RICK ATKINSON

Friday, May 17th

12:00 pm at The Union League Club

The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson’s acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II.

It is the twentieth century’s unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most dramatic story of all - the titanic battle for Western Europe.

D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson’s riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich - all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory.

With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson’s accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

JOSH SCHNEIDER

Saturday, May 18th

11:00 am at The Book Stall

Attorney by Day, Award-winning Author and Illustrator by Night: Josh Schneider reads from and signs copies of his new book, The Meanest Birthday Girl here at The Book Stall.

Chicago attorney Josh Schneider won the Theodor Seuss Geisel award from The American Library Association in 2012 for his book for young readers, Tales for Very Picky Eaters. Mr. Schneider, a native of Winnetka, will read from and sign copies of his follow-up, The Meanest Birthday Girl.

This event is free and open to the public. We won’t be mean, even if the Birthday Girl is - we’ll be serving cake!

This is part of our Children's Book Week celebration--attendees will receive a free book bag as long as supplies last.

CORY FRANKLIN, MD

Saturday, May 18th

3:30 pm at The Book Stall

We are very excited to welcome Cory Franklin to The Book Stall as he introduces his new book, Chicago Flashbulbs: A Quarter Century of News, Politics, Sports and Show Business (1987-2012). This book is a series of carefully crafted columns, most of them published nationally in newspapers and magazines, probing the forensics of the human condition. The columns range from the use of steroids in sports to spurring a search for justice for society's shadow people. The medical articles discuss everything from medical care for the indigent, to back stories on AIDS, to the history and use of the CT scanner. The reader meets deceased icons of past eras and those who have fallen victim to the perils of fame, money, or pressure, frequently encountering tragedy, pathos and inevitable, humor.

The cast of characters includes people from Princess Diana to a grade-school crossing guard. The settings are everywhere from Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium to the middle of a shabby, debris-strewn room and the mummified corpse of a long-forgotten B-movie actress who died forgotten and alone a few blocks from Tinsel Town.

These essays will stimulate and inform as they zip through wormholes from the past and into the future. The reader will become educated, engaged, entertained and occasionally, stirred into action.

ALICE KAPLAN

Tuesday, May 21st

12:00 pm at the University Club

A year in Paris . . . since World War II, countless American students have been lured by that vision - and been transformed by their sojourn in the City of Light. Dreaming in French tells three stories of that experience, and how it changed the lives of three extraordinary American women.

Alice Kaplan takes readers into the lives, hopes, and ambitions of these young women, tracing their paths to Paris and tracking the discoveries, intellectual adventures, friendships and loves that they found there. For all three women, France was far from a passing fancy; rather, Kaplan shows, the year abroad continued to influence them, a significant part of their intellectual and cultural makeup, for the rest of their lives. Jackie Kennedy carried her love of France to the White House and to her later career as a book  editor, bringing her cultural and linguistic fluency to everything from art and diplomacy to fashion and historic restoration - to the extent that many, including Jackie herself, worried that she might seem “too French.” Sontag found in France a model for the life of the mind that she was determined to lead; the intellectual world she observed from afar during that first year in Paris inspired her most important work and remained a key influence - to be grappled with, explored and transcended - the rest of her life. Davis, meanwhile, found that her Parisian vantage strengthened her sense of political exile from racism at home and brought a sense of solidarity with Algerian independence. For her, Paris was a city of political commitment, activism, and militancy, qualities that would deeply inform her own revolutionary agenda and soon make her a hero to the French writers she had once studied.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

KEITH KOENEMAN

Tuesday, May 21st

12:00 pm at The Union League Club

With Koeneman as our guide, we follow young Daley from his beginnings as an average Bridgeport kid thought to lack his father's talent and charisma to his unlikely transformation into an iron-fisted leader. Daley not only escaped the giant shadow of his father but also transformed Chicago from a gritty, post-industrial Midwestern capital into a beautiful, sophisticated global city widely recognized as a model for innovative metropolises throughout the world.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

