Event Archives - The John Adams Institute

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III

Living with history: A people’s journey, a nation’s story

Oct 18, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Museums have a social justice role to play. Cultural institutions need to be as much about today and tomorrow as they are about yesterday. This may just be a time of transformation.” Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the highest position of leadership within the world’s largest museum, education, …...

Miriam Toews

On Film and Literature

Nov 28, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Miriam Toews is the award-winning author of nine books, including Women Talking, which won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay at the 2023 Academy Awards, and All My Puny Sorrows. Known for her light, oftentimes humorous touch, Toews finds moments of brightness and humanity in even the darkest of narratives. Her latest novel, Fight Night, …...

Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk

Innovation and the Demons that Drive it

Nov 24, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Isaacson’s latest inside story is filled with tales of triumph and turmoil, and addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress? Walter Isaacson is the bestselling biographer of the likes of Steve Jobs, Henry Kissinger, and Jennifer Doudna. Throughout his career he has served as …...

The Ministry for the Future (Sold Out)

Kim Stanley Robinson and the Fight for Planet Earth

Nov 08, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“In the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time… beyond that, après moi le déluge.” Uniting science and politics, …...

Strangers to Ourselves

Mental Health, Diagnosis & Identity with Rachel Aviv

Sep 18, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“The divide between the psychic hinterlands and a setting we might call normal is permeable, a fact that is both haunting and promising. It’s startling to realize how narrowly we avoid, or miss, living radically different lives.” How do we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress? Such moments – familiar to any life …...

Nikole Hannah-Jones: 1619

A New American Origin Story

Jun 28, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.” Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has devoted her career to exposing systemic and institutional racism in the United States. Chief among her …...

USA Trivia Night

How much do you know about America?

Jun 13, 2023, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Who was the 6th president of the United States? Who performed the halftime show at the Superbowl this year? And when we speak of the Trail of Tears, what precisely are we referring to? Break out your atlases, history books and encyclopedias! Dust off your knowledge of American music, popular culture, history and current events! …...

Matthew Desmond

Poverty, by America

Jun 08, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Are we—we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college educated, the lucky—connected to all this needless suffering? This is a book about poverty that is not just about the poor. Instead, it’s a book about how some lives are made small so that others may grow.” Pulitzer Prize winning sociologist Matthew Desmond’s work on …...

Race, Class and Feminism in America (CANCELLED)

Critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson on what it means to belong

Oct 04, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Unfortunately, Margo Jefferson will be not able to come to Amsterdam. De Balie will contact ticket holders shortly for a refund. “We know that race is a construction. We also know that race is a construction site we’re not going to be leaving anytime soon. What are we to do with our multiple selves, conjoined …...

Immigration, Transformation and Society

Theater & Talk

Apr 24, 2023, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What makes up the immigrant experience? What are its contours, challenges and realities? And what gets lost, altered, or edited in the transition between leaving one’s birth country and arriving in a new one? The John Adams Institute is thrilled to present an evening that weaves arts and academics, traverses national boundaries, and crosses oceans, …...

New York Burning

John Adams & Fulbright event with Jill Lepore

Apr 20, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

New York City, 1741: Fires break out throughout the city. Public and private property is set ablaze, and the ruling elite is nervous. There are whispers of a coup, or worse, an outright rebellion. But the perpetrators of the crimes lurk in the shadows, and so, fueled by the paranoia that accompanies hearsay, the authorities …...

Thank You for Your Servitude

With Mark Leibovich

Mar 15, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In his second nonfiction blockbuster Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, journalist and political commentator Mark Leibovich sketches the political landscape of Washington during the Trump presidency. Against the backdrop of steak dinners and chants to “drain the swamp”, Leibovich describes the rapid change of the Republican party …...

MATRIX

An Evening with Lauren Groff

Feb 23, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“She rides out of the forest alone. Seventeen years old, in the cold March drizzle, Marie who comes from France.” Rising American literary star Lauren Groff’s most recent novel inhabits the borderlands between myth and history. Set in the early Middle Ages, Matrix is a mystical exploration of the raw power of female creativity in …...

Bret Easton Ellis

The Shards

Jan 30, 2023, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Many years ago, I realized that a book – a novel – asks itself to be written in the same way we fall in love with someone. The book becomes impossible to resist for the author: there’s nothing you can do about it, and you finally give in and succumb, even if your instincts tell you to run the other way because this could be, in the end, a dangerous game.”...

Roe v. Wade: Past, Present, and Future

Online Event with Susan Matthews

Dec 15, 2022, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

You can join this online event for free. Click HERE for link to the livestream. On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court made the shocking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Responses ranged from despairing to triumphant. For decades, Roe v. Wade had guaranteed the constitutional rights of women to get safe abortions. It was …...

America’s Last Chance?

2022 US Midterm Election Town Hall

Nov 10, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

2024 is a year that looms large on any American calendar. But given the political system in the United States, spectators know that November 2022, will be as important for determining the future fate of America as the next presidential election. Join us on November 10th for a town hall in collaboration with the Rode …...

Andrea Elliott

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

Oct 11, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter grew up in the shadows of New York’s second “Gilded Age.” Dasani’s story has become emblematic of one of America’s most wicked problems: homelessness. The John Adams Institute is delighted to welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott, investigative …...

Francis Fukuyama

Liberalism and its Discontents

Oct 03, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

History has not ended. In fact, it is entering yet another phase, where old forms and ideas clash with present realities. The John Adams Institute is excited to welcome Francis Fukuyama back to Amsterdam to discuss his findings in his newest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents. In this rigorous and trim volume, Fukuyama returns to …...

Karen Joy Fowler

Booth

Sep 15, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

April 14th 1865, on the balcony of the Ford Theatre in Washington DC, John Wilkes Booth has just assassinated president Abraham Lincoln. This shocking incident would ring through history and make the Booths the most infamous family in the country. The John Adams Institute is pleased to host author and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy …...

Surviving Injustice

with Mark Godsey & Rickey Jackson

Jun 14, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Rickey Jackson was sentenced to 39 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. Innocent, and unjustly convicted of murder and robbery, his is the longest wrongful imprisonment in US history. The John Adams Institute is honored to host Rickey, who will share the lessons he learned about freedom and forgiveness. The sole evidence against …...

Guns & Votes

Carol Anderson

May 30, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

On paper, every American has the right to vote and – thanks to the Second Amendment – to bear arms. But in reality, says Carol Anderson, both these rights are undermined by the racism which is so deeply rooted in American society. And that, in turn, undermines democracy. Anderson is a professor of African-American studies …...

Michael Ignatieff

On Consolation

May 19, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

How do we find solace in modern times? The internationally acclaimed Canadian author and historian Michael Ignatieff will visit the John Adams Institute to discuss just that in his new, bestselling book: On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times. Ignatieff was the rector of the Central European University in Budapest, until he was forced to …...

Bill Browder

Freezing Order

May 13, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The latest massacres in Bucha and Mariupol have shown that Vladimir Putin has no regard for human life – he only cares about power and money. In Putin’s eyes, money is power, and vice versa. That’s why freezing the assets of Russians tied to Putin’s regime is so important. Between 1996 and 2005, American investor …...

Yascha Mounk

The Great Experiment

Apr 10, 2022, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

The John Adams institute is delighted to present one of the brightest minds in American political thought today: the refreshingly outspoken German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk. He will join us on April 10th to discuss his new, long-awaited book The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart And How They Can Endure. In his new …...

William Drozdiak

The Future of Europe

Mar 23, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The war between Russia and Ukraine starkly illustrates Europe’s vulnerability in an era of resurgent big-power rivalry. President Emmanuel Macron of France has taken the lead in Europe and has warned that the European Union could find itself trapped, even victimized, by power struggles involving Russia, but also China and the United States. It is …...

Hanya Yanagihara

To Paradise

Mar 11, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

This year’s most anticipated new novel is without a doubt Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise (published in Dutch as Naar het paradijs by Nieuw Amsterdam). And we are thrilled that Hanya Yanagihara is returning to the John Adams for a conversation about her three-part story across three centuries, centered around New York City. To Paradise is …...

George Packer

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

Apr 25, 2022, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer returns to the John Adams to discuss his latest book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. In this thought-provoking book about the decline and fall of self-government of the United States, Packer accepts that there’s a new reality for America: “a failed state”. A state that …...

The Accessible City

Online event with Chris & Melissa Bruntlett

Nov 16, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

What was it about life in the Netherlands that Canadian couple Chris and Melissa Bruntlett found so attractive? So attractive that they pulled up stakes and left Vancouver to actually move to Delft with their two children? The answer is: quality of life. A big factor that impacts quality of life is how we move …...

Cecilia Kang

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

Oct 27, 2021, 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm

For years, fringe ideologues were able to use Facebook undisturbed to promote their extreme ideologies and conspiracies. In An Ugly Truth, published in Dutch as Een smerige waarheid by Atlas Contact, New York Times tech reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel reveal how Facebook’s algorithms sacrificed everything for user engagement and profit, while creating a …...

The Photograph

Documentary & Doc Talk

Oct 03, 2021, 6:45 pm - 8:45 pm

In The Photograph, a single photo unleashes a whirlwind of exceptional stories. About New York and its Black inhabitants, about pride and tradition, about the power of photography, and about director Sherman De Jesus’ grandfather. Sherman De Jesus heads to New York with a seemingly clear goal in mind: to find out the story behind …...

Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Sep 29, 2021, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The name of the Sackler family adorns the walls of many storied institutions – Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged …...

Russell Shorto

Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob

Sep 15, 2021, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Could it really be happening? Will there – after more than a year and a half online – be a John Adams event with a real, live speaker?! Yes, in addition to our rich online program we are happy to start welcoming speakers in person again. On September 15, Russell Shorto will take the John …...

Eliot Brown

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion

Jul 14, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

The Cult of We by Wall Street Journal correspondents Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell is the definitive inside story of WeWork and its audacious founder Adam Neumann. Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic, hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billion — on paper. Billions poured in, but in …...

Niall Ferguson

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Jul 05, 2021, 7:30 pm - 8:45 pm

Might there have been fewer deaths from Covid-19 if governments had been quicker to impose lockdowns and restrict, even ban, air travel? Might its spread have been more quickly controlled if the Chinese authorities had been more open when the first cases were identified? The knowledge about diseases that we have accumulated over the past …...

Elizabeth Kolbert

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

Jun 10, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

If we can just get through the 21st century, humanity might have a chance, says Elizabeth Kolbert. We have already intervened in the earth’s system to the extent that we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’. Maybe we can buy time by intervening even more, with so-called geo-engineering: turning carbon emissions to stone, for example, …...

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Challenging Corona

May 25, 2021, 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm

The John Adams Institute is happy to welcome Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President, for a conversation about our response to the corona virus. If we have to learn to live with the virus, as is now often said, what will the ‘new normal’ look like? Is there indeed light at the …...

Sharon Zukin

The Urban Innovation Complex

Apr 19, 2021, 8:30 pm - 10:00 pm

Cities like New York and San Francisco have bloomed thanks to the innovation economy. Can tech save our cities? In her new book The Innovation Complex, professor of urban sociology Sharon Zukin shows how these forces are shaping both the new urban economy and urban space. What happens when big tech enters a city? It brings talent and jobs and new ideas and urban revival, yes, but the ‘innovation complex’ also increases dependence on global capital and enables the rise of a new meritocratic...

Arun Chaudhary

Campaigning the American Way

Mar 16, 2021, 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm

The victory of Joe Biden in the US elections was predicted by no one in 2019, and by any reasonable metric, he did not run an innovative or even effective campaign. So why did he win? Arun Chaudhary, who worked on both Barack Obama’s and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, and is currently a campaign advisor …...

Rebecca Henderson

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

Mar 04, 2021, 7:15 pm - 8:30 pm

Yes, capitalism is the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But many also blame it for the massive problems that plague the modern world. In Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, Harvard Business School Professor Rebecca Henderson argues that only a new form of capitalism can drive the innovation we need …...

Martin Luther King vs. The FBI

Documentary & Doc Talk

Jan 23, 2021, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Captivating and urgent, Martin Luther King vs. The FBI uncovers how during the civil rights movement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) utilized every means at its disposal to sabotage the efforts of dr. Martin Luther King and other Black activists. Based on recently discovered and declassified files, the documentary powerfully demonstrates how fear for …...

The Georgia Runoffs: Battle for the Senate

with Michael Steele & Jonathan Capehart

Jan 06, 2021, 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

The presidential election is over, but the race for the US Senate is heating up – and Georgia holds the key. It is here that the last two seats in the Senate are up for grabs, so the stakes are high. Will the Republicans maintain their grip on the Senate? Or will the Democrats create …...

Art & Activism in America Now

Dec 16, 2020, 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

American art today is confronting issues of racism, colonialism and identity head on. What is it like to be a visual artist in America now, where the public debate is dominated by Trumpism on the one hand and Black Lives Matter on the other? The John Adams is joining forces with Kunsthal KAdE to talk …...

Ian Buruma

The Churchill Complex

Dec 01, 2020, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

What would Churchill do? The Special Relationship between Britain and America has done much to shape the world as we know it, from World War II through to Trump and Brexit. The victors of the war inherited a legacy of leadership and prestige as beacons of freedom and democracy. But what is left of that …...

The Day After the 2020 Elections

Reflections on the Outcome

Nov 04, 2020, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

On November 4th, the day after the upcoming US Elections 2020, the John Adams Institute is organizing a live online event with several commentators – many of whom you may have seen at the John Adams before – to hear their thoughts and reflections on the undoubtedly turbulent events of the day before. We don’t …...

The US 2020 Elections

High School Student Webinar

Nov 02, 2020, 10:30 am - 11:30 am

Our 2020 Quincy Club lecture school series on the US Presidential Elections filled up fast. For everyone who missed out or wants to participate again, the John Adams is organizing a live online broadcast on the day before the elections, Monday 2 November at 10.30 am. This broadcast will be presented live by Albertine Bloemendal, …...

Abhijit Banerjee

Good Economics for Hard Times

Oct 06, 2020, 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm

The Nobel Prize for Economics 2019 went to Abhijit Banerjee from India and his wife Esther Duflo, from France. Both are economists at MIT where they founded the Poverty Action Lab. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work on new, practical ways to fight global poverty. “Economics is too important to be …...

Madeleine Albright

Hell and Other Destinations

Jun 20, 2020, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright returned to the John Adams Institute once more, this time for an online interview with Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal about her new book Hell and Other Destinations, a 21st-Century Memoir. As one of the world’s most admired and tireless public servants, Albright reflects on the final stages of …...

UN, US, NL

Online Webinar with Samantha Power and Karel van Oosterom

Jun 25, 2020, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm

With her book The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir, Samantha Power – Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2013-2017, Pulitzer Prize winner and human rights advocate – has written an intimate, powerful, and galvanizing memoir. The book traces Power’s distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official during …...

100 Years of Voting: Women’s Rights and Responsibilities

Liz Cheney & The National Archives on the 19th Amendment

Aug 27, 2020, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, winning women a constitutional guarantee of equal voting rights with men and bringing an end to decades of political disenfranchisement. Hosted by the American Women’s Club of Amsterdam, the U.S. Consulate General in Amsterdam and The John Adams Institute, this free online event will feature …...

