Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award of 1920

The Associates of the Boston Public Library cordially invites you to participate in our Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award competition, which will weigh the enduring literary merits of three bestsellers published in 1920. This year’s contenders are Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), and W.E.B. DuBois' Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. The books will be championed by novelist Jackie Mitchard and physicist Alan Lightman, respectively. Radio host Christopher Lydon will moderate the lighthearted debate, after which the audience will vote to determine the winner of the Retroactive Book Award of 1920.

This is a free Members' event. Please contact the Associates office with any questions via hello@AssociatesBPL.org or 617-536-3886.

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Meet the Presenters:

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the number one New York Times best-selling author of twelve novels for adults, including The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and also made into a major feature film. The editor of a realistic Young Adult imprint, Merit Press, Mitchard also is the author of seven novels for Young Adults. She is a professor of Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a contributing editor for More magazine.

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. At MIT, he was the first person to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities, and was John Burchard Professor of Humanities before becoming Professor of the Practice of the Humanities to allow more time for his writing. Lightman is the author of five novels, two collections of essays, a book-length narrative poem, and several books on science. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages.

Chad Williams is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. Williams earned a BA with honors in History and African American Studies from UCLA and received both his MA and Ph.D. from Princeton University. He specializes in African American and modern United States history, African American military history, the World War I era and African American intellectual history. His first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, was published in 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. His upcoming book is titled The Wounded World: W.E.B. DuBois and World War I.

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About the Moderator:

Christopher Lydon is the host of WBUR’s Open Source. Previously he covered politics for The New York Times from the Washington bureau in the 1970s. He hosted The Ten O’Clock News on WGBH TV through the 1980s, and he co-founded and hosted The Connection on WBUR in the ’90s. He recorded the original podcast in 2003 with Dave Winer.

For more details about the Associates of the Boston Public Library, the presenters, or the book selections, please visit our website.