book Award; the memoir Men We Reaped; and the novel, Let Us Descend.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm programFree to members/$25 nonmembersRegistration required. Please note date change. You do NOT need to register for new date.
Jesmyn Ward is a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans where she teaches creative writing. In 2016, she won the Strauss Living award, given every five years by the American Academy of Arts & Letters for literary excellence. In 2017, she was recognized with a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for her work “exploring the enduring bonds of community and familial love among poor African-Americans of the rural South against a landscape of circumscribed possibilities and lost potential.” In 2018, she was recognized among Time‘s 100 Most Influential People, and she is the winner of the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Words & Music: SOLD OUT
2024-11-12 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut St., #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
OVER the RHINE: Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler
SOLD OUT: the wait list is currently full
If you have tickets for this event, we will send information closer to the date.
The Words & Music lecture is back with singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler (who've been married for 22 years) have built a vivid, emotionally-charged body of work that has won them a deeply devoted following and critical acclaim.
They'll be telling the stories behind the songs and playing the Mercantile's 1937 Steinway.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$50 nonmembersRegistration required. Space is limited.

SOLD OUT - The Memoir Lecture: Michelle Zauner
2025-02-25 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
#1 New York Times Bestseller Michelle Zauner delivers the 2025 Memoir Lecture.
From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR).
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of Crying in H Mart will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

MICHELLE ZAUNER is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017).

SOLD OUT - The 1835 Lecture: Timothy Egan
2025-04-17 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
Pulitzer and National Book Award-winner Timothy Egan delivers the 2025 1835 Lecture.
A historical thriller by the New York Times bestselling author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.
Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of A Fever in the Heartland will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
Please pre-order the book here - https://www.josephbeth.com/product/fever-heartland-ku-klux-klans-plot-take-over-america-and-woman-who-stopped-them-paperback

Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and the author of nine other books, most recently the highly acclaimed A Pilgrimage to Eternity and The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction.

Words & Music Lecture: Fred Hersch
2025-05-01 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
Jazz could not contain Fred Hersch.
Hersch’s prodigious talent as a sideman—a pianist who played with the giants of the twentieth century in the autumn of their careers, including Art Farmer and Joe Henderson—blossomed further in the eighties and beyond into a compositional genius that defied the boundaries of bop, sweeping in elements of pop, classical, and folk to create a wholly new music.
Good Things Happen Slowly is his memoir. It’s the story of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player; a deep look into the cloistered jazz culture that made such a status both transgressive and groundbreaking; and a profound exploration of how Hersch’s two-month-long coma in 2007 led to his creating some of the finest, most direct, and most emotionally compelling music of his career.
Remarkable, and at times lyrical, Good Things Happen Slowly is an evocation of the twilight of Post-Stonewall New York, and a powerfully brave narrative of illness, recovery, music, creativity, and the glorious reward of finally becoming oneself.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm program $25 for Members, $50 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of Good Things Happen Slowly will be available for sale.
About Fred Hersch
Jazz pianist, composer, activist, and educator Fred Hersch is a ten-time Grammy nominee and the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. He was named a 2016 Doris Duke Artist and has twice been awarded Jazz Pianist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. He concertizes worldwide as a solo artist, as a collaborator, and with the Fred Hersch Trio. He was a longtime member of the Jazz Studies faculty of the New England Conservatory and now teaches at Rutgers University. He is the subject of the feature documentary The Ballad of Fred Hersch. He lives in New York City and Pennsylvania with his partner, Scott Morgan.

SOLD OUT - The Hearth & Home Lecture: Crystal Wilkinson
2025-05-08 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
Award Winner and National Bestseller Crystal Wilkinson delivers the 2025 Hearth & Home Lecture.
People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed.
Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine.

An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia.
As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
Please pre-order the book here - https://www.josephbeth.com/event/mercantile-library-event-%E2%80%93-home-hearth-crystal-wilkinson

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black; The Birds of Opulence; Water Street; and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Hermitage Foundation, and others. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky in the creative writing MFA program.

About America's River Roots
America’s River Roots Festival is a signature event for America’s 250th celebration, taking place from October 08-12, 2025 in Cincy along the banks of the Ohio River. Soak into River Roots Music, Cuisine and Culture that honor and share our unique American stories and celebrates the distinct contributions and experiences that make Cincy, Cincy. The river is singing. Join in.