David Frum on the upcoming Presidential Elections

'Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy'

Sep 24, 2020, 9:15 pm - 10:15 pm

The John Adams is pleased to announce the second speaker in our fall program, in collaboration with De Balie. David Frum, journalist at The Atlantic and author, will be joining us for a free online event to discuss the upcoming presidential elections with moderator Tim Wagemakers. Political commentator David Frum will also discuss his latest …...

High School Student Webinar

California and Silicon Valley

Jun 11, 2020, 10:30 am - 11:30 am

Every year, already since 2002, the John Adams Institute organizes a lecture program called The Quincy Club at schools all throughout the Netherlands to help young audiences better understand American culture. This year, the John Adams presented a unique, online live Quincy Club webinar about California’s Silicon Valley, an English program aimed at students in …...

Esther Safran Foer

I Want You to Know We're Still Here

May 26, 2020, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm

For our third online event we invited author Esther Safran Foer. The mother of three renowned authors – Franklin, Jonathan and Joshua – has written a heartfelt memoir exploring the history of her parents and extended family who were killed in Ukraine during World War 2. Her book, I Want You to Know We’re Still …...

Francis Fukuyama

In Government We Trust

May 12, 2020, 12:00 am - 9:00 pm

How will the current COVID-19 crisis influence national democracies and international political relations? Will there be a shift in the balance of powers – between countries, but also between democracies and dictatorships? For insight and knowledge on these matters, we can look to the renowned American political scientist Francis Fukuyama. The John Adams Institute and …...

Roger Ross Williams

The Innocence Files

Apr 15, 2020, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

The documentary series The Innocence Files is inspired by ‘The Innocence Project’, started in 1992 by two New York lawyers who use DNA technology to exonerate people who were wrongly convicted. There are now Innocence Projects in every state of the US. They have been able to get over 2500 people out of jail, often …...

Kim Wehle

How to Read the Constitution - and Why

Mar 03, 2020, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Super Tuesday! That unique American event marks an important moment at the start of the elections. This year it takes place on Tuesday March 3rd. On that very day, the John Adams will host Kim Wehle, a law professor, constitutional scholar, commentator and author of the book How to Read the Constitution – and Why. …...

Meg Waite Clayton

The Last Train to London

Jan 21, 2020, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Next year the Netherlands commemorates 75 years of liberation from Nazi repression. Bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton is coming to the John Adams to discuss her new novel The Last Train to London, which is based on the true story of the Vienna Kindertransports and the heroic woman who led the rescues, Truus Wijsmuller. In …...

Daniel Ziblatt

How Democracies Die

Jan 16, 2020, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

How do democracies die? Not at the hands of generals, but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. That is the unsettling conclusion of Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt’s highly praised book How Democracies Die. He will be speaking about it at the John Adams on …...

Roger Ross Williams

Documentary 'The Apollo' & Doc Talk

Nov 24, 2019, 1:45 pm - 4:00 pm

IDFA and the John Adams present the documentary The Apollo by director Roger Ross Williams. After the screening, Williams will take the stage for an interview, along with several experts on soul music. In 2018, the John Adams hosted Roger Ross Williams for a screening of his powerful documentary American Jail. The Apollo Theater on …...

An evening with John Grisham

in conversation with Twan Huys

Nov 19, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

We are thrilled to announce that best-selling author John Grisham is coming to the Netherlands for the very first time. After his debut A Time to Kill appeared in 1988, his books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold over 300 million copies worldwide. Grisham drew his experience from practicing criminal law …...

Megan Twohey

She Said

Dec 03, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The most explosive book of this year is without a doubt She Said: Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s book about their wide-ranging investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual predation. It has already been labeled a “feminist All the President’s Men”. Megan Twohey will take the John Adams stage to discuss her Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting about …...

George Packer

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

Nov 20, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Arrogant, self-absorbed, even brutal – yes. But also sentimental and sometimes compassionate. Endearing? Not so much. Brilliant? Absolutely. Above all, Richard Holbrooke was ambitious – and he embodied much of the character of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. George Packer, one of America’s most renowned authors and winner of …...

Dina Nayeri

The Ungrateful Refugee

Nov 04, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Eternal gratitude. Is that what is expected from a refugee? How long can you stay grateful, and how do you show your gratitude? And if you do not show your gratitude, will you be sent back to… well, to where? In The Ungrateful Refugee (translated by Susan Ridder into De ondankbare vluchteling for Volt Publishers), …...

Joseph Stiglitz

People, Power, and Profits

Nov 15, 2019, 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is returning to the John Adams to discuss his important new book People, Power, and Profits (translated into Winst voor iedereen, by Arian Verheij and Huub Stegeman for Athenaeum), about the dangers of free market fundamentalism and the many economic challenges America is facing. In this book, Stiglitz explains how …...

Raymond Neutra

My Father and Frank Lloyd Wright

Aug 29, 2019, 5:30 pm - 9:00 pm

From old-world Vienna to the breezy mid-century Modernism of Southern California: the career of the architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970) spanned continents and epochs. His son Raymond Neutra is coming to Amsterdam for an event co-hosted by Iconic Houses and Museum het Schip, to talk about his father’s work and his relationship to architecture in America. After …...

Jill Lepore

These Truths

Oct 16, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Three truths, no more and no less: political equality, natural rights, and sovereignty of the people. According to Thomas Jefferson, these truths were the foundation on which the American experiment rested. Most Americans recognize his words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” How …...

Jed Emerson

The Purpose of Capital

Oct 01, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What is the purpose of your capital? The emergent ‘impact investing’ movement holds out the golden promise that we can make money and do good at the same time. This new financial sector is being embraced not only by family offices and social entrepreneurs, but also by traditional financial strongholds such as by Blackrock, JP Morgan and …...

Leon Neyfakh

Storytelling in the Digital Age

Sep 10, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The podcast. Whether you only have a quick 15 minutes to spare on the bus or train, or an hour-long drive to work, there’s a perfect podcast out there for you. Podcasts can tell real, engaging stories, creating a sense of connection between listener and content, and at the same time making you feel part …...

Jonathan Safran Foer

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

Sep 03, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Climate change is the single biggest threat to human survival – and we are dealing with it all wrong, according to bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer. In his new book We Are the Weather, Foer explores the central dilemma of our time in a creative and urgent new way. We have turned our planet into …...

Hendrik Meijer

Senator Arthur Vandenberg and the Creation of NATO

Jun 20, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In 2020 the Western world will celebrate the founding of NATO 70 years ago. To make the idea of such a transatlantic treaty even possible, the US had to move from a position of isolationism towards a more open and engaged relationship with European countries. This change of direction started with the Vandenberg Resolution, which …...

Barry Eichengreen

The Populist Temptation

May 27, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In the last few years, populism – on both the right and the left – has spread like wildfire throughout the world. Economic changes and downturns have left sections of populations worse off. What are these economic grievances that drive populist movements? And how can our welfare systems designed to support them prevent these grievances? …...

Stephen P. Williams

Blockchain: The Next Everything

May 13, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What is blockchain? Why does everyone, from tech experts to business moguls, believe it is bound to revolutionize society as significantly as the internet? Join us for an evening that helps us understand what it is, how it works and what the implications are for the future of our world. Journalist and author Stephen Williams, …...

Kristen Roupenian

You Know You Want This

Apr 02, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

When Kristen Roupenian’s short story ‘Cat Person’ came out in The New Yorker magazine and online at the end of 2017, it immediately went wildly viral: it became the second-most-emailed page on the New Yorker’s website in that entire year. The story confused readers who mistook it for reportage rather than fiction, given that it …...

Peter Sellars

The Future of Opera in a Changing World

Mar 01, 2019, 5:30 pm - 6:15 pm

The John Adams is partnering with the Dutch National Opera for a special 45-minute talk about the future of opera in a changing world, by renowned stage director Peter Sellars. Sellars is best known for staging plays and operas for numerous international theaters in settings wildly different from those suggested by the text. He wrote …...

Francis Fukuyama

Against Identity Politics

Mar 08, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The John Adams Institute, in collaboration with De Balie, is once again hosting the renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama to discuss his new book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, translated into Dutch as Identiteit and published by Atlas Contact. In Identity, Fukuyama shows that populist nationalism is not motivated by …...

Tommy Orange

There There

Feb 14, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The author of one of the most galvanizing debut novels of 2018 took the John Adams stage to discuss his story about twelve characters who converge and collide on one fateful day. Tommy Orange’s groundbreaking novel There There – translated for Meulenhoff into Dutch as Er Is Geen Daar Daar – was chosen as one …...

David Eicher & André Kuipers

Mission Moon: Reliving the Great Space Race

Feb 06, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In 1969 a seemingly impossible goal was achieved as Neil Armstrong uttered his immortal line: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind.” This year celebrates not only 50 years since Apollo 11 and the first human steps on the Moon, but also the achievements of all the Soviet and American …...

Saskia Coenen-Snyder

Signs and Sounds in Nazi-Occupied Amsterdam

Mar 14, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

How did residents of the city of Amsterdam experience the Nazi-occupation in the 1940s through their sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch? People’s senses changed dramatically during these years, and learning more about the history of the senses gives us better insight into how people experienced the war. In a co-operation with the Anne Frank …...

Jennifer Clement

Gun Love

Jan 16, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

For our first event of 2019, the John Adams will host Jennifer Clement, author of four novels and President of PEN International – the first woman President since the organization was founded in 1921. Clement’s latest novel is Gun Love, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and was named one of …...

Everybody Works!

A workshop on diversity, youth and jobs

Mar 23, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

“Everybody Works!” is a hands-on conference and workshop that explores practical ways in which to connect diverse youth to labor opportunities in the private and public sectors. Organized by the John Adams Institute in cooperation with the United States Embassy and the U.S. Department of State, the conference started off with an overview of the …...

Stephanie Houtzeel

Mezzo-Soprano

Mar 13, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Mezzo-Soprano Stephanie Houtzeel is winning accolades for her opera and concert performances around the world. She was nominated one of the best up-and-coming singers by Opernwelt Magazine. Opera News has praised her performances as “vocally, dramatically and physically sublime.” During her recital she performed musical selections by American composers Charles Ives and Elliot Carter....

Hyphen-Nation

American Perspectives on Diversity

Feb 05, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Immigration and diversity: they are the biggest, hottest, most painful issues in the Netherlands. America is the land of diversity. What is the secret to America’s approach? It’s a tiny thing: the hyphen. Everyone in the U.S. has a dual identity: Mexican-American, Italian-American, African-American…America tells newcomers: “Become American, join us…but don’t lose your origins!” Can …...

Stephen Greenblatt

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Nov 23, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted writer Stephen Greenblatt, who spoke on his biography on William Shakespeare, titled Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare. For his biography, Greenblatt did extensive research on Shakespeare’s life concerning religion, London, ghosts, rural life, alcoholism, his marriage and his fellow writers. The Elizabethan era seems to come to life, …...

Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything Is Illuminated

Sep 18, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted author Jonathan Safran Foer, who spoke about his novel Everything Is Illuminated. The novel has been named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and is the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions …...

Jonathan Spence

Treason by the Book

May 30, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with Yale professor Jonathan Spence, who visited on account of his book Treason by the Book. Treason by the Book is a historical account of the Zeng Jing (曾靜) case which took place during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor of China around 1730. Zeng Jing, a failed degree …...

Mark Danner

A Helpless Giant? America and the Post-Cold War World

Jun 14, 2000, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute presented an evening with writer and journalist Mark Danner. He spoke on American Foreign Policy after the Cold War. Danner is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs, war and politics, and has written extensively …...

Michael Pollan

How to Change your Mind

Dec 11, 2018, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Michael Pollan is returning to the John Adams to discuss his new book How To Change Your Mind with renowned psychiatrist Damiaan Denys. In this new book Pollan has moved on from his research on food to delve into the world of psychedelics and their medical use. In the past decade, there has been renewed …...

American Adventures in Architecture

Frank Gehry and John Walsh in Discussion

Jul 02, 1999, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

As part of the American Adventures Festival in Amsterdam, the John Adams Institute hosted a series of lectures on various subjects. On July 2, 1999, architect Frank Gehry and director of de J. Paul Getty Musem John Walsh spoke on the American influences in European architecture. Dutch architect Cees Dam moderated the evening. Internationally celebrated …...

American Adventures in Art

A Discussion between David Salle and Anna Tilroe

Jun 27, 1999, 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm

As part of the American Adventures Festival in Amsterdam, the John Adams Institute hosted a series of lectures on various subjects. On June 27, 1999, American artist Davide Salle and Dutch art critic Anna Tilroe discussed the American influences on European contemporary art. David Salle established himself in the late 1970s as one of the …...

American Adventures in Music

Philip Glass and Louis Andriesen in Discussion

Jun 26, 1999, 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm

As part of the American Adventures Festival in Amsterdam, the John Adams Institute hosted a series of lectures on various subjects. On June 26, 1999, American composer Philip Glass and Dutch composer Louis Andriessen spoke about influences from the U.S. on 20th century Dutch composing. Since the opera Einstein on the Beach, produced in collaboration …...

American Adventures in Music

Wynton Marsalis and Leonard Slatkin in Discussion

Jun 21, 1999, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

As part of the American Adventures Festival in Amsterdam, the John Adams Institute hosted a series of lectures on various subjects. On June 21, 1999, jazz trumpet player, classical musician and composer Wynton Marsalis and music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. Leonard Slatkin discussed American music. Marsalis wrote an epic oratorio …...

Analyzing the Midterms

With Darius Baxter & Frank Luntz

Dec 06, 2018, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The 2018 midterm elections, featuring hundreds of congressional, state and local primaries, culminate with the Nov. 6 general election to decide whether Democrats gain control of Congress or if Republicans keep their hold on the legislative branch. On December 6, one month after these elections, two political commentators from opposite sides of the political spectrum …...

Errol Morris

Documentary 'American Dharma' & Doc Talk

Nov 18, 2018, 5:30 pm - 7:45 pm

The John Adams presents, in cooperation with IDFA, the documentary American Dharma about Steve Bannon. The screening will be followed by a discussion between filmmaker Errol Morris and journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal. The movie is an extensive interview by Morris with Steve Bannon, head of the 2016 Trump campaign, former White House Chief Strategist …...

Christiane Amanpour

From the Gulf War to the Trump Presidency

Jan 25, 2019, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

On January 25th, Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor and host of the network’s award-winning global affairs program ‘Amanpour’, will take the stage at the John Adams for the first time. Amanpour will discuss her illustrious career in journalism, spanning three decades, from the Gulf War to the Trump presidency. Amanpour’s international career began in …...

Alice Walker

Writer as Medium

May 27, 1990, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

On May 27th, 1990, writer Alice Walker visited the John Adams Institute to lecture on civil rights and civil participation. Alice Walker was born in Georgia. In 1982 she gained world renown with her novel The Color Purple. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer prize, the American Book award and the National Book Critics Circle award. …...

Paul Watkins

On Night Over Day Over Night

Jun 06, 1991, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

On June 6th, 1991, the John Adams Institute hosted British-American author Paul Watkins. He spoke about his novel Night over Day over Night (translated in Dutch as Dag in Nacht uit). The protagonist is a German teenager, who joins the Waffen-SS in 1944. Watkins examines the psychology of the Waffen-SS members in the final stretch of the …...

Paul Theroux

Double Lives and Escapades - The Adventures of Paul Theroux

Apr 11, 1990, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

On April 11th, 1990, travel author Paul Theroux visited the John Adams Institute to discuss his book My Secret History. Theroux gained renown as author of travel stories. With his sharp pen and intriguing reports, he brought renewed interest to the literary travel genre. However, Theroux sees his travel stories as subordinate to his other work. Traveling …...

