Pictured above: Harvard Book Store, March 15, 2020

This has truly been a month of reflection and painful anniversaries, as many of us look back upon our pandemic year. For those of us who have made Harvard Book Store our place of work and home away from home, the image above from March 2020 is a gut punch. This bookstore is a community space, a Harvard Square landmark, and—in the time before COVID-19 and March 2020—we were open until 10 or 11 every night. And so, at this time a year ago, it was haunting to see the bookstore completely shuttered, particularly during daylight hours. After closing to in-store shopping on March 15 last year, we wouldn’t open to customers again until July 3. And here in March 2021, we continue to maintain limited capacities in the store in order to achieve safe social distancing, and limited hours compared to our pre-pandemic hours of operation. Yes, we’re all contemplating our pandemic year—where we were a year ago, and all the grief and uncertainty we've endured. But we're here.

As we look hopefully to the future, please, follow public health guidelines—get vaccinated when you can, keep wearing masks—and please, keep reading books. When you choose to purchase those books from Harvard Book Store, you are helping us keep the lights on. We look forward to extended evening hours in coming weeks and months—with our lights burning late into the night once again. Until that time, every book you purchase helps us achieve that goal.

During this time of limited capacities and hours, shop with us at harvard.com, where we feature new releases, best sellers, and staff recommendations. Every single book purchase helps. We keep saying it, and we still mean it: Thank you for your continued support.

Monday, March 29, 7PM ET

Washington Post investigative reporter Emma Brown discusses To Raise a Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood. Joining her is Soraya Chemaly, executive director of The Representation Project and author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger. Online via Zoom.

Tuesday, March 30, 12PM ET

Paul Nurse—Nobel Prize–winning biologist and director of the Francis Crick Institute—discusses his latest book, What Is Life?: Five Great Ideas in Biology. Online via Zoom.

Tuesday, March 30, 7PM ET

Wendy Lower—the John K. Roth Professor in History at Claremont McKenna College and author of Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields—discusses her latest book, The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed. She will be joined in conversation by Joshua Rubenstein, associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Online via Zoom.

Wednesday, March 31, 7PM ET

Acclaimed, bestselling writer Nathaniel Rich—author of Losing Earth: A Recent History and King Zeno: A Novel—discusses Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade. Joining in conversation is celebrated writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Online via Zoom.

Thursday, April 1, 7PM ET

Prize-winning writer and poet Adrienne Raphel celebrates the paperback release of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them. She will be joined in conversation by novelist and essayist Evan James, author of Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe and I've Been Wrong Before. Online via Zoom.

Friday, April 2, 12PM ET

Writer, teacher, and film producer Peter B. Kaufman discusses The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge. The Q&A for this event will be moderated by Peter Suber, director of Harvard Library's Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Open Access Project. Online via Zoom.

Friday, April 2, 7PM ET

Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg discusses his groundbreaking book The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. He will be joined in conversation by Andrew Strominger, prize-winning theoretical physicist and director of Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. Online via Zoom.

Into the Video Archive

Earlier this month we hosted a virtual event with writers Tyehimba Jess, Cheswayo Mphanza, Domenica Ruta, Sonia Sanchez, and Yeoh Jo-Ann for a series of readings celebrating the publication of Ancestors, the Winter 2021 issue of Boston Review, which considers how we are shaped by the past. Check out the video on the HBS Channel, where you can explore our virtual event archive, in addition to previous event recordings, courtesy of the Forum Network.

This week's new titles include a new Jacqueline Winspear mystery, James Carroll's reckoning with the Catholic Church, and Mieko Kawakami's novel Breasts and Eggs, now in paperback ("so amazing it took my breath away" writes Haruki Murakami). In case you missed it, check out our latest "New This Week" newsletter, and come browse our virtual New Arrivals shelves for all the very latest new books, updated every Tuesday!