The Albert Pyle Urban Lecture: Becca Costello & Ella Rowen
2025-07-10 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
Backed Up Podcast hosts Becca Costello & Ella Rowen deliver the 2025 Albert Pyle Urban Lecture.
There's something wrong with the plumbing in Cincinnati. Sewage is bubbling up in our basements and pouring into our waterways. Climate change is making it worse, and the powers that be can't seem to agree on how to fix it.
Backed Up is a podcast that demystifies one of the most complex systems of public infrastructure — our sewers — and tells the stories of the people suffering under decades of mismanagement.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free to members/$25 nonmembers
Registration required.

Becca Costello and Ella Rowen are co-hosts of Backed Up. Becca is Cincinnati Public Radio’s Local Government Reporter; she has a Master’s in Journalism from Indiana University and nearly ten years of public media experience. Ella is CPR’s Podcast Coordinator with a particular passion for sound design; she also produces and engineers CPR’s podcast Looking Up with Dean Regas.

SOLD OUT - The Science & Nature Lecture: Ada Limón
2025-08-27 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
24th Poet Laureate of The United States and National Bestseller Ada Limón delivers the 2025 Science & Nature Lecture.
Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by fifty of our most celebrated contemporary writers.
In recent years, our poetic landscape has evolved in profound and exciting ways. So has our planet. Edited and introduced by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, this book challenges what we think we know about "nature poetry," illuminating the myriad ways our landscapes-both literal and literary-are changing.
You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation's most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more. Each poem engages with its author's local landscape-be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop-offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States.
Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what "nature" and "poetry" are today, inviting readers to experience both anew.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.

Copies of You Are Here will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
Please pre-order the book here - https://www.josephbeth.com/event/mercantile-library-event-%E2%80%93-science-nature-ada-limon

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and a TIME magazine woman of the year. As the Poet Laureate, her signature project is called You Are Here and focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. Her first books for children include In Praise of Mystery and And, Too, The Fox.

SOLD OUT - The Modern Novel Lecture: Kaveh Akbar
2025-09-09 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
New York Times Bestseller & National Book Award Finalist Kaveh Akbar delivers the 2025 Modern Novel Lecture.
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of Martyr! will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Downbound Books. You can also purchase any of Kaveh's books at downboundbooks.com/kaveh-akbar

KAVEH AKBAR’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City.

SOLD OUT - The Innovation Lecture: Lauren Groff
2025-10-08 18:00 - 20:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
New York Times Bestselling Novelist & Lynx Bookstore Owner Lauren Groff delivers the 2025 Innovation Lecture.
Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
In 2024, Lauren Groff She was named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME and opened a bookstore, The Lynx, in Gainesville, Florida.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of Lauren’s books will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
Please pre-order the book here - https://www.josephbeth.com/event/mercantile-library-event-%E2%80%93-innovation-lauren-groff

The Annual Meeting
2026-01-20 16:00 - 18:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
The Annual Meeting & Cincinnati History Lecture
AGENDA4:00 pm RECEPTION4:30 pm BUSINESS MEETING & 2026 SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT4:50 pm CINCINNATI HISTORY LECTUREAmerica's First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. ClarkDelivered by Dr. Nikki M. Taylor
Free to members. Reservations required.R.S.V.P. by January 15.For more information: 513.621.0717
Join us for the announcement of our 2026 Season and the Cincinnati History Lecture,delivered by Dr. Nikki M. Taylor.
Politician, intellectual, educator, activist, and The Mercantile Library’s first African-American member, Peter Humphries Clark (1829–1925) defied easy classification.
Complex and enigmatic, Clark influenced a generation of abolitionists and civil rightsactivists. In pursuit of his foremost goal, full and equal citizenship for African Americans.A pioneer educational activist, Clark led the fight for African Americans' access to Ohio'spublic schools and became the first Black principal in the state, and Cincinnati PublicSchools’ first Black employee.
Dr. Nikki M. Taylor is a Professor of U.S. History. Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, sheattended the University of Pennsylvania where she developed an interest in History andan academic career. She earned her PhD in U.S. History (and a certificate in Women’sStudies) from Duke University. Dr. Taylor has had a long academic career that hasspanned two decades, including a decade at the University of Cincinnati. She was therecipient of several prestigious fellowships and grants, including a Fulbright (Ghana),Woodrow Wilson, Mellon Mays (institutional grant), and a $5 million Mellon Just FuturesGrant. She authored 4 monographs including her most recent, Brooding Over BloodyRevenge: Enslaved Women and Lethal Resistance (2023) –which won the SlaveryArchive Prize, the Letitia Woods Brown Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times bookaward.
Her three other books all focus on Cincinnati. They are: Driven Toward Madness: TheFugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (2016), America’s First BlackSocialist (2013) and Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802-1868(2005), which is being honored with the best prize of all---the book is being made into adocumentary about this community.