Paul Auster

On the Search for the Limits of Human Existence

Jan 24, 1990, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

On January 24th, 1990, Paul Auster visited the John Adams Institute to speak on one of the central themes in his novels; the search for the limits of human existence. Auster grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in a family of Jewish-Austrian descent. He spent a few years in France, were he mainly focused on …...

Jamaica Kincaid

The Sound of Silence: Tales from the Caribbean

Dec 07, 1989, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

In 1989 Jamaica Kincaid visited the John Adams Institute to talk about ‘A Small Place’. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, ‘A Small Place’ magnifies our vision of one small place with Swiftian wit and precision. Jamaica Kincaid’s expansive essay candidly appraises the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up, and makes palpable …...

Timothy Snyder

The Road to Unfreedom

Nov 13, 2018, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Democracy and the rule of law in Western societies are under threat, according to Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, due to Vladimir Putin’s efforts to destabilize neighboring governments and to stir up dissent in countries from France to the United States. The John Adams, in a collaboration with De Balie, is happy …...

Richard Powers

The Overstory

Nov 04, 2018, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

National Book Award winning author Richard Powers took a risk with his new novel The Overstory: in it trees talk. The trees are well-developed characters with interesting quirks who converse with each other, and with a handful of humans. Or rather, a few characters in The Overstory become convinced that trees are talking to them. …...

The U.S. Midterm Elections: What’s at Stake?

A John Adams & Fulbright Event with Jonathan Capehart

Oct 18, 2018, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The John Adams and the Fulbright Center are bringing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart to Amsterdam. Capehart is a contributor to MSNBC, host of “America on the Line” on New York Public Radio (WNYC) and a member of The Washington Post editorial board, where he writes about politics and social issues. He will discuss the upcoming US mid-term elections …...

American Jail: Film & Interview

With Director Roger Ross Williams

Oct 04, 2018, 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm

The John Adams, in collaboration with Submarine, is bringing Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams to Amsterdam to discuss his latest documentary, American Jail. In this provocative and personal film, he explores the modern tragedy of mass incarceration from both a very personal and a political angle. He contends that poor people and minorities are more …...

Madeleine Albright

Fascism: A Warning

Jun 29, 2018, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

We are happy to announce that former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, is returning to the John Adams Institute to discuss her latest book ‘Fascism: A Warning’, which offers a personal and urgent examination of fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world. After her talk, Former Secretary Albright will …...

The Fourth Estate

An Evening with The New York Times

May 22, 2018, 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm

The John Adams Institute, in collaboration with VPRO Television, is happy to announce a special screening of the documentary series The Fourth Estate, a four-part series in which renowned filmmaker Liz Garbus (‘Bobby Fischer Against The World’) documents the Washington bureau of The New York Times during the tumultuous first year of the Trump administration. …...

Matthew Desmond

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Jul 04, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

What if the dominant discourse on poverty in the United States is wrong? What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals, or that they lack the skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? What if the problem is that poverty is profitable? These are the questions at the …...

Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen

The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse

Jun 16, 2018, 3:00 pm - 3:45 pm

A wish has come true! The John Adams Institute is happy to announce we are hosting an event especially for children, with the award-winning duo author Mac Barnett and illustrator Jon Klassen, who have successfully collaborated on several picturebooks, the trilogy ‘Triangle’, ‘Square’ and ‘Circle’, as well as ‘Extra Yarn’, and ‘Sam & Dave Dig …...

Andrew Keen

How To Fix The Future

May 24, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute is happy to announce our upcoming event with author Andrew Keen, one of the world’s best known and controversial commentators on the digital revolution. In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Keen showcases global solutions for our digital predicament. After the huge changes of the Industrial Revolution, civilized societies remade …...

1968 – Vietnam Protest

You Say You Want A Revolution

May 05, 2018, 7:15 pm - 9:30 pm

Fifty years ago, from Paris to Mexico-City, young people, students, factory workers and filmmakers united to protest authority. They did not only carry rocks, but also light, flexible 16mm camera’s. On the fiftieth birthday of the May 1968 Paris events, EYE Film Museum, in their series “1968 – You Say You Want A Revolution”, will show …...

Jeremy Bailenson

Experience on Demand

Apr 24, 2018, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Virtual reality is getting better at simulating the real world. Can it also transform education, environmental conservation, health care? And… do we want it to? Yes, says Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. He is speaking at the John Adams Institute on April 24th. Bailenson has spent two decades researching …...

A.M. Homes

May We Be Forgiven

Apr 13, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute is happy to announce our upcoming event with renowned novelist A.M. Homes, in co-operation with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Libris Prize shortlisted author Murat Isik will interview A.M. Homes about her work. May We Be Forgiven (now adapted into a play by Toneelgroep Amsterdam) is a darkly comic novel of twenty-first-century domestic life and …...

Robbert Dijkgraaf & Pia de Jong

An evening on books, academic & family life

Mar 19, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute is happy to announce our upcoming event ‘An Evening with Robbert Dijkgraaf & Pia de Jong’. During this evening Dijkgraaf and De Jong will speak about their work and about academic and family life in the United States. The audience will be given a unique insight in the life and work …...

Deborah Tannen

Talking from 9 to 5

Jun 15, 1995, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

On June 15th, 1995, the John Adams Institute presented a lecture by Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Dr. Tannen discussed her book, Talking from 9 to 5. Deborah Tannen looks at the role played by talk ‘from 9 to 5’, focusing in particular on the differing conversational rituals that …...

Jonathan Taplin

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy

Feb 02, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams is happy to announce a last-minute addition to our program. Jonathan Taplin is the author of Move Fast and Break Things, a bracing account of how the internet has been captured by the big tech companies. Taplin, himself with thirty years’ experience in the music and film industry, tells the story of …...

Alex Ross

Adventures in Musical Modernism

Feb 03, 2018, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm

The John Adams is partnering with the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, which will run from 27 January to 3 February 2018 at the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. On the last day of the festival, the renowned music critic of The New Yorker, Alex Ross, will give a talk in which he will reflect on some of the …...

Jennifer Egan

Manhattan Beach

Feb 21, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

We are happy to announce that Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel A Visit From the Goon Squad, will take the John Adams stage to discuss her new novel Manhattan Beach. The novel is set during the Depression and World War II and tells the story of an Irish family …...

Russell Shorto

Revolution Song

Jan 23, 2018, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Bestselling author Russell Shorto returns to the John Adams to discuss his much-anticipated new book Revolution Song. In this narrative, Shorto asks what the American Revolution would have looked like if it were told exclusively through the prism of personal lives. In Revolution Song, Shorto paints an intimate group portrait of six extraordinary figures of …...

Ryan Lizza

A Year of Trump

Nov 05, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

November 8 marks the first anniversary of the election of President Trump. It has been a turbulent year and many people are looking for reflection and insight into today’s United States. We are happy to announce that Ryan Lizza, the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker and on-air contributor for CNN, will take the John Adams …...

The Happiest Kids in the World

By Hollis Kurman

September 19, 2017

The introduction to the event of The Happiest Kids in the World can be read here....

Holly Krieger

The Beauty of Symmetry through the eyes of a Mathematician

Oct 10, 2017, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

We are pleased to announce that renowned American mathematician Holly Krieger will visit the John Adams to discuss how mathematics can be used to describe the beauty of symmetry. For centuries, symmetry has fascinated philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, artists, architects and physicists. It is a prevalent aesthetic theme in the art and architecture of many cultures, …...

Amsterdam Stories

Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck

Dec 11, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Have the Netherlands left a mark on the US? Come find out on December 11th, when the Belgian filmmakers Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck show a compilation of their road movie in which they take you all across the continent to visit all the American places named Amsterdam. On their journey through cities, towns, …...

Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad

Dec 06, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Colson Whitehead is the biggest literary sensation of this decade. He was the first author since Annie Proulx to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad (translated as De Ondergrondse Spoorweg by Atlas Contact). Several prominent figures also declared it their favorite novel, including President Obama. …...

Dan Brown

Origin

Oct 22, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Watch the book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4brbdYz8qu0...

Happiest Kids in the World

Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison

Sep 18, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Dutch children are the happiest kids in the world, according to UNICEF studies of child well-being in 2007 and 2013. Why is that? Is the Dutch approach to parenting really that different? In their book The Happiest Kids in the World, American writer Rina Mae Acosta and British writer Michele Hutchison – both married to …...

Mohsin Hamid

Exit West

Sep 12, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Mohsin Hamid returned to The John Adams Institute, this time to discuss his new novel Exit West, also translated and published as Exit West by De Bezige Bij. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet and fall in love. The sensual and fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. When …...

Nicole Krauss

Forest Dark

Aug 29, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Bestselling American novelist Nicole Krauss joined the John Adams Institute to discuss her new novel Forest Dark, translated as Donker Woud by Ambo Anthos. The New York Times described Krauss as “one of America’s most important novelists”, and is best known for her novel The History of Love. Forest Dark is a story about the personal …...

John A. Farrell

Richard Nixon: The Life

Jun 29, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

With his book Richard Nixon: The Life, John A. Farrell has written the defining biography of this media-hating president driven by paranoia and pursued by scandals. It is a tour de force, an enthralling biography of America’s darkest president, and has been hailed by critics as brilliantly researched, authoritatively crafted, and lively on the page. It is …...

Martin Ford

Rise of the Robots

Jun 21, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

In his book Rise of the Robots (winner of the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award), Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford looks at the impact on labor of robotisation and automation. They have made production so efficient that companies can now produce vast quantities of goods virtually without the help of human …...

Branko Milanovic

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization

Apr 13, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Who are the winners and losers of globalization? One of the world’s leading economists of inequality, the former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, visited the John Adams to explain the income disparities both within countries and between them, as well as how we got here, and whether there’s a way out. In his book Global Inequality: A New …...

Lauren Greenfield

Generation Wealth

May 16, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

We are obsessed by the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The acclaimed American photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, maker of the award-winning documentary The Queen of Versailles, is a prominent chronicler of consumerism, youth culture and gender issues. In addition to her many films, exhibitions and monographs such as Girl Culture, Fast Forward and THIN, she is most …...

Adam Alter

My phone, my phone, my irresistible phone: Welcome to the age of addictive technology

Apr 20, 2017, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

We spend more time communicating through our smartphones than we spend talking to our partner. New technology has nestled itself in our pockets, our lives, our habits, our dealings with each other and the rest of the world. This addiction is not just a sign of our own weakness: these products are actually designed to get us hooked. Adam Alter of NYU …...

Trump’s First 100 Days

With Thomas Frank, Will Englund and Greg Shapiro

May 01, 2017, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Listen, Liberal – or: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? is the title of the newest best-selling book by Thomas Frank, political analyst and historian. In his previous book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004) Frank already explored the rise of populist conservatism in the US, focusing …...

Paul Beatty

The Sellout

Mar 12, 2017, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

The Sellout, “a caustic satire on US racial politics that puts him up there with Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift,” according to the Man Booker Prize jury. The Sellout (translated into Dutch as De Verrader by Uitgeverij Prometheus) tells the story of a young black man who tries to reinstate slavery and racial segregation in a …...

Michael Chabon

Moonglow

Apr 11, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Telegraph Avenue, as well as the screenwriter for the hugely successful Spiderman 2 film. On April 11th, this master storyteller returned to the John Adams Institute with his deeply personal new book Moonglow, translated as Maangloed by Ambo Anthos. In …...

Amy Webb

The Signals Are Talking: How Today's Fringe Becomes Tomorrow's Mainstream

Mar 17, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

How do you spot the emerging trends in business, technology and culture so that you can distinguish the trend from the trendy? Futurist Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute, visited the John Adams to discuss her new book The Signals Are Talking – about how to predict which of all the seemingly random …...

Joby Warrick

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Mar 22, 2017, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Two time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Joby Warrick (Washington Post) visited the John Adams to discuss his new book Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, translated into Dutch by Uitgeverij Q. In this book, Warrick tells the story of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the founding father of the organization that would become the Islamic State. Drawing on unique …...

Bernstein: East Side, West Side

An evening with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Feb 01, 2017, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

As a young musician Leonard ‘Lenny’ Bernstein lived in an immigrant neighborhood of New York City, the Lower East Side. He died in his apartment at the prestigious Dakota building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In cooperation with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, we presented a special program in the West-Indisch Huis which shed a …...

Election Night

Presidential Elections 2016

Nov 08, 2016, 9:00 pm - 1:00 am

In collaboration with Paradiso we organised an Election Night event on November 8th. The program switched between CNN, NPO, live speakers and presentations about the election and American history. Kees van Minnen (directeur Roosevelt Study Center en Professor of American History at Ghent University) about the timeTheodor Roosevelt’s spoke at Paradiso while visiting the Netherlands. …...

Mary Norris

Between You & Me

Oct 26, 2016, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

To celebrate the 50th birthday of our partner Athenaeum Boekhandel, we co-hosted an event with ‘Comma Queen’ Mary Norris. She has spent more than three decades guarding The New Yorker’s grand traditions of grammar and usage. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in …...

Steve McCurry

On Reading

Nov 01, 2016, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Photographer Steve McCurry (1950) is best known for his iconic picture taken in 1984 of an Afghan girl, which was published on the cover of National Geographic the following year. He managed to enter Afghanistan just as it was being closed to Western journalists. The images that he smuggled out of the country showed the …...

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie as Memory Play

Sep 22, 2016, 7:30 pm - 11:00 pm

In this collaboration with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, we paid attention to their performance of Tennessee Williams’ legendary play The Glass Menagerie (Glazen Speelgoed). This is the first play directed outside America by rising star Sam Gold. The Glass Menagerie, one of the most powerful plays of the 20th century, is a tale of love, loss and the disparate …...

Zadie Smith

Swing Time

Nov 11, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

One of the most talented authors of this generation visited the John Adams Institute to speak about her exuberant and ambitious new novel Swing Time – published in Dutch by Prometheus Publishers. Zadie Smith’s star rose quickly with her debut novel White Teeth, which won multiple awards and proved Smith to be a wondrously talented …...

Jonathan Safran Foer

Here I Am

Oct 14, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Here I Am is Foer’s third novel, after Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The story focuses on an American Jewish family which is falling apart in a moment of crisis. The story is set against the broader backdrop of political instability and natural disaster in the Middle East. At stake is …...

Joseph Stiglitz

The Euro

Sep 30, 2016, 8:30 pm - 10:00 pm

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winner and one of the most influential economists in the world today, returned to the John Adams to speak about his new book The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe. As recent events in the U.K. have shown, unity within the EU has been replaced by dissent. Stiglitz …...

Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life

Oct 05, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel A Little Life has established her as a major new voice in US fiction. The novel, which is both a dislocating meditation on the trauma of child sexual abuse, and a moving tribute to the possibilities and limitations of adult male friendship and love, was widely greeted as a book of …...

Obama: Dream & Legacy

Guus Valk and Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal

Sep 05, 2016, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What have eight years of Barack Obama brought the U.S.? Was the change he promised America for better or worse? Two top Dutch experts on changing American society took the stage at the John Adams Institute to explore topics such as the vanishing middle class, immigration and inequality, the decline of many important American institutions, …...

Jay McInerney

Bright, Precious Days

Sep 13, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

One of the finest chroniclers of the city of New York returned to Amsterdam to speak at the John Adams. McInerney was also one of the institute’s first speakers. It is almost three decades since his coming-of-age classic Bright Lights, Big City, brought him fame and fortune. This account of greed and excess in 1980’s …...

