Leon Trotsky is the subject of Book Talk & Signing
Author Roberta Satow Wool of Washington, CT and Manhattan will offer a talk and book signing on her recently published historical novel, Two Sisters of Coyoacan. This program is on Thursday, August 24, 2017 @ 6:30pm.
Based on a true story about Leon Trotsky, Two Sisters of Coyoacán brings the conflicts of the artistic, intellectual and political world of New York, Paris and Coyoacán, Mexico in the 1930’s to life.
Lilly and Gertie are Jewish girls from Brooklyn whose parents, like many American Jews, supported the overthrow of the Czarist regime by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Through her college professor, Marxist Philosopher Sidney Hook, Lilly is invited to be John Dewey’s assistant and accompanies him to Coyoacán for the proceedings of the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials.
Lilly remains in Coyoacán after Dewey leaves and becomes Trotsky’s English secretary, while Gertie goes to Paris to assist Frida Kahlo in her exhibition and falls in love with Jacques Mornard.
Two Sisters of Coyoacán follows the life of two Jewish sisters who unknowingly become entangled in a plot conceived by Stalin to eliminate a powerful enemy. What happens to these two well-meaning young women from Brooklyn when Trotsky is assassinated?
R
oberta Satow wrote her undergraduate honors thesis in political science at the University of California at Berkeley about Trotsky. When she learned that Ruth Poulos (the person Lilly Abramovitz is based upon) was a fellow psychoanalyst, she felt impelled to write a novel about her role in Trotsky’s assassination. Dr. Satow is the author of Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didn’t Take Care of You. She is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is also a psychoanalyst and writes a blog for Psychology Today.
Books will be available for sale and signing.
Saturn and NASA’s Epic Cassini Spacecraft – Visual Presentation
Denis Williamson of the Litchfield Hills Astronomy Club delivers a visual presentation Saturn and NASA’s Epic Cassini Spacecraft. This program will be Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 6:30pm.
NASA’S Cassini spacecraft is one of the most ambitious efforts in space exploration. Launched in 1997, Cassini traveled 2.2 billion miles in seven years to reach Saturn and enter orbit. This September it will take its final measurements and images as it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere at 77,000 miles per hour, burning up high above the cloud tops. Over the past 13 years, Cassini’s instruments have returned countless priceless observations and hundreds of thousands of images of the Saturnian system. With imagery, Dennis will share some of Cassini’s amazing discoveries of Saturn – its atmosphere, moons, vast rings and much more. Join us as this mission comes to an end.
Founded in 1956, the mission of the Litchfield Hills Amateur Astronomy Club is to promote the enjoyment of astronomy through education, meetings, and public outreach. For more information visit lhastro.org
19th Century American Literature in 5 Short Stories Led by Scholar Mark Scarbrough
Gunn Memorial Library in Washington, CT is pleased to welcome Mark Scarbrough, a scholar on 19th Century American literature, as he leads a five week 
session exploring literature, politics and culture in the United States through the genre of short stories.
While the short story didn’t originate in the United States, it became the form the new nation re-invented and made its own. From Nathaniel Hawthorne through Charlotte Perkins Gilman, participants will examine these changes through our cultural history before and after the Civil War. Join us for a lively lecture/discussion format. Copies of the short stories will be available at the circulation desk, when reserved in advance. Please sign up today. Supplies are limited.
The discussions scheduled Mondays at 10:00am
September 11, 2017– Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” (1832)
September 18, 2017 – Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)
September 25, 2017 – Bret Harte, “The Outcasts Of Poker Flat” (1869)
October 2, 2017 – Charles Chesnutt, “The Wife Of His Youth” (1898)
October 16, 2017 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
Mark Scarbrough started his professional life as an academic and did his doctoral work in nineteenth century American literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison before accepting a job at Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He has given papers on Chaucer at the International Medieval Conference and on American literature at the MLA and regional MLA conferences. After several years teaching, he resigned and moved to New York to write. In New York, he met and married Bruce Weinstein. Together, they have written more than two dozen cookbooks, and have appeared on The Today Show, CBS This Morning and The View and selected as The Most Influential People of Litchfield County. Mark is enmeshed in literature and has been a popular book group and literary discussion leader across Southern New England.
For more information on Mark visit bruceandmark.com.
Chris Whipple’s The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency Talk and Book Signing
WASHINGTON — MAY 18: Writer and producer Chris Whipple, Washington, D.C., May 18, 2015. (Photo David Hume Kennerly/GettyImages)
Gunn Memorial Library in Washington, CT is pleased to welcome acclaimed author, journalist, documentary filmmaker and multiple Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer, Chris Whipple, for a talk and signing of his New York Times bestseller, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. This event will be Sunday, September 10, 2017 at 2pm in the library’s Wykeham Room.
“Could not be more timely…There are valuable lessons in The Gatekeepers for Trump’s chief…” —TIME.com
“If you’re a political junkie or merely curious, this is the book for you.”—Tom Brokaw, former anchor, NBC Nightly News
The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actions—and inactions—have defined the course of our country.
What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United States—as did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as “the gatekeepers,” wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS’s agenda, and—most crucially—enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks.
Through extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeen living chiefs and two former presidents, Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker’s expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution—and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout might have been prevented by a more effective chief.
Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details, The Gatekeepers offers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington.
CHRIS WHIPPLE is an acclaimed writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and speaker. A multiple Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s Primetime, he is the chief executive officer of CCWHIP Productions. Most recently, he was the executive producer and writer of Showtime’s The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs.
Hickory Stick Bookstore will provide books for sale and signing.
All programs are free and open to the public, but registration is requested.
Please call 860-868-7586 for further information or visit www.gunnlibrary.org
The Gunn Memorial Library is located at
5 Wykeham Road at Route 47 on the Green, in Washington, CT.