SOLD OUT - The Modern Novel Lecture: Ocean Vuong in conversation with John Brooks
2026-01-29 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
The Modern Novel Lecture with Ocean Vuong in conversation with John Brooks
In partnership with The Weston Art Gallery
The instant New York Times bestseller • Oprah’s Book Club Pick • Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive“Stunning . . . A heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society, and the unique challenges they face to survive and thrive.” —Oprah Winfrey“Magnificent . . . In writing this book, Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists.” —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles TimesThe hardest thing in the world is to live only once…One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and currently splits his time between western Massachusetts and New York City. The Emperor of Gladness is his latest novel.

The 1835 Lecture: Alexis Coe
2026-04-15 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
THIS LECTURE IS SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
Alexis Coe delivers the 2026 1835 Lecture.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AN NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “In her form-shattering and myth-crushing book….Coe examines myths with mirth, and writes history with humor… [You Never Forget Your First] is an accessible look at a president who always finishes in the first ranks of our leaders.” —Boston Globe Alexis Coe takes a closer look at our first--and finds he is not quite the man we remember Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War cast him as the nation's hero, he was desperate to retire, but the founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. When he retired years later, no one talked him out of it. He left the highest office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created. Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty must confront his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the men, women, and children he owns--before he succumbs to death. With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling every page.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free for Members, $25 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of You Never Forget Your First will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

Alexis Coe is a presidential historian, an award-winning, New York Times bestselling presidential historian, and a senior fellow at New America, a bi-partisan think tank. In July 2025, Coe became the American History Columnist at the New York Times.

The Albert Pyle Urban Lecture: Michael Murphy
2026-04-28 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
THIS LECTURE IS SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
Michael Murphy delivers the 2026 Albert Pyle Urban Lecture.
From “tomorrow’s greatest designer” (The Atlantic), a personal and deeply researched look at how the choices we build into our environment reflect and determine the way we think, connect, and live. We've been led to believe that purposefully designed spaces are something reserved only for those that can afford them. But in reality, all the spaces we inhabit—to work, to learn, to heal, and to live—have been planned and built to influence our lives. They sway our emotions, nudge our behaviors, protect us from disease, and do more, or less, to support shared prosperity and our sense of the common good. Our World in Ten Buildings unpacks this hidden but ever more important element of our lived experience. As author and architectural designer Michael Murphy takes us through ten milestone projects in his career he lays bare the physical, political, and intellectual labor at work shaping the world we live in. With rare insight, access, and passion, Murphy braids the history of architecture with his own iconic projects to show the power of urban design and how it revolutionizes our homes, minds, workplaces, safety, and health care. Profound, and accessible, Our World in Ten Buildings will change the way you look at and think about your surroundings.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free for Members, $25 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of Our World in Ten Buildings will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.
PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY FOR PICK-UP AT THE EVENT HERE!

Michael P. Murphy is an architect, educator, and writer, and is the founder and president of AMMA, a design and development collaborative focused on the ways in which space shapes our minds, bodies, and communities. In 2007, he founded the architectural non-profit firm, MASS Design Group, and was CEO until 2022, leading the design of their projects including the Butaro Hospital and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice to name a few. He is currently the Thomas Ventulett Chair of Architecture at The Georgia Institute of Technology. Originally from Poughkeepsie, New York, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