Lera Boroditsky 

How Language Shapes the Way we Think

Oct 01, 2016, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

In cooperation with the DRONGO language festival, the John Adams presented Lera Boroditsky as a keynote speaker. Lera Boroditsky is an Associate Professor at the department of Cognitive Science of the University of California, San Diego. Her research into language and cognition focusses on the theory of Linguistic Relativity, the idea that the way people experience the …...

Mark Landler

Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the twilight struggle over American Power

Jun 21, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The deeply reported story of two supremely ambitious figures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—archrivals who became partners for a time, trailblazers who share a common sense of their historic destiny but hold very different beliefs about how to project American power. In Alter Egos, New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us inside the …...

Ian Buruma

Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War

Jun 29, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with journalist, writer and academic Ian Buruma. His new book, Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War, is an account of a love sustained through the terror and separation of two world wars and the thousands of love letters sent in the darkest hours of …...

Philip Glass

Words Without Music

Aug 20, 2016, 8:30 pm - 10:00 pm

We were honored to have one of the most influential composers of the 20th century on the John Adams program. Philip Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience not only in the opera house and the concert hall, but also in the dance world, in film and in popular music – …...

How Data Will Determine The Next President

Timothy Prescott & Andy Tanenbaum

May 26, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

As the United States ramped up for the Presidential election, big data and social data to play an increasingly important role. Social data drove the 2008 presidential election and big data drove the 2012 election. Together with data-analyst Timothy Prescott and computer scientist Andy Tanenbaum we discussed the influence of data analytics on the 2016 …...

Lynda Waggoner

Fallingwater

May 12, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Frank Lloyd Wright is regarded by the American Institute of Architects as the greatest American architects of all time, and they voted his masterwork Fallingwater “the best all-time work of American architecture”. Designed in 1935, the house in southwestern Pennsylvania is hailed as a marvel of innovation and daring design that appears to float over …...

Nigel Hamilton

Commander in Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943

May 02, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

In the next installment of the “splendid memoir Roosevelt didn’t get to write” (New York Times), bestselling and award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton tells the astonishing story of FDR’s year-long, defining battle with Churchill, as the war raged in Africa and Italy. Nigel Hamilton’s Mantle of Command, long-listed for the National Book Award, drew on years of archival …...

Game of Thrones

Designing the Seven Kingdoms with William Simpson

Apr 24, 2016, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Today’s most popular television series is without a doubt Game of Thrones, in which kings and queens, knights and renegades all battle to conquer the Iron Throne. There are numerous blogs devoted to the series, there are viewing parties in bars and restaurants and it’s the most (illegally) downloaded program. On the day of the …...

Requiem for the American Dream

Kelly Nyks

Apr 06, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

In Requiem for the American Dream, Noam Chomsky argues that the collapse of American democratic ideals and the rise of the 1% means that the American dream is harder than ever to achieve. Tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, Chomsky lays bare the costly debris left …...

Zak Ebrahim

The Terrorist’s Son

Mar 10, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

What is it like to grow up with a terrorist in your home? Zak Ebrahim was seven years old when his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League. While in prison, Nosair helped plan the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The boy spent the rest …...

About Edgar A. Poe

Lecture at Boekhandel van Rossum

Feb 11, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

American writer Edgar A. Poe is famous for his literary qualities, however this lecture sheds a different light on Poe: as a foremost man of science. Even though he is admired all over the world nowadays, Poe’s reputation is still scarred by the attacks of his enemies of long ago: Had other circumstances favored, it …...

Moby-Dick

White Whales: American fictions of monomania, failure, and finitude

Mar 23, 2016, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute presented a two day course at Boekhandel Van Rossum on Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby-Dick, taught by George Blaustein, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. Grand, strange, sometimes nonsensical, occasionally prophetic, and funnier than you expect, Moby-Dick is as subtle as a sledgehammer and yet as elusive as vapor. Why …...

Kate Andersen Brower

The Residence

Mar 21, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

“Downton Abbey meets House of Cards”. From the mystique of the glamorous Kennedys to the tumult that surrounded Bill and Hillary Clinton during the president’s impeachment to the historic tenure of Barack and Michelle Obama, each new administration brings a unique set of personalities to the White House – and a new set of challenges …...

John Irving

Avenue of Mysteries

Jan 23, 2016, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with widely acclaimed American novelist John Irving, who returned to the institute to discuss his fourteenth novel Avenue of Mysteries. This novel spins two remarkable tales – both about the central character Juan Diego, a successful 54-year-old international novelist who is embarking on a trip to the Philippines. …...

Garth Risk Hallberg

City on Fire

Jan 18, 2016, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The buzz around City on Fire started already two years ago, when Garth Risk Hallberg sold the manuscript for two million dollars. Readers were not disappointed: in a brisk and superb narrative, Hallberg subjects a group of characters living in gritty New York in 1977 to an intimate examination, revolving around the shooting of a …...

Garry Kasparov

Winter is Coming

Dec 12, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The growing rift between Russia and the West represents a conflict between modernity and the past, according to chess grand master-turned human rights activist Garry Kasparov. For over a decade Kasparov has been an outspoken opponent of Vladimir Putin’s growing authoritarianism, but he has also been equally critical of the US and its allies for …...

Robert Putnam

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Nov 16, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. Robert Putnam – about whom The Economist said, “his scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny” – offers a personal but also …...

Marilynne Robinson

Lila - SOLD OUT

Nov 15, 2015, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

One of the most prominent novelists of her generation came to the John Adams Institute to talk about her new novel Lila, the third and final part of her Gilead trilogy. Readers all over the world had anxiously been awaiting it, among them President Obama who identifies her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead as one of …...

Laird Hunt

Neverhome

Nov 13, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Lucky Laird Hunt, to get praise like this from his famous fellow author Paul Auster for his novel Neverhome: “This is a spare, beautiful novel, so deeply about America and the language of America that its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself. Magnificent.” Neverhome is the story of Constance Thompson, a woman …...

Buffy Wicks

Insights to the US Presidential Campaign

Nov 10, 2015, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

What are the odds of Hillary Clinton becoming the next president of the United States, and becoming the most powerful woman in the world? At least she is the favorite candidate in the Democratic primary. But how does the presidential campaign really work? Exactly one year before Election Day, Buffy Wicks, an insider of the …...

Noah Charney

The Art of Forgery. The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers

Sep 24, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Art forgery has an intriguing place in the world of crime. No violence, no victims and forgers are often seen as cheeky practical jokers. Who doesn’t remember Han van Meegeren, who tricked Herman Göring into buying a fake Vermeer? Also, the benefits for art criminals outweigh the risks they have to take, according to art …...

Kenneth Cukier

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Nov 06, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The huge amounts of data (this event is part of our technology series) we produce are transforming the world and our daily lives fundamentally. Kenneth Cukier, data-editor at The Economist and co-author of the successful book Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, compares the impact of big data …...

Niall Ferguson

Kissinger the Idealist: 1923-1968

Oct 26, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University and one of the most renowned historians of this age, has returned to the John Adams Institute to discuss part one of his long-awaited biography of Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State and foreign policy chief for Presidents Nixon and Ford. Kissinger is widely regarded as …...

T.C. Boyle

The Harder They Come

Sep 05, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

After two decades, one of the paragons of American literature, T.C. Boyle, returns to the John Adams. His newest novel, The Harder They Come, recounts the miseries of a troubled father and son in a resonant meditation on the American frontier ethos. “From the novel’s thrilling set piece of a start … to its pensive conclusion,” The New York Times wrote “The Harder They Come is a masterly — and arresting — piece of storytelling, arguably Mr. Boyle’s most powerful, kinetic novel...

Jonathan Franzen

Purity

Oct 19, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Jonathan Franzen has returned to the John Adams Institute with an impressive new novel about youthful idealism, fidelity, identity and secrets. Purity (in publisher Prometheus’ Dutch translation: Zuiverheid) is the story of a young girl named Pip (born Purity) Tyler who goes in search of her unknown father. Written with “conversational, enormously intelligent prose that …...

Woody and the Big Apple

Aug 22, 2015, 4:30 pm - 11:00 pm

This summer EYE was showing ‘The Comedies of Woody Allen . On August 22th, EYE and the John Adams collaborated on a special screening of three Woody Allen films in which New York plays an important role. John Adams-director Tracy Metz gave an introduction on the role the city plays in Allen’s films; sociologist Jan …...

Nina Siegal

The Anatomy Lesson (Invitation Only)

Jun 23, 2015, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

The John Adams Institute and AEGON organized a special event at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. We hosted American author Nina Siegal, author of the novel The Anatomy Lesson (published in translation by The House of Books as Tulpen en Terpentijn), based on the famous painting by Rembrandt. Siegal was joined by a panel of experts including Emilie …...

Michelle Miller

The Underwriting: New Concepts in Publishing

Jun 16, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Sex scandals, power plays, shady trading, and even murder. This is the cluster of elements underpinning Michelle Miller´s corporate thriller The Underwriting, which brings together the different cultures of Wall Street and California in a story about a successful startup in Silicon Valley. The Underwriting, translated into Dutch by LS Publishers under the title De …...

Senator George Mitchell

The Negotiator: Reflections on an American Life

Jun 08, 2015, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

This event was part of our ongoing 2016 Election Series. Previous events in the series were Jennifer Lawless and George Packer. During a political career that spans over four decades, George Mitchell has gained a reputation for his skill in finding compromise and common sense in desperate situations and places. In his aptly-titled memoir The Negotiator, he shares …...

Leslie Jamison

The Empathy Exams

Jun 02, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Beginning with her experience as a medical actor, paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison’s visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about one another? How can we feel another’s pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? …...

Jerome Karabel

Who Gets in, What Comes Out: Accessibility & Responsibility of Top Education

May 28, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

At the end of the 19th century, Harvard launched a policy to attract students not only from the elite, but also from public schools. This move resulted in an unwelcome surprise for Harvard: they enrolled too many Jewish students. Harvard quickly took measures that were intended to, as President A. Lawrence Lowell said, “prevent a dangerous …...

Laszlo Bock

Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google that Will Transform How You Live and Lead

May 21, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm

Each year, Google receives more than two million job applications from around the world. The company has been rated the #1 Best Company to Work For in the United States and 16 other countries, the 1# top Diversity Employer, and the best company for women in technology. But what makes Google such a widely praised …...

George Packer

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Apr 16, 2015, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

This event was part of our ongoing 2016 Election Series. Other events in the series were Jennifer Lawless and Senator George Mitchell. America is unravelling. Within three decades, the land of endless opportunity has become more than ever a country of winners and losers. In his book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer …...

Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See

Apr 07, 2015, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

“Masterpiece. Tremendous. Wow. Overwhelming”. Just a few characterizations by readers of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. And the literary critics were also unanimous: Anthony Doerr has an immense talent for storytelling. His masterful and moving novel about two young people during World War II rapidly became a #1 New York Times bestseller and …...

Bill Browder

Red Notice

Feb 26, 2015, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Bill Browder, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, went from being the biggest foreign investor in Russia’s stockmarket to being ‘one of the country’s biggest enemies’, in his own words. His battle against corporate corruption led to the authorities declaring him a “threat to national security” and a prison sentence of …...

Jennifer Lawless

The US midterm elections: Where do we go from here?

Jan 14, 2015, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The event was the first in our ongoing 2016 Election Series. Other events in the series are George Packer, Senator George Mitchell, and Buffy Wicks. The midterm elections revealed the deep divisions within American society. With a Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Obama has a tough last two years ahead …...

John Adams at IDFA

The Female Gaze

Nov 20, 2014, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm

The John Adams Institute collaborated with the International Documentary Film Festival this year on the theme ‘The Female Gaze’. IDFA invited fifteen leading female directors from various countries to present three documentaries each: one directed by themselves, one directed by a woman who has inspired them, and one by an up-and-coming female talent. The John …...

Naomi Klein in cooperation with IDFA

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Nov 25, 2014, 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

Naomi Klein, author and one of the key figures in the ‘alter-globalization movement’, sees climate change as a catalyst for change and a better world. With her new book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein opens her readers’ eyes – as she did in her bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine – with a merciless …...

David Byrne & Michel Lambot

Are Musicians an Endangered Species in the Digital World?

Oct 18, 2014, 8:15 pm - 10:00 pm

The John Adams Instiute presented an evening with Michel Lambot who had a conversation with David Byrne, Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, cofounder of Talking Heads and author of How Music Works. In How Music Works, David Byrne explores the fundamentals of making music and analyses how profoundly music is shaped by its …...

Gary Shteyngart

Little Failure: A Memoir

Nov 17, 2014, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Gary Shteyngart’s parents were disappointed in their baby, who was sickly and asthmatic. His dad called him ‘Snotty’, his mom ‘Failurchka’ – hence the title of his new book, ‘Little Failure’. He is back at the John Adams for the second time to talk about his new book, his first foray into non-fiction in the …...

Francis Fukuyama

Political Order and Political Decay

Sep 26, 2014, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Francis Fukuyama, the renowned professor of political science at Stanford, returns to the John Adams Institute. Three years ago he came to talk about The Origins of Political Order (2011), in which he explained why some societies successfully evolved into fully formed states, while others remain largely governed by tribalism. Now he will discuss its …...

Clive Thompson

Smarter Than You Think

Jun 26, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Technology Series Internet is altering our minds in subtle and profound ways. But how? Does the web dumb us down or are new technologies boosting our abilities? Clive Thompson is one of today’s most prominent technology thinkers and writes for The New York Times Magazine and Wired. In his new book Smarter Than You Think (We Worden Steeds Slimmer in …...

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead

Sep 01, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Ayn Rand (1905-1982), the author of the bestsellers Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, is probably one of America’s most controversial political thinkers. With the rise of the Tea Party, her fierce defense of the individual versus the collective is once again at the forefront of American politics. Her opinions have always had less traction in …...

Amanda Gefter

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn

Jun 12, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The year was 1995 and Amanda Gefter was having dinner with her father in a Chinese restaurant when he asked her: ‘How would you define nothing?’ That was the beginning of her quest to discover…the meaning of nothing. It led her to physics and cosmology, to neuroscience and philosophy, and to conferences that she gatecrashed …...

Unseen Photo Fair

Under Construction in collaboration with John Adams Institute

Sep 19, 2014, 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Programme with talks and round table discussion related to the exhibition Under Construction – New Positions in American Photography which opens in Foam on September 17. An exhibition that explores the latest developments towards the use of the photographic image, its complexity and its meaning in the current stream of digitalization. Often there exists an …...

Darrin McMahon

Divine Fury: A History of Genius

Sep 15, 2014, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute and the Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies have joined forces to organize the annual Burgerhart lecture, in which an eminent scholar reflects on the Enlightenment. Darrin McMahon was awarded Best Book of the Year awards by the New York Times, the Washington Post and the online magazine Slate for his previous book …...

Amy Tan

The Valley of Amazement

Sep 10, 2014, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

One of the great storytellers of American literature, Amy Tan, returns to the John Adams Institute after her first visit in 1996 with a sprawling epic of mother-daughter relationship, abandonment, love and betrayal. Since her debut in 1989, The Joy Luck Club, her novels have all been New York Times bestsellers, as well as the …...