EDWARD LEE

Tuesday, May 21st

12:00 pm at The Standard Club

Chef Edward Lee's story and his food could only happen in America. Raised in Brooklyn by a family of Korean immigrants, he eventually settled down in his adopted hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, where he owns the acclaimed restaurant 610 Magnolia. A multiple James Beard Award nominee for his unique patchwork cuisine, Lee creates recipes - filled with pickling, fermenting, frying, curing and smoking - that reflect the overlapping flavors and techniques that led this Korean-American boy to feel right at home in the South. Dishes like chicken-fried pork steak with a ramen crust and buttermilk pepper gravy, collards and kimchi, braised beef kalbi with soft grits and scallions and miso-smothered chicken all share a place on his table. Born with the storytelling gene of a true Southerner, Lee fills his debut cookbook, Smoke and Pickles, with tales of the restaurant world, New York City, Kentucky and his time competing on Top Chef (season 9), plus more than 130 exceptional recipes for food with Korean roots and Southern soul.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

CHRISTINA SCHWARZ - EVENT POSTPONED

Wednesday, May 22nd

12:00 pm at The Women's Athletic Club

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

CRAIG BORZO

Wednesday, May 22nd

12:00 pm at the University Club

When most people hear "cable car" they think "San Francisco." Yet for almost one-quarter of a century Chicago boasted the largest cable car system the world has ever seen, transporting more than one billion riders. This gigantic public work filled residents with pride - and filled robber barons' pockets with money. It also sparked a cable car building boom that spread to twenty-six other U.S. cities. But after twenty-five years, the boom went bust, and Chicago abandoned its cable car system. Today, the fascinating story of the rise and fall of Chicago's cable cars is all but forgotten. Having already written the history of the "L," Greg Borzo introduces his new book Chicago Cable Cars and guides readers through a stretch of Chicago's transit history that most people never knew existed - even though they have been walking past, riding over and even dining in remnants of it for years.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

DALE KUSHNER

Wednesday, May 22nd

7:00 pm at The Book Stall

LESLIE ZEMECKIS

Thursday, May 23rd

6:00 pm at The Standard Club - Cocktail Reception

Burlesque was one of America's most popular forms of live entertainment in the first half of the 20th century. Gaudy, bawdy and spectacular, the shows entertained thousands of paying customers every night of the week. And yet the legacy of burlesque is often vilified and misunderstood, left out of the history books.

By telling the intimate and surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men) who lived it, Behind the Burly Q reveals the true story of burlesque, even as it experiences a new renaissance. Lovingly interviewed by burlesque enthusiast Leslie Zemeckis who produced the hit documentary of the same name, are former musicians, strippers, novelty acts, club owners, authors and historians - assembled here for the first time ever to tell you just what really happened in a burlesque show. From Jack Ruby and Robert Kennedy to Abbott and Costello--burlesque touched every corner of American life. The sexy shows often poked fun at the upper classes, at sex, and at what people were willing to do in the pursuit of sex. Sadly, many of the performers have since passed away, making this their last, and often only interview. Behind the Burly Q is the definitive history of burlesque during its heyday and an invaluable oral history of an American art form. Funny, shocking, unbelievable, and heartbreaking, their stories will touch your hearts. We invite you to peek behind the curtain at the burly show.

To make reservations for the reception, please call: 847.446.8880.

MIRIAM KARMEL

Thursday, May 23rd

6:30 pm at The Book Stall

Being Esther intimately explores the interior consciousness of an elderly Jewish woman who lives as much in the past as in the present. Not prone to self-pity, Esther is at moments lucid and then suddenly lost in a world which has disappeared along with many who had inhabited it.

Born to parents who fled the shtetl, Esther Lusting has led a seemingly conventional life - marriage, two children, a life in suburban Chicago. Now, at the age of eighty-five, her husband is deceased, her children have families of their own and most of her friends are gone. Even in this diminished condition, life has its moments of richness, as well as its memorable characters. But above all there are the memories. Of better days with Marty, her husband. Of unrealized obsessions with other men.