The Hearth & Home Lecture: Priya Krishna
2026-05-12 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
THIS LECTURE IS SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
National Bestseller Priya Krishna delivers the 2026 Hearth & Home Lecture.
A witty and irresistible celebration of one very cool and boundary-breaking mom’s “Indian-ish” cooking—with accessible and innovative Indian-American recipes Indian food is everyday food! This colorful, lively book is food writer Priya Krishna’s loving tribute to her mom’s “Indian-ish” cooking—a trove of one-of-a-kind Indian-American hybrids that are easy to make, clever, practical, and packed with flavor. Think Roti Pizza, Tomato Rice with Crispy Cheddar, Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Green Pea Chutney, and Malaysian Ramen. Priya’s mom, Ritu, taught herself to cook after moving to the U.S. while also working as a software programmer—her unique creations merging the Indian flavors of her childhood with her global travels and inspiration from cooking shows as well as her kids’ requests for American favorites like spaghetti and PB&Js. The results are approachable and unfailingly delightful, like spiced, yogurt-filled sandwiches crusted with curry leaves, or “Indian Gatorade” (a thirst-quenching salty-sweet limeade)—including plenty of simple dinners you can whip up in minutes at the end of a long work day. Throughout, Priya’s funny and relatable stories—punctuated with candid portraits and original illustrations by acclaimed Desi pop artist Maria Qamar (also known as Hatecopy)—will bring you up close and personal with the Krishna family and its many quirks.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of Indian-Ish will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

Priya Krishna is a food reporter and video host for the New York Times and the bestselling author of multiple cookbooks including Indian-ish and Cooking at Home. Her stories have been included in the 2019 and 2021 editions of The Best American Food Writing and in 2021, she was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. She is originally from Dallas, Texas, which happens to be one of the busiest travel hubs in the world.

The Innovation Lecture: Mac Barnett
2026-07-16 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
New York Times Bestseller Mac Barnett delivers the 2026 Innovation Lecture.
A book for adults about books for children, a rallying cry for art and imagination, and a celebration of the power of storytelling in all our lives. Make Believe is bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett’s incisive, intimate, and timely invitation to approach children’s literature not only as an art form worthy of deep study and criticism, but as a portal into the lives of the children. And at a time when we are faced with a national literacy crisis, he champions the profound joys of literature and the importance of reading for pleasure. What if children are a great audience for art? What if they are in fact better equipped to engage deeply with stories than adults? What if humans’ ability to appreciate art is, if not innate, awakened early in childhood? Well, then we’d better do our best to make some good kids’ books. Written with humor and academic rigor, Make Believe reads like a letter from your smartest and funniest friend.
6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free for Members, $25 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of Mac’s books will be available for sale & signing.

Mac Barnett is the ninth U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, appointed by the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader. He’s a New York Times-bestselling author of stories for children and the writer, with Jon Klassen, of Looking at Picture Books, a newsletter for adults about how picture books work. Barnett’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. His books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Germany’s Jugendliteraturpreis, China’s Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Award, The Netherlands’ Silver Griffel, and Italy’s Premio Orbil. He lives in Oakland, California.

The Memoir Lecture - Roxane Gay
2026-09-17 18:00 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
TICKETS GO ON SALE 8/6/26
New York Times Bestseller Roxane Gay delivers the 2026 Memoir Lecture.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, The New York Times-bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and The New York Times-bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free for Members, $25 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of Roxane’s books will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

The Words & Music Lecture: Carrie Brownstein
2026-10-07 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
THIS LECTURE IS SOLD OUT - Please email michael@mercantilelibrary.com to be added to the waitlist.
Carrie Brownstein delivers the 2026 Words & Music Lecture.
From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, the book Kim Gordon says "everyone has been waiting for" and a New York Times Notable Book -- a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life--and finding yourself--in music. Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock. Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later. With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program $25 for Members, $50 for Non-Members. Registration required.
Copies of Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

Carrie Brownstein is a musician, writer and actor who first became widely known as the guitarist and vocalist of the band Sleater-Kinney and later as a creator, writer and co-star of the Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award winning television show Portlandia. Brownstein's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, Slate, and numerous anthologies on music and culture. She lives in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles.

The Science & Nature Lecture: Zoë Schlanger
2026-10-15 18:00 - 19:30 | 414 Walnut Street, #1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
TICKETS GO ON SALE 9/3/26
New York Times Bestseller Zoë Schlanger delivers the 2026 Science & Nature Lecture.
The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 • TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 • New York Magazine’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 • Smithsonian’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year • A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American, New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly • An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize • Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History
“A masterpiece of science writing.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
“Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” –Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
“Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” –Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction
Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” (The New Yorker)

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.
What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.
We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program Free to members/$25 nonmembers Registration required.
Copies of The Light Eaters will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at the Atlantic, where she covers climate change. She previously covered the environment at Quartz and Newsweek. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Time, NPR, and elsewhere. Schlanger was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