B.J. Novak

One More Thing

Aug 30, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

With One More Thing, author, actor and comedian B.J. Novak brings you a hilarious collection of bizarre and short stories. Most people know him as the character Ryan from the television series The Office U.S., on which he was also one of the writers. With a background in stand-up comedy, Novak’s stories are quick and …...

Amy Bloom

Lucky Us

Aug 27, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

With her new novel Lucky Us, Amy Bloom, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, proves again that she is one of America’s most gifted literary voices. Set in the decade of world War II, in the years between 1939 and 1949, the novel moves from past …...

Karin Slaughter

Cop Town

May 26, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Karin Slaughter’s nickname says it all: she is the Queen of Suspense. She is one of crime fiction’s most celebrated award-winning writers. In the Netherlands alone she has sold more than two million copies of her books, and she is the only author ever with eight titles on the Dutch bestseller list at the same …...

Glenn Greenwald

No Place to Hide

May 20, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The journalist Glenn Greenwald broke the biggest news of 2013: in The Guardian he reported on the surveillance by the American National Security Agency brought to light by Edward Snowden’s leaked documents. His stories triggered a fierce debate over national security, the amount of big data government gathers on citizens without their knowledge or consent and the …...

Rachel Kushner

The Flamethrowers

Apr 16, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Rachel Kushner has risen rapidly through the ranks of American literature. Her widely praised debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was already a finalist for the National Book Award in 2008, and she did it again with her new novel The Flamethrowers. In beautiful prose, Kushner weaves two stories together — one begins in Italy in …...

Michael Cunningham

The Snow Queen

Jun 07, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Two brothers, Barrett and Tyler. As they grapple with aging and loss, the one turns to religion after seeing a nighttime vision in Central Park, the other to drugs. They are the focal point around which Michael Cunningham’s haunting new novel The Snow Queen revolves. This is the sixth book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Cunningham, who …...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah

Feb 21, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams institute proudly hosted an event with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. An “immensely talented author”, according to Janet Maslin of The New York Times, Adichie also figured on the The New Yorker’s prestigious ‘20 Under 40’ list. Her fame skyrocketed with her widely acclaimed debut novel Purple Hibiscus, only to top this with her Orange Prize winning …...

Andrew Solomon

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

Feb 20, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Parents cherish hopes and expectations for their children. But what if your child is “different”? Andrew Solomon draws in Far From the Tree, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2012, on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, …...

Henry Urbach

The Glass House

Feb 17, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Henry Urbach is Director of the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of the 20th century’s most significant residential structures. Built in 1949 by Philip Johnson — an enfant terrible of American architecture —as a weekend retreat that grew over several decades into a campus comprising numerous structures and an important art collection. The …...

Reza Aslan

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Mar 20, 2014, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Who was the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth? Not the divine Jesus Christ, but the man shaped by the political, social and economic contexts of early first century Palestine? In Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, biblical scholar and author of the international bestseller No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and …...

Dan Brown

Inferno

Jan 07, 2014, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Ten years ago, a mystery-detective novel suddenly rose to the top of the bestseller lists. That book was The Da Vinci Code, the fourth novel of an, until then, unknown novelist named Dan Brown. We all know what happened next: this ”riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller,” as Janet Maslin described it, turned into one of the …...

James Boyle, Paul Goldstein & Bernt Hugenholtz

A Discussion about Copyright

Dec 08, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Technology Series Does copyright protect and encourage creativity? Can you own an idea? Does the concept of copyright slow down innovation? These are some of the many questions surrounding copyright law and policy – questions already raised by Thomas Jefferson in 1813. The John Adams Institute partnered with Google and Wolters Kluwer to explore this …...

Ruby Wax

Sane New World

Nov 05, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Ruby Wax might win the title of ‘Hardest Working Woman in Show Business’. She has been an interviewer, comedian, actress, script editor, author, teacher. And she’s wildly successful in everything she does. Her TV series Ruby Wax Goes Dutch was a hit; her interviews with celebrities have achieved cult status. Her new book, ‘Sane New …...

Philipp Meyer

The Son

Oct 23, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Elemental America is Philipp Meyer’s subject matter, both in his earlier, highly acclaimed novel American Rust, which was set in a Pennsylvania rust belt town, and his shimmering new work. The Son is a saga of the American West. It flickers with suggestions of earlier writers who laid claims to the Great American Novel epithet – …...

Russell Shorto

Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City

Oct 16, 2013, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Amsterdam could stake a claim to being the birthplace of the modern world. That, in essence, is what Russell Shorto argues in Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City. His book weaves together the lives of Amsterdammers past and present, from Rembrandt to Anne Frank to Theo van Gogh, and teases apart the many …...

Kent Larson

Technology and the Future of the City

Sep 23, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Technology Series Will you soon be driving a folding car? Will your apartment be tricked out with robotic walls, converting your dining room into a yoga studio and then a bedroom? The world is changing even faster than we think. In this century 90% of population growth will be in cities, meaning that we have …...

Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam

Sep 04, 2013, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Margaret Atwood is one of the world’s best-loved writers. Her output extends to more than fifty volumes. While she is probably best known for her novels, she has also written poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Dystopia is one of her fictional preoccupations, and in her novel, MaddAddam, Atwood is at her very best: as Booklist says, “from her …...

Herdenking Slavernijverleden

Commemorating 150 years

Jun 30, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The year 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of both the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in the Dutch colonies. The John Adams Institute is partnering with the Stichting Herdenking Slavernijverleden to commemorate this dual landmark with two events: – On June 30th, Emily Raboteau, author of Searching for Zion, gave a talk about …...

Kim Ghattas

The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power

Jun 11, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Kim Ghattas, who has covered the U.S. State Department for the BBC since 2008, has written a gracious, nuanced book about Hillary Clinton’s years as Secretary of State. Ghattas logged 300,000 miles as she traveled with Clinton to 40 countries. In that time, she conducted 18 interviews with Clinton. The result is a portrait that …...

Michael Pollan

Cooked: a Natural History of Transformation

Jun 03, 2013, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Michael Pollan, America’s favorite writer about the business and science of food, is back. Cooked is a personal story, one that most of us enact every day. We cook. We use fire, water, air, plants and animals. But what are we really doing? We are making a primal connection. The cook, Pollan discovers, connects his or …...

Barbara Kellerman

The End of Leadership

May 13, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Who will lead? The question has been asked by humans since time began. Alexander, Napoleon, George Washington, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs…history is an endless succession of people who purport to know the way, and of others willing to follow. But things are different now. Barbara Kellerman of Harvard, an expert on leadership, says in The End of …...

Mohsin Hamid

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Mar 28, 2013, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

A poor boy from an unnamed village somewhere in the Third World wants to succeed in life. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a kind of self-help book for this character in Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, a character who might be said to represent hundreds of millions of people today. Hamid himself is a …...

Dan Hassler-Forest

Capitalist Superheroes: Caped Crusaders in the Neoliberal Age

Feb 13, 2013, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In 2002 the editors of Der Spiegel depicted then-president George W. Bush as a comic book superhero on their cover. They expected outrage from the White House. Instead, Bush ordered 33 posters of the image. In his new book, Dan Hassler-Forest, a professor of media studies at the University of Amsterdam, sees the Hollywood films …...

Anne Applebaum

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

Jan 31, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

What separates Europe’s eastern half from the west? Why did communism take root in the East? How did the Soviet Union dominate there in the aftermath of World War II, and how did societies view the transformation and adapt? Anne Applebaum has mined newly-opened archives to craft a vivid picture of how people believed in …...

Tracy Metz

Sweet & Salt: Water and the Dutch

Dec 12, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Hurricane Sandy reawakened America, and the world, to what we already knew: our coasts are under threat. In Sweet & Salt, Tracy Metz lays out the special relationship that the Dutch have with the sea–how thoroughly water management is rooted in the culture – and she offers potential solutions for places around the world that are …...

Madeleine Albright

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948

Nov 26, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The first female Secretary of State in United States history was born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague in 1937. When she was two years old, her family fled the Nazi threat and escaped to England–for political reasons, she was told. Only later did she learn that she was in fact Jewish. After a stellar career …...

Gayle Lemmon

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Nov 13, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is a New York Times bestselling book that highlights the tremendous difficulties women in Afghanistan face even as it reveals paths of promise. It focuses on the drive and entrepreneurial spirit of Kamila Sidiqi, who was forced out of school by the Taliban, then learned to sew, and developed a business to support …...

Chris Zook

Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change

Oct 30, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In a rapidly changing world, companies believe they have to constantly reinvent themselves to stay profitable. But authors Zook and James Allen argue pretty much the opposite. The companies that succeed – from Nike to Apple to Ikea – stick to their formula. They create a “repeatable” business model, and continually adapt it to changing …...

Shane Jett & Gary Nordlinger

Debate: Obama versus Romney

Oct 11, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

All-American debate that preceded the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. For the Republicans: Shane Jett is a former Oklahoma state legislator, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and director of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Community Development Corporation, which provides loans to Native American-owned businesses. For the Democrats: Gary Nordlinger is president of Nordlinger Associates, a political …...

Jeff Kinney

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Oct 07, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

When Jeff Kinney was a kid in Fort Washington, Maryland, he wanted to be a cartoonist, but he couldn’t get his cartoons syndicated. In 1998 he started writing a fictional diary of a boy named Greg Heffley. In 2004, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid first appeared on the game site FunBrain. Finally, in 2007, he published it …...

Frans Verhagen

Lincoln - Een Geniaal Politicus

Sep 25, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

American historians consistently rank Abraham Lincoln as the country’s greatest president. Yet during his time in office he was arguably its most divisive. His very election ignited the Civil War, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history. In the first Dutch biography of Lincoln in more than half a century, America-journalist and publicist Frans Verhagen …...

Peter Bergen

Manhunt

Sep 11, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Peter Bergen is one of America’s foremost national security experts. His books have all been about Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, whom Bergen interviewed for CNN. Bergen then focused all of that experience into a riveting account of the long hunt for Bin Laden. While the book Manhunt often reads like a thriller, it also …...

David Henry Hwang

A Multicultural Dialogue Through Theater

Sep 06, 2012, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm

David Henry Hwang is one of America’s top playwrights, and one of its most incisive chroniclers of the immigrant experience in America: or better said, the post-immigrant experience. Hwang was born in Los Angeles to Chinese parents, and grew up as a “real” American. He later said that as a boy he considered his Chinese …...

Nathan Englander

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Sep 04, 2012, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Nathan Englander’s new short story collection self-consciously references the two poles of his work: Jewish life and American prose. The title refers to the late Raymond Carver, whose What We Talk About When We Talk About Love redefined the short story. By replacing love with Anne Frank (i.e., Jewishness), Englander signals what the New York Times called his …...

Stanley Kubrick Remembered

Retrospective

Jun 22, 2012, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Stanley Kubrick was one of the greatest American filmmakers ever. His range was incredibly broad: from Lolita to 2001: A Space Odyssey, from the horror of The Shining to the dystopia of A Clockwork Orange to the antiwar intensity of Full Metal Jacket. The John Adams Institute and EYE presented a special event dedicated to the master. Kubrick’s widow, Christiane Kubrick, and …...

Martha Nussbaum

Creating Capabilities

May 31, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, is one of the world’s foremost philosophers. Her book, the culmination of a career dedicated to social justice issues, highlights one of the conundrums of western societies. As she says, “Leaders of countries often focus on national economic growth alone, but their people, …...

Teju Cole

Open City

May 29, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Teju Cole is rapidly becoming a new literary sensation in America. His novel Open City – which won the 2012 Pen/Hemingway Award and the New York City Book Award – is unlike anything you’ve ever read. The narrator, Julius, is a Nigerian psychiatry student who lives in Manhattan and likes to walk in the city. …...

David Mark

Inside the U.S. Presidential Election: A Discussion with POLITICO editor David Mark

May 21, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

However the Republican race is decided, the fall presidential campaign promises to be extraordinarily combative. Republicans are vehement in their belief that President Obama has used the economic crisis as an excuse to pull the U.S.toward what many of them feel is “socialism.” Democrats believe Obama has done his best to rescue the country from …...

Patrick deWitt

The Sisters Brothers

Apr 24, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The Sisters Brothers is a black-comic western that is hilarious, hair-raising, and completely absorbing. Its story involves two brothers – last name, Sisters – who are hired killers. Their new job is to ride from the Oregon Territory into California Gold Rush country and gun down a man. But there are problems: Eli, who is …...

Gini Reticker

Peace Unveiled

Apr 11, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

As Afghanistan continues to struggle, so do its women and children. But there are strong individuals who give reason for hope. The groundbreaking documentary film Peace Unveiled, narrated by Tilda Swinton, follows three Afghan women who organized to protect women’s rights from being traded away in 2009 during peace talks between U.S.forces and the Taliban. One …...

Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs

Apr 02, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Steve Jobs created Apple. He gave the world the iPad, the Mac, and the iPhone. He was also an eccentric who was capable of bursting into tears when he didn’t get what he wanted, or of refusing to wear a hospital mask because its design offended him. In his phenomenal biography of Jobs, Walter Isaacson …...

Deborah Scroggins

Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror - The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui

Mar 08, 2012, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is lauded in America as a champion of the cause of women within Islam. But the Dutch know her differently. As a member of the Dutch parliament and collaborator of polarizing filmmaker Theo van Gogh, she stirred sharp feelings here. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and uslim terrorist now …...

Cullen Murphy

God's Jury

Feb 06, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. So went the old Monty Python skit. But does anyone expect that the Roman Catholic Church’s office of the Inquisition is still with us today? In his insightful new book, Cullen Murphy, editor at large at Vanity Fair, deconstructs the infamous Inquisition, lays out its past, and offers a …...

Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding

Jan 19, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Once in a great while, a debut novel appears that causes critics to declare an instant classic. Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is such a book. The New York Times listed it as one of the 10 best books of 2011, and Amazon named it the best book of the year. It is set at a midwestern college, and it’s …...

Leo Blokhuis

The Sound of the South

Jan 18, 2012, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Leo Blokhuis is the Dutch “pop professor.” He is co-host of the TV show Top 2000 a Gogo. His last book, The Sound of the West Coast, won the Golden Tulip award, and the accompanying album reached gold status. In his new book, The Sound of the South, he makes the case that in the early 60’s southern soul was influenced …...

Jeffrey Eugenides

The Marriage Plot

Dec 15, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Jeffrey Eugenides is one of America’s greatest living novelists. If that isn’t so apparent, it may be because he only produces a new book every nine years. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, about five girls who commit suicide in the suburbs of Detroit, electrified critics and readers alike. His second, Middlesex, about the travails …...

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Van Gogh: The Life

Nov 22, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

So you think you know Vincent Van Gogh? Think again. In the first major biography of the Dutch genius in more than 70 years, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith – who previously won a Pulitzer Prize for their biography of Jackson Pollock – give a richly detailed, and in some ways surprising, portrait of …...

James Gleick

The Information

Nov 01, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

We live in the “information age” – but what is information, actually? In human terms, one might say information is the food that nourishes the mind. But how is it prepared and consumed? James Gleick has been called one of the greatest science writers of all time. Of his previous books, Chaos introduced a new science …...

Charles C. Mann

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Oct 18, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

What do Italian tomato sauce, Florida oranges and Thai chili peppers have in common? All are products that are not native to those lands. Every American knows that 1492 was when Columbus “discovered” the New World. It was also the moment when, biologically, the world changed. In his previous bestselling book, 1491, Charles C. Mann …...

Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns

Sep 28, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in cooperation with the US Embassy in The Hague, proudly presented an evening with journalist and writer Isabel Wilkerson. Almost everything you know about the black American experience relates to one thing: the so-called Great Migration, when millions of people left harsh conditions in the South for a better life in …...

Marvin Hamlisch

The Maestro of American Music

Sep 19, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in cooperation with AEGON, was honored to host composer Marvin Hamlish for a second time. Marvin Hamlisch was the maestro of American music, and one of the most celebrated composers of our time. He won three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony and three Golden Globe awards. His Broadway credits include A …...

Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein

Aug 31, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

What did you have for dinner last Tuesday? What was your family’s telephone number when you were eight years old? Human memory has a long history, but, ironically, we have forgotten most of it. We all know that before moveable type people relied on memorization. With the advent of the book – and the internet …...

Paul Theroux

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

May 25, 2011, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

From Hemingway to Dickens, from Nabokov to Twain, from Isak Dinesen to Graham Greene, many of the world’s great writers were also great travel writers. Paul Theroux, arguably the most renowned living travel writer, has capped a fifty year writing career with The Tao of Travel, a collection of travel stories – by himself and …...

Lawrence Hill

The Book of Negroes

May 22, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The Book of Negroes, the third novel by Toronto-born writer Lawrence Hill, gives a fictionalized account of a remarkable historical event. In the 1700s, a number of Africans were taken into slavery, brought to America, transferred to Canada, and ultimately were able to return to Africa. Their circular passage is personified by Aminata Diallo, who …...

Francis Fukuyama

The Origins of Political Order

May 10, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

One of America’s most distinguished political thinkers took the John Adams Institute stage for the second time to discuss his far-ranging exploration of history and society. Francis Fukuyama’s book is about how states form, but while it goes back into the distant past, its relevance is very up-to-date. How did ancient societies relinquish their tribal …...

Nicholas Carr

The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember

Mar 02, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Nicholas Carr’s 2008 essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” opened a new chapter in our relationship to digital technology. In his book, Carr–who was previously editor of the Harvard Business Review–explores how the internet is changing our very brains: how we think, read and remember. As The Wall Street Journal put it, “We all joke about how the …...

Kelly Nyks

Split: A Divided America

Feb 17, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Dutch politics is all about consensus–which is one reason Dutch people find American politics so bizarre. The shooting in Arizona of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last month–in which 6 people were murdered–brought new attention to the crisis underlying American politics. A special screening of a documentary that explores the great political divide that threatens to pull …...

Robert D. Kaplan

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of Power

Feb 08, 2011, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Robert Kaplan is one of America’s most provocative and influential writers about power and the future of the world. His books have outlined the threats brought by overpopulation, environmental desecration, and religious fervor. His book, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of Power, argues that the Indian Ocean occupies a role that the Mediterranean once did: …...

Spike Lee

Doing the Right Thing

Dec 14, 2010, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

America has the Tea Party movement. Europe has its anti-immigrant movement. How should a society balance the rights of citizens with the needs of newcomers? How do we ensure that government treats everyone equally? How do we respond when it doesn’t? And how can individuals, especially young people, find their place and make their voices …...

Lionel Shriver

So Much for That

Dec 01, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Lionel Shriver’s novel, So Much for That, has just been nominated for the 2010 National Book Award. Shriver follows a distinctly American tradition of exploring difficult material with elegant language. Her 2003 novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, became a bestseller despite, or perhaps because of, its hard look at the aftermath of a mass killing …...

Lang Lang

A Conversation, with Music

Nov 18, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

“The hottest artist on the classical music planet” (in the words of the New York Times) also has a remarkable life story. He grew up in northeastern China, won his first piano competition at age 5, and has played in virtually every major concert hall in the world. His performance at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 …...

Michael Cunningham

By Nightfall

Nov 02, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

By Nightfall, the sixth novel by Michael Cunningham, brings us into the world of a successful New York couple whose elegant urban lives begin to unravel with the appearance of a chance visitor. Cunningham–who won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for his 1998 novel The Hours–proves himself once again a master both of the …...

Jonathan Franzen

Freedom

Oct 21, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The New York Times Book Review calls Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom, “a masterpiece of American fiction.” Time Magazine actually put Franzen on its cover with the title “Great American Novelist.” The accolades are coming nonstop. Franzen’s novel spans the 9/11 decade. In following a single family, Franzen creates a vast meditation on a continent and a country; ultimately it …...

Richard Russo

That Old Cape Magic

Sep 27, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Where Richard Russo’s recent novels Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighswere epic in scale, his eighth book, That Old Cape Magic is smaller: a warmly comic portrait of a man in midlife crisis. While suffering through his present-day anguish, the hero, Jack Griffin, is carrying the ashes of his father in the trunk of his car: literal baggage of his past. …...

Bret Easton Ellis

Imperial Bedrooms

Sep 17, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Bret Easton Ellis became a celebrity novelist in 1985, at the age of 21, when Less Than Zero was published. Since then, his work has both built upon and mocked the themes that made him famous, including drug use, designer labels and generally amoral behavior. In his novel Imperial Bedrooms, he returns to the characters of his …...

David Remnick

The Bridge

Jun 08, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

As the editor of The New Yorker magazine, David Remnick has been responsible for some of the greatest writing of our time. As an author and journalist, Remnick has also produced transformative bestsellers, beginning with Lenin’s Tomb, about the end of the Soviet Union, and continuing with King of the World, his biography of Muhammad Ali. His book, The Bridge, …...

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Jun 03, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The Help sat atop the New York Times bestseller list for a full year. Its popularity is due to its richly rendered story and setting, but also because it is daring. Kathryn Stockett, a white southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi, chose to tell the story of black maids in the old South, and to write in old-fashioned dialect. …...

Jon Krakauer

Where Men Win Glory

Apr 28, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Jon Krakauer has written some of the most popular outdoor adventure books of our time. Into Thin Air, about a fatal trip up Mount Everest, was Time Magazine’s book of the year. Into the Wild became a major motion picture. Krakauer’s fascination with endurance and heroism takes a different focus in his new book. Where Men Win Glory is the …...

E. Benjamin Skinner

A Crime So Monstrous

Apr 21, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

There are more slaves in the world now than at any other time in history. E. Benjamin Skinner’s A Crime So Monstrous is an in-depth, ground-level account of slavery today. Skinner’s important book names, takes us down alleys and into buildings where human beings are bought and sold, and exposes the whole trade. Supporters of the book …...

John Irving

Last Night in Twisted River

Mar 19, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

John Irving burst onto the American literary scene in 1980 with the publication of The World According to Garp. Since then, through 12 novels, he has become a fixture and a rarity: a writer both critically acclaimed and popularly beloved. His awards are numerous and quixotic: he has received a National Book Award and an Oscar …...

Ron Rash

Serena

Mar 10, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Ron Rash writes poetry, short stories and novels. He is a Southerner, a crafter of finely wrought literature. His work is only now getting wide exposure in the U.S.–he has quietly become a bestseller–and the attention is long past due. Listening to “the elegantly fine-tuned voice of this Appalachian poet and storyteller,” as the New York Times has it, …...

Reverend Jesse Jackson

Hyphen-Nation: Public keynote address

Feb 05, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

From the civil rights marches of the 1960s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson has been at the core of the American civil rights movement. He made history as an African American running for president in the 1980s, and the image of him weeping for joy on the night of Barack Obama’s election brought things full circle …...

James Ellroy

Blood's a Rover

Jan 24, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Let him say it himself: “I am the greatest crime writer who ever lived.” James Ellroy writes tough, intense fiction. He has ego and style. Much of his oeuvre is set in Los Angeles in the 1950s, a hot landscape peopled by cops and bad deeds. His book, Blood’s a Rover, is the third of a …...

Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating Animals

Jan 14, 2010, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Brilliant, thrilling, genius, breathtaking: such are the adjectives that have routinely been applied to Jonathan Safran Foer’s two award-winning novels. At 32, a married man with small children, Foer turned his attention to nonfiction, and to the food we eat. Eating Animals is not an appeal for vegetarianism, but a sustained, at times brutal look at the …...

Jane Alison

The Sisters Antipodes

Dec 03, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The acclaimed American novelist Jane Alison wrote a memoir of her exotic childhood, and did so, in the words of the Boston Globe, “with the insight of a novelist and the language of a poet.” It is a story—involving double spouse-swapping among diplomats, daughters who were mirror images of one another, and ultimately tragedy—that Alison originally …...

Marvin Hamlisch

Composer and Musical Director

Oct 20, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Marvin Hamlisch was the maestro of American music. As composer, he scored everything from Woody Allen films to James Bond movies to A Chorus Line and The Sting. With 3 Oscar awards, 4 Grammy awards, 4 Emmys, 3 Golden Globes, a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize, Hamlisch was a highly acclaimed composer. He was also an accomplished pianist and …...

Christopher Caldwell

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

October 16, 2009

This was the third event in our New America Series, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributor to The Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell is a Young Turk (if one can apply the term) in the American conservative movement. His provocative arguments have covered everything from California’s budget …...

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

When Skateboards Will Be Free

Oct 01, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Say you grew up in 1970s and 1980s America. Say your father was Iranian and your mother was Jewish. Say both were radical members of the Socialist Workers Party, who cared more about handing out political leaflets than taking care of you. What would you do? If you were Saїd Sayrafiezadeh, you would write an …...

David Simon

The Wire

Sep 30, 2009, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

More than a few critics have called The Wire, the hit U.S. series about crime in Baltimore, the best TV show of the year. David Simon, its creator, began his career as a crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun, where he gleaned details of the city’s seamy side. Using this material, he produced a series of bestselling books–including Homicide, …...

David Leavitt

The Indian Clerk

Jun 16, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Born in Pittsburgh, educated at Yale, David Leavitt has been grouped with the likes of Edmund White as a writer who has “made art out of previously repressed and unnarrated areas of homoerotic experience.” He is also drawn to history. The Indian Clerk takes place in the early 20th century, and revolves around the relationship between the brilliant …...

Amy Chua

Day of Empire

May 27, 2009, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The Persian dynasties, the Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, United States of America: all of these hyperpowers grew to world dominance at a time when they had high concentrations of minorities. Each admitted people who had been persecuted or cast off. And each profited from them. So says Amy Chua in …...

Toni Morrison

A Mercy

May 20, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

One of the most important American writers of her generation will take the John Adams Institute stage for the first time. Toni Morrison, as renowned for her magical realism as for her portrayal of the African American struggle, is that rare writer who is acclaimed by critics and adored by the reading public. In her …...

Henry Hudson Sets Sail

Town Hall Meeting featuring: Geert Mak and Russell Shorto

Apr 04, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

This special event celebrates the 400-year relationship between the Netherlands and the U.S., and especially between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam – that is, New York. It features talks by Geert Mak and Russell Shorto, the presentation of the book they co-wrote for the event (1609: The Forgotten History of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York), as …...

Joseph O’Neill

Netherland

Mar 13, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

This is the first event in our New America Series, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Joseph O’Neill was born in Ireland, raised in the Netherlands, educated in England, and lives in New York. His award-winning novel, Netherland, reflects his background, as well as his passion for cricket. Its hero is a Dutchman who immerses …...

Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food

Feb 11, 2009, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Never has so much attention been paid to what we eat. It’s strange, then, that a lot of what we eat is not actually food but, according to Michael Pollan, “edible food like substances are no longer the products of nature but of food science.” The irony, which Pollan details in his book, In Defense of …...

Stewart O’Nan

Snow Angels

Feb 10, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Winter is cold in Butler, Pennsylvania. The characters in O’Nan’s atmospheric novel interact like snowflakes: in a swirl of love and pain and coincidence. At the center is a boy named Arthur, whose parents’ marriage is collapsing and whose former babysitter is murdered. Last year the book became a Hollywood film starring Sam Rockwell and …...

Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers: The Story of Success

Jan 30, 2009, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

What if the Beatles had never gone to Hamburg in 1960? Would they have become a sensation? What if Bill Gates had been born five years later? Would he have revolutionalized the world? Excellence, we often think, comes from practice. But Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, took the …...

Chip Taylor

Songs from a Dutch Tour

Dec 14, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Singer-songwriter Chip Taylor took the John Adams Institute stage to talk about his special bond with The Netherlands, but also to play some of his famous songs. Taylor is the man behind such classics as Wild Thing (The Troggs), Try Just a Little Bit Harder (Janis Joplin) and Angel of the Morning (Juice Newton), and is considered one of the great …...

Dexter Filkins

The Forever War

Nov 20, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

In The Forever War, Dexter Filkins – one of America’s top war correspondents – has produced a book of scintillating beauty, if one can apply such a term to the nightmare that has unfolded in Afghanistan and Iraq. How to sort through the lies, the bombs, the billions of dollars, the thousands of deaths? Filkins stays …...

Shelby Steele

A Bound Man

Oct 05, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Barack Obama is the most compelling political figure to come out of the U.S. in at least a generation. At the core of his personality is his biracial background. Shelby Steele -a research fellow at Stanford University and a winner of the National Book Critics’ Circle Award- is also the child of a white mother …...

David Sedaris

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Sep 23, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The humorist and author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim brings his entourage to Amsterdam for the Dutch publication of his latest collection of wisdom, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris instructed the John Adams audience on how to buy drugs in a North Carolina trailer and …...

Martin Amis

The Second Plane

Sep 09, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Britain’s greatest living author came to the John Adams Institute podium on the occasion of the Dutch publication of his new collection of essays about the post-9/11 world, The Second Plane. After spending his early career on the political left, Martin Amis lived for two years in Uruguay and returned to find that, as he later …...

Lisa Jardine

Going Dutch

Jun 19, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

19 June 2008 In the great book of history, the British Empire typically merits a fat chapter, while the Dutch Enlightenment gets a passing mention. The problem with this, argues Lisa Jardine in her groundbreaking work Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory, is that Britain’s rise was built on -not to say swiped from- the …...

Paul Auster

Man in the Dark

Jun 10, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute presented an evening with Paul Auster, marking his third visit after his visits in 1990 and 2004. Paul Auster was born in New Jersey, but is most associated with Brooklyn (where he has long lived) and Paris (where he worked as a translator of French literature). He is a writer like no other, …...

Michael Oreskes

In conversation with Twan Huys

May 13, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

13 May 2008 The intense interest in 2008’s American presidential election has a flipside: the reason all campaigns had the mantra of “change” is that no one was pleased with the country’s recent leadership. The U.S. prides itself on its democracy, and above all on its Constitution. How has the American government strayed so far …...

Ben Katchor

On Comics

Apr 27, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

27 April 2008 The John Adams Institute was proud to present Ben Katchor, the first comic strip artist ever to win a McArthur Foundation “genius grant.” Katchor has been called “the most poetic, deeply layered artist ever to draw a comic strip.” Katchor started out as a contributor to Art Spiegelman’s legendary cutting edge graphics …...

Steve Coll

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Apr 21, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

21 April 2008 One of America’ s most renowned international affairs correspondents came to the John Adams Institute podium to discuss his revelatory book on the Bin Laden family. Steve Coll won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 forGhost Wars, which showed how 9/11 was an outgrowth of the CIA’ s long involvement in Afghanistan. His …...

Amy Bloom

Away

Mar 05, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute presented a lecture with Amy Bloom. She might be trained as a psychotherapist, but her prose is anything but analytical. Her sensitive exploration of human interactions, expressed in a style that is luminous yet engagingly direct, has won her many fans and awards. Her novel, Away, tells the picaresque story of a Russian Jew …...