As she moves back and forth through time, Esther attempts to come to terms with the meaning of her outwardly modest life. As a young woman, she wondered about the world beyond the narrow, prescribed world she inhabited. Now, cruelly, she can’t help but wonder if she has done anything for which she will be remembered.

At once sad and amusing, unpretentious yet wonderfully ambitious, Miriam Karmel’s debut novel brings understanding and tremendous empathy to the unforgettable Esther Lustig.

PHIL JACKSON

Friday, May 24th

12:00 pm at The Union League Club

During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. Even more important, he succeeded in never wavering from coaching his way, from a place of deep values. Jackson was tagged as the “Zen master” half in jest by sportswriters, but the nickname speaks to an important truth: this is a coach who inspired, not goaded; who led by awakening and challenging the better angels of his players’ nature, not their egos, fear, or greed.

This is the story of a preacher’s kid from North Dakota who grew up to be one of the most innovative leaders of our time. In his quest to reinvent himself, Jackson explored everything from humanistic psychology and Native American philosophy to Zen meditation. In the process, he developed a new approach to leadership based on freedom, authenticity, and selfless teamwork that turned the hypercompetitive world of professional sports on its head.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

MEMORIAL DAY - STORE IS CLOSED

Monday, May 27th

All Day at The Book Stall

In observance of Memorial Day, we will be closed. Enjoy your day and we will see you on Tuesday, May 28th at 9:30 am.

OLYMPIA SNOWE

Tuesday, May 28th

12:00 pm at The Union League Club

Known for working across party lines in her 18 years in the U.S. Senate, Republican Olympia Snowe, from Maine, felt driven from the legislative body by acrimonious partisanship and declined to run for reelection in 2012. But she hasn't abandoned politics. In this heartfelt call to action, she details the cost to the American public of a Congress so polarized that it passes record low numbers of laws and can't agree on a budget. Snowe offers an insider's view of how Congress came to be so dysfunctional, including a behind-the-scenes look at her role in working with both sides to get President Obama's health-care bill passed. She recounts her personal history of losing both parents when a child, widowhood at 26 that led to taking her husband's state legislative seat, later marriage to John McKernan, who would be elected governor of Maine as she pursued politics into the Senate. Snowe offers a passionate plea to Americans to insist on changes in the Senate, including filibuster reform, biennial budgeting, and a five-day workweek for Congress.

To make reservations for the luncheon, please call: 847.446.8880.

PETER BERGEN

Thursday, May 30th

7:00 pm at Congregation Beth Shalom, 3433 Walters Avenue, Northbrook, IL

An exciting insider account of the vast, secretive effort to track and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Shortly after coming into office, President Obama urged CIA Chief Leon Panetta to redouble the efforts to find Osama bin Laden; the trail had grown cold despite the dozen high-level intelligence officers working on the case for a decade. Only in 2010 did the monitoring of a Kuwaiti courier's cellphone use suggest ties to bin Laden, and they followed his car to the compound in the quiet Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he actually lived with bin Laden's extended family. A CIA safe house was set up nearby to observe the "pattern of life" details: the wives and children living at the compound and never leaving, the wash hanging on the line, the mysterious "pacer" who walked around the "jail yard" and never left. In fact, bin Laden had lived there for years, increasingly isolated and out of touch with his network and with only the Kuwaiti and his brother as guards and conduits to the outside world. CNN national security analyst, Peter Bergen (The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda, 2011, etc.) ably delineates the U.S. government decision-making process in pursuing the Special Operations infiltration of the compound, despite the lack of certainty that bin Laden was actually there. Officials also had to consider America's delicate relationship with Pakistan. In three weeks of rehearsal, SEAL teams manipulated every eventuality, even the helicopter mishap that actually happened. Bergen also stresses the enormity of the political risks undertaken by Obama and his staff, and he pursues the aftermath in terms of wounded Pakistan-U.S. relations and the spelling of the "twilight" for al-Qaeda. A compelling story, told with authority, of the final takedown of likely the most wanted criminal in history.

This event is free and open to the public.