Madeleine Albright

Memo to the President-Elect

February 19, 2008

19 February 2008 A one-of-a-kind event with Madeleine Albright: Secretary Albright discussed her book, Memo to the President-Elect, offered her analysis of what the next president must do to restore America’s international standing, and assessed the presidential candidates. This event was a coproduction of the John Adams Institute, the International School for Humanities and Social …...

Christopher Hitchens

God Is Not Great

February 13, 2008

13 February 2008 He dismisses Hillary Clinton as “an aging and resentful female” and, regarding Barack Obama, he asks, “why is a man with a white mother considered to be ‘black,’ anyway?” Christopher Hitchens is one of America’s most provocative public intellectuals. In his book, God Is Not Great – a runaway bestseller in the U.S. – …...

Steve Earle

in conversation with Chris Kijne

Jan 31, 2008, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Steve Earle -“the hardcore troubadour”- is a legend in rock and country music circles, and nearly as renowned for his politics as for his music. His 2002 album, Jerusalem, was a reaction to President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism.” The song “John Walker’s Blues,” about the captured American Taliban John Walker Lindh, provoked headlines around …...

Robert B Reich

Supercapitalism

Jan 14, 2008, 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

President Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor argues in his important book that in the last thirty years capitalism has flourished at the expense of democracy. Robert Reich – one of America’s most renowned economists – says people now see themselves as buyers and sellers first and citizens only later, if at all. The rise …...

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Express

Dec 06, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening around the multi-talented author, journalist and TV personality Nigella Lawson. According to Salman Rushdie she is one of the most original and funny literary food writers. Nigella is an interesting personality in her own right. She has written extensively about the loss to cancer of two loved …...

Dana Thomas

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre

Nov 20, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The topic of luxury today is all about globalization, capitalization, class and culture. Dana Thomas explores with a blend of history, culture and investigative journalism the whole of today’s high-end shopping experience. Thomas answers some pressing questions in her book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre: What happened to brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Yves Saint …...

Stedman Graham

Diversity: Leaders Not Labels

Oct 16, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Stedman Graham demonstrates in his book Diversity: Leaders not Labels – a New Plan for the 21st Century, that cultural diversity is changing the face of nations across the world. Either embrace diversity or get left behind. In an inspiring talk he showed the great variety of opportunities cultural diversity has to offer by focusing …...

Daniel Mendelsohn

The Lost

Sep 18, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

18 September 2007 Award-winning author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn joined us to discuss his book The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and received extraordinary critical acclaim e.g. in The New York Review of Books (“the most gripping, the most amazing true story I have …...

William Easterly

The White Man's Burden

Sep 12, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

New York University Professor and former World Bank economist William Easterly joined us for a discussion on why the 100 billion USD the rich world yearly dedicates to end poverty in the developing world is for a big part wasted. The Millennium Development Goals, an initiative of the UN directed by Jeffrey Sachs, are the …...

John Adams & Peter Sellars

Dr. Atomic Revisited

Jun 11, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Composer John Adams and theater director Peter Sellars joined us us for a joint interview to mark the Dutch premiere of their opera Dr. Atomic. Following the success of the opera Nixon in China, Dr Atomic once again explores a politically current theme with great artistic flair, which Sellars, who wrote the libretto, skilfully links …...

Miranda July

No One Belongs Here More Than You

Jun 07, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Filmmaker, performing artist and writer Miranda July joined us to discuss her work and her new collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. After writing, directing and starring in the feature film Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, she turned …...

Nathan Englander

The Ministry of Special Cases

May 31, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Author Nathan Englander joined us to discuss his work and his long awaited novel The Ministry of Special Cases. The novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Its a timeless story of fathers and sons and the search for the ‘desaparecidos’. In a world turned upside down, where the past …...

Niall Ferguson

The War of the World

May 22, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

British historian Niall Ferguson joined us to discuss the question why the 20th century was the bloodiest in modern history. Another theme he discussed was why he thinks the American Century will be remembered for the exhaustion of the West and the rise of China. He challenges Americans to rethink their place in the world …...

Michelle Goldberg

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

May 14, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg joined us to discuss her ideas on the influence of Christian Evangelical organizations on politics, the educational system and the legal system. In her book Kingdom Coming, Goldberg traces the financial and ideological ties of these groups with the Republican Party and how educational programs in many states in the US …...

Antoine van Agtmael

Emerging Markets - The Challenge for Western Companies and the Strategies They Should Be Aware Of!

Apr 17, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

As part of the Dutch-American Friendship Day, we invited the brilliant author Antoine van Agtmael to talk about the topic for the afternoon: Emerging Markets – The Challenge for Western Companies and the Strategies They Should Be Aware Of! In his keynote speech Van Agtmael demonstrated how a new breed of world-class companies is taking …...

Ariel Levy

Female Chauvinist Pigs

Apr 12, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Author Ariel Levy and staff writer at The New Yorker joined us for a lecture on her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. A bold, piercing examination of how twenty-first century American society perceives sex and women. The book cleverly leads us to explore the role models women aspire to emulate. Levy argues that rather than pursuing the …...

Daniel Mason

A Far Country

Apr 02, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Author of the bestseller The Piano Tuner, joined us for a lecture of his highly anticipated novel, A Far Country. Relating the story of a teenage girl’s search for her beloved older brother in a Third World country, A Far Country is a vivid, uncompromising portrayal of poverty and desperation and a universal tale about …...

Michael Ruse

The Evolution-Creation Struggle

Mar 29, 2007, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Ruse was called “one of the most stimulating writers on the never-ending cultural debate over evolution” by New York Magazine. As one of the leading participants in the contemporary debate, Ruse gives a new perspective on the historical continuity of thinking about creation, evolution, and the relationship between religion and science. He uncovers surprising similarities …...

Harold McGee

On Food & Cooking

Dec 12, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with Harold McGee, food author. He spoke about his book On Food & Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which has just been translated in Dutch by Nieuw Amsterdam Publishers with the title Over Eten en Koken. Harold McGee writes about the science and chemistry behind cooking, …...

Tony Judt

A View from Nowhere: Is a History of Postwar Europe Possible?

Nov 03, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

New York University historian Tony Judt joins us to discuss his new book Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Judt covers the broad strokes and fine details of modern history, including the continent’s troubled relationship with the United States. Prof. Judt’s is ‘arguably the most esteemed writer on contemporary European history’, writes The New Yorker. …...

Marisha Pessl

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Nov 02, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Fresh new literary voice Marisha Pessl joined us to discuss her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, one of the most vibrant and acclaimed books published this fall. Describing the relationship between a daughter and an ‘incredibly narcissistic, amoral, controlling and very charming’ political science professor father, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a literary …...

Al Gore

An Inconvenient Truth

Oct 06, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

United International Pictures (UIP) and The John Adams Institute are proud to present Al Gore at the preview premiere of the film An Inconvenient Truth. Chris Kijne (VPRO broadcaster) presented the evening. Al Gore’s groundbreaking book, An Inconvenient Truth, brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world, as well as photographs, charts, and other …...

Philip Glass

Waiting for the Barbarians

Sep 30, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Philip Glass is one of the late 20th century’s most influential composers and a founder of American Minimalism. His distinctive style – incorporating elements of ethnic and rock music – has been brought to bear on symphonies based on the works of David Bowie and Brian Eno. Waiting for the Barbarians premiered in September 2005 …...

Jonathan Franzen

The Discomfort Zone

Sep 28, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Bestseller and National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen joined us to discuss his memoir. The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History takes an intimate and humorous look at his own adolescence, his mother’s death and America during the sometimes tumultuous 1960s-70s. Franzen is a Fulbright scholar, a Guggenheim fellow and one of The New Yorker’s ’20 Writers …...

John Irving

Until I Find You

Jun 24, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

One of America’s most popular and respected writers, John Irving returned to the Netherlands to discuss his career and his latest novel, Until I Find You. Irving published his first novel at the age of twenty-six, but it was 1978’s The World According to Garp that truly made him a household name. Since then, everything he …...

Madeleine Albright

The Mighty and the Almighty

Jun 17, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Madeleine Albright returned to the John Adams Institute after her first visit in 2003 to discuss her book The Mighty and the Almighty, translated in Dutch under the title ‘De macht en de almacht’ by Anthos/Manteau. In this book, Madeleine Albright tackles the thorny subject of the role of faith in international relations. Albright rejects …...

Mark Kurlansky

The Big Oyster

May 30, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Former pastry chef and international correspondent Mark Kurlansky reveals the secrets of the foods we love. His culinary odyssey, The Big Oyster, is a history of New York told through its most celebrated shellfish. New York City’s oyster houses were famous around the world until pollution finally destroyed the beds off nearby Ellis Island in the …...

A. M. Homes

This Book Will Save Your Life

May 23, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Award-winning novelist and short story writer A.M. Homes visited Amsterdam to discuss her new novel This Book Will Save Your Life. It is a portrait of estrangement in the surreal netherworld of contemporary Los Angeles. Her work has been called “provocative” and “dangerous”, and specializes in bringing dark impulses and twisted tendencies to the surface. A.M. …...

Irene Dische

International Literature Festival - More than Words

May 20, 2006

20 May 2006 Literaire Podia Amsterdam (LPA) presents: International Literature Festival Amsterdam 2006 MORE THAN WORDS The John Adams contribution: Irene Dische 20 may 2006 – 8pm in de Balie Organisations: SLAA, Cinema De Balie, Goethe-Institut, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, John Adams Instituut, Maison Descartes, Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, Perdu, School der Poezie, Stichting GRAP....

Marc Chavannes

On the Axis of Good and Evil

May 06, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Marc Chavannes, former Washington correspondent and journalism professor, joined the John Adams Institute to discuss his new book On the Axis of Good and Evil (Op de As van Goed en Kwaad – Amerika achter de schermen). Chavannes spent five years at the Washington desk reporting for NRC Handelsblad. In his book, he goes behind …...

James Salter

Last Night

Apr 26, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Award-winning novelist and short story writer James Salter visited Amsterdam to discuss his latest work. His book, a collection of ten exceptional short stories entitled Last Night, has recently been translated and published in Dutch. Salter is widely regarded as one of the finest living practitioners of his craft by readers, critics and fellow writers. A …...

Charles C. Mann

1491

Mar 17, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with award-winning American journalist and author Charles C. Mann. Mann has been called both ‘revisionist’ and ‘revolutionary’. His work – 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Nieuw Amsterdam publishers: 1491; De ontdekking van precolumbiaans Amerika) – traces the early history of the continent and dispels long-held …...

Jay McInerney

The Good Life

Mar 10, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with ‘brat pack’ novelist Jay McInerney. McInerney’s first novel – Bright Lights, Big City – was an instant classic and a Hollywood hit, capturing the cocaine-fueled excess of 1980’s Manhattan like few others. Then, as he told The New York Times recently, he became one of the decadent …...

Amitai Etzioni

The New Golden Rule

Dec 07, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Etzioni was in the Netherlands to launch the Dutch translation of his bestselling book The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (De nieuwe gulden regel) with a preface by Balkenende, who was presented with the first copy in The Hague. A panel of MPs, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali ,Femke Halsema and …...

Lewis H. Lapham

Power Talk

Nov 30, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

30 November 2005 A meeting with the influential American essayist Lewis H. Lapham. Co-presented by IDFA, ISHSS/University of Amsterdam, and the John Adams Institute. Lewis H. Lapham editor of Harper’s Magazine, and star and writer in the film The American Ruling Class (which sees its European premiere at IDFA) shared his views on propaganda, the media, …...

Eduard van de Bilt

Becoming John Adams, Leiden and the Making of a Great American, 1780-1782

Nov 23, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

23 November 2005 2005 was designated as ‘John Adams Year’ to mark the 225th anniversary of this honorable American citizen’s arrival in the Dutch Republic. Adams became the first American Ambassador to the Netherlands and arranged Dutch loans to keep the American War of Independence aﬂoat. Immediately upon his arrival in July 1780, John Adams …...

Karin Slaughter

Faithless

Nov 09, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with bestselling author Karin Slaughter. She visited the Institute to speak about her new book Faithless (published in Dutch as Trouweloos). In the latest installment of her popular Grant County series, medical examiner Sara Linton returns to solve another mysterious small-town death in America’s deep south. “Brilliant plotting, relentless suspense,” …...

Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and Texture of Reality Creation Story

Nov 02, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

02 November 2005 Brian Greene has been called ‘the closest thing physics has to a pop star’. The university professor and Rhodes scholar is one of the world’s foremost exponents of Superstring Theory. In the U.S., he is a frequent guest on science documentaries, late night talk shows and even a Hollywood film. Greene’s newest …...

Mark Z. Danielewski

The Fifty Year Sword

Oct 31, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

31 October 2005 The Fifty Year Sword is the much awaited successor to Danielewski’s unconventionel debut novel House of Leaves, a complex and experimental horror story packed with anagrams, puzzles, teasing typography and hidden meanings. The event coincided with the worldwide launch of this book The Fifty Year Sword (Het Vijftig Jaars Zwaard), a wicked and witty ghost story …...

Jane Fonda

My Life So Far

Oct 13, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

From Hollywood to Hanoi, Jane Fonda has endeared and enraged Americans for more than four decades with her sparkling performances and outspoken views. Following an eclectic career as an actress, activist and fitness guru plus a string of high-profile husbands the acclaimed Fonda tells all in her new autobiography. Throughout her youth among Hollywood’s elite …...

Tom Wolfe

I Am Charlotte Simmons

Oct 07, 2006, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with journalist and writer Tom Wolfe, who spoke about his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. In the novel, Charlotte Simmons attends the fictional Dupont University. It is there that she loses her innocence as she discovers the only way to survive at university is through sex. She tries to …...

Eric Schlosser

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Oct 06, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

06 October 2005 An award-winning journalist, Schlosser’s first book – Fast Food Nation:The Dark Side of the All-American Meal – is a devastating exposé that spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. His publication – Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market – delves into three key components of America’s underground …...

Michael Cunningham

Specimen Days

Sep 29, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Cunningham’s The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the prestigious PEN/Faulkner award, and went on to become an Academy Award-winning film starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep. An earlier novel, A Home at the End of the World, was recently made into a film starring Sissy Spacek and Colin …...

Jeremy Rifkin

The European Dream

Sep 22, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with Jeremy Rifkin. As director of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington D.C., he is one of the 150 most influential people in the United States capital. He has written seventeen books on the impact of technological changes on the economy and the community. Within his foundation …...

Lisa See

Snow Flowers and the Secret Fan

Sep 06, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey into to a world that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. ‘It is achingly beautiful,’ raves best-selling author Amy Tan. ‘A marvel of imagination of a real and secret world that has only recently disappeared.’ Set in 19th century China, …...

John Adams in Amsterdam

Aug 25, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

25 August 2005 Mini Exhibition 4 Juli -25 August 2005 The American Diplomat John Adams in Amsterdam,1780-1782 The Amsterdams Historisch Museum and the John Adams Institute proudly presented the first-ever exhibition commemorating the life of U.S. President John Adams in Holland. The exhibition gave an impression of the political situation in the Netherlands at the …...

Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: A Novel

Jun 07, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute hosted author Jonathan Safran Foer, who spoke about his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The evening was moderated by Pieter Steinz, and included Q&A with the audience. Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestseller Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the …...

Tom Regan

The Case for Animal Rights

May 20, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Tom Regan has published more than 20 books and is widely regarded as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. His seminal work – The Case for Animal Rights – provides the philosophical underpinning for this ongoing debate. Regan is emeritus professor of philosophy at North Carolina State …...

R. B. Bernstein

John Adams 1780-2005

Apr 18, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The first American diplomats in Europe fought an intellectual war for American independence to prove that Americans were intellectual equals deserving the respect of European philosophers. While Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson exploded the claim that nature and human beings degenerated in the New World, John Adams chose as his battlefield “the divine science of …...

Edward P. Jones

The Known World

Apr 17, 2005, 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor — William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia’s Manchester County. Under Robbins’s tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation — as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, …...

An American Evening

Apr 13, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

In the presence of Her Majesty the Queen, the John Adams Institute proudly presented: An American Evening at the Concertgebouw In honor of the 225th anniversary of John Adams’ arrival in this country, Dutch and American musicians will perform works by Copland, Dvorak and the premiere of: John Adams in Amsterdam “A song for Abigail”, work …...

Martha Nussbaum

Upheavals of Thought - The Intelligence of Emotions

Mar 22, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

22 March 2005 For everybody who thinks that philosophy is a stuffy dull science, practiced by unworldly absent-minded professors: Martha Nussbaum isn’t an abstract scientist who occupies herself with the universe and metaphysics. She is in touch with daily life. The underlying assumption of her ideas is based on human emotions. According to Nussbaum emotions are …...

Pauline Maier

The Everlasting American Dream

Feb 21, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

21 February 2005 For many American people today, the history of the American Revolution and all that went with it is still a matter of keen interest. A fact already signified by the enormous number of best-sellers written in recent years about the Founding Fathers of the United States. Pauline Maier, a historian attached to …...

Barbara Ehrenreich

Nickel and Dimed - On (not) getting by in America

Jan 31, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Millions of Americans work full time and more, often juggling two jobs, yet still fall below the poverty line. In Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America, journalist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover in low-wage America to experience the grinding treadmill of the ‘working poor’, and discover how they keep body, …...

John Adams Year 2005 Celebration

Jan 01, 2005, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

At the John Adams Institute, we’ve designated 2005 as “John Adams Year”, to mark the 225th anniversary of our honorable namesake’s arrival as America’s first envoy to the Netherlands. 20 september 2004 Unveiling of the memorial plaque on the façade of Keizersgracht 529, the canal side house where John Adams lived in 1781-1782. Official unveiling by Amsterdam …...

Russell Shorto

New Amsterdam - The Island at the Center of the World

Nov 08, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

How did Manhattan grow into the most powerful city in the world? After literally stumbling over the gravestones of early Dutch settlers near his apartment in New York City’s East Village, Russel Shorto wanted to know more about this overlooked chapter in the history of old Manhattan. He visited archives in the city and eventually …...

Louis de Bernières

Birds Without Wings

Nov 07, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. He joined the army at 18 but left after spending four months at Sandhurst. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London. Before writing full-time, he …...

Arthur Phillips

The Egyptologist, or Atum is Aroused

Oct 26, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The Egyptologist is a true crime story. The book jacket heralds it as ‘a darkly comic labyrinth of a story.’ Written in the form of journal entries and letters, The Egyptologist contains two plots meandering back and forth in time, each in their appropriate style. One story is woven around Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush and his quest for the …...

David McCullough

John Adams 1735-1826

Sep 21, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

To celebrate the 2004-2005 lecture season, the John Adams Institute paid tribute to the American patriot, John Adams, who provided both the original inspiration and namesake to the institute. 2005 marks the 225th anniversary of his arrival in Amsterdam and for the inaugural lecture we welcomed his biographer, David McCullough. Credited by The New York Review …...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

A Supreme Court Justice's view on the Netherlands

Sep 09, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Having been known for his powerful intellect and unequivocal opinions, Antonin Scalia served 28 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. Having been considered one of the Court’s most conservative justices, he was regarded by George W. Bush as a model for future judicial appointments, which lead to speculation that he could one day occupy the …...

Walter Russell Mead

Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk

Jun 23, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, to talk about his latest book: Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk. Maarten Huygen, commentator for NRC Handelsblad, interviewed Mead and moderated the discussion. Power, Terror, Peace, and War is …...

Andrew Sean Greer

The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Jun 09, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The Confessions of Max Tivoli tells in retrospect the wondrous life story of Max Tivoli, from 1930 backwards to 1871. Max is born with the body of a septuagenarian. As time passes, his body develops from old to young, so that at the end of his life he looks like a small boy. His mind, though, …...

Paul Auster

Oracle Night

May 13, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Oracle Night, Auster’s 11th novel, is a book about the power of words. It explores the typical Auster themes: fiction and reality, time and dreams, premonitions and foreboding, as well as randomness and free will. The book is narrated by writer Sydney Orr, who recounts a writing craze that overcame him twenty years ago after …...

Siri Hustvedt

What I Loved

May 12, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

What I Loved is the diary-like biography of art historian Leo Herzberg. It chronicles twenty-five years of his life as a participant and observer of the New York art world. In 1975, he discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a Soho gallery. He buys the work and tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler. …...

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx

Apr 28, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

A frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and other journals, LeBlanc joined us to discuss her bestselling first book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. Publishing house Arbeiderspers has recently released a Dutch translation of the book, Zomaar familie. Prof. Ruth Oldenziel, who acted as moderator, received her …...

Dutch-American Friendship Day

April 19, 2004

19 April 2004 On Monday, 19 April 2004, we celebrated the 222nd Dutch-American Friendship Day together with the Amsterdam American Business Club in WTC Schiphol. The Netherlands was, after France, the second country to recognize America as an independent nation. Our namesake John Adams, the second president of the United States, arranged for this on …...

Ivo Daalder

America Unbound

Mar 10, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute was proud to present Ivo H. Daalder, senior research fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and member of the U.S. National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. Publishing house Het Spectrum brought out a Dutch translation of his latest book, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Amerika ontketend), …...

Deirdre Bair

Jung: A Biography

Jan 27, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Deirdre Bair meticulously assembled every scrap of information about Jung she could get her hands on, culminating in a big book which strikes Publishers Weekly as “a balance between damage control and deification” and suggests that in bulk and detail there is little more to say. Bair has evoked the man in all his cynical …...

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Foreign Fruit

Jan 23, 2004, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a young poet in whose work food and the pleasure of eating have found a special place. Her elegant and comical, sensual and delicate style creates poems like Are you making Dump Cake, Cheese Curds, The First Time and Fruit Cocktail Tree. They are part of her latest collection of poems Miracle Fruit (2003) and received the …...

James Frey

A Million Little Pieces

Dec 09, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

A Million Little Pieces is the confessional autobiography of James Frey about his past as an alcoholic and drug addict. The book starts at the moment he is checked into a rehabilitation facility at the age of twenty-three. He is in such bad shape, that the doctor at the rehab center warns that another incidence of …...

Michael Ignatieff

In the Flames

Nov 25, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed well-known essayist and novelist Michael Ignatieff, who talked about two of his recently published books Charlie Johnson in the Flames and Empire Lite (Charlie Johnsons laatste woord en Afgedwongen vrijheid). Paul Scheffer introduced Michael Ignatieff, conducted the interview as well as moderated questions from the audience. Charlie Johnson in the Flames covers the breakdown of …...

Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake

Nov 13, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jhumpa Lahiri, who spoke about and read from her recently published novel The Namesake. Pieter Steinz introduced and interviewed Jhumpa Lahiri as well as moderated questions from the audience. The Namesake expands on Lahiri’s signature themes: the immigrant experience, clash of cultures, conflicts of assimilation and the tangled …...

Philip Kotler

Selling Amsterdam

Nov 05, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly welcomed marketing expert Philip Kotler, whose textbooks are hailed worldwide as marketing ‘bibles’. Peter Jurgens, senior consultant for strategic communication at Boer & Croon , moderated a discussion about City Marketing Amsterdam between Professor Philip Kotler and Amsterdam’s Vice Mayor, Geert Dales and conducted the questions from the audience. Philip …...

Madeleine Albright

Madame Secretary: A Memoir

Oct 14, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who talked about her autobiography Madame Secretary: A Memoir. This autobiography recounts her childhood in the 1930’s as the daughter of a Czechoslovakian diplomat, the family’s flight to London where they spent World War II, their emigration to the …...

Michael Connelly

Lost Light

Sep 29, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Publishing House De Boekerij, presented Michael Connelly, who spoke about his latest Harry Bosch novel Lost Light (Verloren Licht). Arno Ruitenbeek, crime reporter of the Noord Hollands Dagblad, introduced Michael Connelly and conducted the interview with him, as well as moderated questions from the audience. In Lost Light Harry Bosch is fifty-two years …...

Candace Bushnell

Trading Up

Aug 20, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in cooperation with Publishing House Vassallucci, invited Candace Bushnell for a unique performance in the music temple Paradiso. The author introduced her recently published – first – novel Trading Up. Heleen van Royen interviewed Miss Bushnell; the public was invited to ask questions. After the booksigning, Candace Bushnell joined the crowd for …...

Paul Krugman

Has the Eagle Landed?

May 20, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Paul Krugman spoke about the latest developments in macro-economics and commented on America’s current economic policy and on the consequences of America being the only superpower in the world. Sweder van Wijnbergen introduceded Paul Krugman and debated with him and the audience on several global and economic issues. Krugman joined The New York Times in …...

Robert Kagan

Of Paradise and Power: America Vs. Europe in the New World Order

Apr 23, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The Netherlands Atlantic Association together with the John Adams Institute and The Busy Bee Publishing House proudly presented a lecture by Robert Kagan. Kagan’s book Of Paradise and Power had been recently translated into Dutch as Balans van de Macht. Leonard Ornstein, journalist for Netwerk, Dutch National TV, introduced Kagan and interviewed him after his talk. Kagan …...

Fay Weldon

Auto-Da-Fay

Apr 09, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

We were pleased to welcome well-known novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon, who spoke about her autobiography Auto Da Fay (translated into Dutch with the same title by Publishing House Contact). Stine Jensen introduced Fay Weldon and conducted the interview with her, as well as moderated questions from the audience. Auto Da Fay is, as Fay Weldon remarks, …...

Gary Shteyngart

The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Apr 26, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Prometheus Publishing House, proudly presented Gary Shteyngart, the author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (published by Riverhead Books), translated into Dutch under the title Handboek voor de Russische Debutante. Herman Stevens, novelist and literary critic for HP De Tijd, introduced Gary Shteyngart and interviewed him following his reading. …...

Neal Pollack

Neal Pollack's Eternal Love For the Good People of Holland (and Belgium)

Jan 30, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly announced Neal Pollack as our guest at the National Poetry Day Amsterdam, on January 30, 2003. He also performed as a special guest with the Boom Chicago crew on January 31, 2003. Neal Pollack has worked as a journalist for the ‘Chicago Reader’. He gave it all up and started …...

Robert Jan van Pelt

The Holocaust: A History

Jan 27, 2003, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute presented the renowned historians Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt on 27 January 2003, exactly 58 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Dwork and Van Pelt are the authors of the recently published book The Holocaust: A History (De Holocaust. Een geschiedenis; published by Uitgeverij Boom). Professor Johannes Houwink ten Cate, director …...

Peter Gay

Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914

Nov 20, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed the renowned Sterling Professor of History, Peter Gay. His work, Schnitzler’s Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1914 (Penguin UK, 2001), had been translated recently into Dutch by Publishing House De Bezige Bij under the title De eeuw van Schnitzler: Een nieuwe geschiedenis van de negentiende eeuw. Herman Beliën, historian …...

Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex

Nov 14, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

Jeffrey Eugenides (Detroit, 1960) spoke about his latest novel, Middlesex. Middlesex, translated in Dutch by Contact Publishers, is Eugenides’ long-awaited second novel, following his sensational debut The Virgin Suicides (1993). Stacey Knecht (New York, 1957), literary translator and staff member at the Fonds voor de Letteren (Foundation for Dutch Literature), introduced Eugenides and interviewed him …...

Atul Gawande

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Nov 07, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an additional lecture to its schedule of events with writer-physician Atul Gawande (1965). His book Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science was recently translated into Dutch under the title Complicaties by Dutch publishing house De Arbeiderspers. Louise Gunning, Dean of the Medical Faculty of the University of Amsterdam …...

Wayne Johnston

Baltimore's Mansion

Oct 30, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed Canadian author Wayne Johnston next month to talk about his first work of non-fiction, Baltimore’s Mansion, which is published in Dutch by De Geus Publishing House as Het Huis van Baltimore. A beguiling blend of family history and autobiography, Johnston’s book was awarded the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Jan Donkers, …...

Arthur C. Danto

Beauty and Politics

Oct 22, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with the Historische Uitgeverij, proudly presented Arthur C. Danto in the Van Gogh Museum. The Historische Uitgeverij had recently published a collection of Danto’s most important essays, titled De komedie van de overeenkomsten. Danto was a renowned philosopher and art critic. His theory on the end of art is as …...

Mark Hertsgaard

The Eagle's Shadow

Sep 10, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Cossee Publishing House and the University of Amsterdam presented an evening with Mark Hertsgaard. Hertsgaard talked about his book, The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World. Professor Maarten Brands participated in a discussion with Mark Hertsgaard, giving his views on America and America’s relationship with …...

George Plimpton

Zelda, Scott and Ernest: A Theatrical Adaptation

Jun 26, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute was pleased to present a unique performance of the works of Ernest Hemingway and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written by George Plimpton and Terry Quinn, Zelda, Scott and Ernest: A Theatrical Adaptation, was performed by Norman Mailer, Norris Church Mailer and George Plimpton on June 26 in the Stadsschouwburg, Leidseplein 26 …...

Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer

Jun 11, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute welcomed American best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver to speak about her novel Prodigal Summer (2000), that had been published by Prometheus as Zomer van overvloed. Jan Donkers, writer and journalist, introduced Barbara Kingsolver and moderated the discussion with the audience. Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger …...

Naomi Wolf

Misconceptions

May 14, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

14 May 2002 The John Adams Institute welcomed best-selling author Naomi Wolf to speak on her work Misconceptions (Valse Verwachtingen, published by De Arbeiderspers). Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, has written an uncompromising account of the painful truth of motherhood in contemporary America. Beatrijs Smulders, advocate of Dutch-style confinement, obstetric and author of Veilig …...

John Irving

In Retrospective

Apr 15, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute proudly presented an evening with widely acclaimed American novelist, John Irving, on Monday 15 April 2002. Following his earlier visits to the Institute in 1991 and 1994, John Irving returned to discuss his work in retrospective. Dutch journalist and literary critic for NRC Handelsblad, Pieter Steinz, introduced Mr. Irving and moderated questions …...

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Globalization and its Discontents

Apr 17, 2002, 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The John Adams Institute hosted Joseph E. Stiglitz, former advisor to President Clinton. The winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics gave frank and controversial talk about his book Globalization and its Discontents and spoke openly about his tenure at the World Bank. During his time in Washington D.C., he was the never shy of critiquing …...

Chang-rae Lee

Native Speaker

Feb 28, 2002, 12:00 am - 12:00 am

The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Ambo Anthos Publishing House, was delighted to present an evening with Korean-born, U.S. raised Chang-rae Lee. He spoke about his first novel Native Speaker, which appeared in Dutch translation in February of that year. Native Speaker (Moedertaal) received five major awards, including the Hemingway Foundation/PEN and the American …...