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This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Historian and author Jeffrey A. Denman presents his new book, "Philadelphia Quakers and the American Revolution."

About the book (from the publisher):
Discover the history of Philadelphia's Quakers as they rose to power and prosperity and fell into peril.

Fleeing political upheavals in England for settlement in the New World, Quakers rose to unprecedented economic and political power in the Pennsylvania colony. However, the failure of the Quaker-dominated government to provide for defense in the wars from the 1730s into the 1760s was the beginning of their downfall. By the Revolution, their fortunes had waned, and they were brutally suppressed by their political foes. Seventeen influential Friends and three others were exiled to Virginia without so much as a hearing, and Quaker farms and businesses were subject to depredations. Labeled dissenters by Loyalist and Patriot alike, they stood their ground, alone and isolated.

Through the words of those who were there, author and historian Jeff Denman vividly describes the precipitous rise of the Philadelphia Quakers and their fall during the American Revolution.

About the author:
Jeff Denman is a graduate of the University of Maine (BS) and the University of Connecticut (MA) and was a U.S. history and world geography teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of several articles on U.S. history and coauthor of "Greene and Cornwallis in the Carolinas: The Pivotal Struggle of the American Revolution, 1780–1781" and "John Quincy Adams, Reluctant Abolitionist."

Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on June 22, 2026.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Patrice Nganang writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country’s history and in his life. An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

"Scale Boy" is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community; though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man’s coming-of-age.

About the Author:
Patrice Nganang is a Cameroonian writer, author of more than 15 books including the novel "Dog Days" for which he won the Marguerite Yourcenar Literary Award and the Black African Literary Grand Prize. He is head of the Department of African, African American and Caribbean Studies (Africana) at the State University of New York, Stony Brook where he teaches literary and cultural theory.

About the Moderator:
Colby Cedar Smith is an award-winning poet, novelist, and educator, and the author of two novels in verse: "The Siren and the Star" and "Call Me Athena." Her work has been chosen as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, a Cybils Award Poetry Finalist, a Goodreads Choice Best Poetry nominee, a Kids’ Book Choice nominee, Independent Publisher Book Award winner, a Nautilus Award winner, a Michigan Notable Book, and a winner of the Midwest Book Award for YA Fiction. Colby has also been a recipient of the New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.

This event was recorded on June 7, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and jaZams. YA author K.L. Walther discusses her latest novel, "The Summer of Second Chances," with the library's Teen Advisory Board.

About the book:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of "The Summer of Broken Rules" comes another incredible summer romance about holding onto memories, making new ones, learning to let go, and unexpectedly falling in love.

Olivia Lupo feels stuck. All her friends have gone on to their first year of college while she's still at home with her family. There's a good reason though, her beloved grandmother, Annie, has dementia, and Olivia can't bear the thought of being so far from home when Annie needs her the most.

So when her stepmother asks the family to spend three weeks of the summer on Martha's Vineyard, Olivia plans to say no...until she discovers an old box Annie filled with photos and memories from her own time there. Olivia decides to follow in her grandmother's footsteps and spend some time on the island that Annie describes as magical.

When she arrives, she meets Connor, a boy from her past who really wants to be a part of her present... and future. Olivia's never thought about forever with someone until meeting Connor...and it scares her. How can she make plans when all she wants to do is keep close to her grandmother before she's gone forever? As she recreates the memories Annie made a lifetime ago, she has to decide if she's finally willing to give someone her heart, just when she needs it the most.

About the author:
K.L. Walther was born and raised in the rolling hills of Bucks County, Pennsylvania surrounded by family, dogs, and books. Her childhood was spent traveling the northeastern seaboard to play ice hockey. She attended a boarding school in New Jersey and went on to earn a B.A. in English from the University of Virginia. She is happiest on the beach with a book, cheering for the New York Rangers, or enjoying a rom-com while digging into a big bowl of popcorn and M&Ms.

This event was recorded on May 17, 2026.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Great Game Lab director Andrés Martinez discusses the convergence of footballing in this talk based on his book "The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport."

The United States is the only major nation on earth that can't compete against others in its favorite spectator sport because no one else plays it. But as the world's game of football keeps growing in popularity in the United States and the nation prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the two footballing worlds are converging.

In "The Great Game," Andrés Martinez looks at how a generation of sporting billionaires, tech and media conglomerates, women players propelled by Title IX, computer game enthusiasts, and immigrants have sought to end America's sports isolationism--not by continuing to expand the reach of “their” games, but by turning their country into an unexpected power in the other, international, football. It's a story of America's changing cultural customs and demography, as well as a tale of shifting business philosophies driven by technology. Sport has become an ever more massive industry, its economic value soaring thanks to its unique ability to still bring together audiences in the tens of millions on a regular basis and a growing appreciation for its “soft” yet impactful branding power.

About the Author:
Andrés Martinez is co-director of the Great Game Lab at Arizona State University, where he also teaches at the Cronkite School of Journalism, and is a fellow at the New America think tank. He has been a business reporter, editorial writer, and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of editorials on global trade. He has also written extensively on sport and globalization for the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Time, Reuters, the Washington Post, and Reforma.

This event was recorded on May 13, 2026

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Poets Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky offer a collaborative presentation of their works on deafness, the challenges of facing cancer, and the war in Ukraine.

Blending performance with conversation, the poets explore how poetry can make meaning out of tragedy and steady us through hardship.

About the Poets:
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union, in 1977, and arrived to the US in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the government. He is the author of "Deaf Republic" and "Dancing In Odessa" and co-editor and co-translator of many other books. His work was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.

Katie Farris is a poet, writer of hybrid forms, and translator. Her most recent book is "Standing in the Forest of Being Alive," which Publishers Weekly named one of the Top Ten Books of 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook "A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving," which won the Chad Walsh Poetry Award from Beloit Poetry Journal. Her earlier collection is "boysgirls," a hybrid-form book. Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, Orison Prize, and Anne Halley Prize from Massachusetts Review. She also is the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from the French, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian. In addition to her poetry and translations, Farris writes prose about cancer, the body, and its relationship to writing, such as in her recent, widely circulated essay in Oprah Daily. She graduated with an MFA from Brown University, and is currently an Associate Professor of Poetry at Princeton University.

This event is part of the Being Human Festival (US) 2026 and is organized in partnership with the Princeton University Humanities Council and co-sponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts. In partnership with humanists and humanities organizations across the country, the National Humanities Center is supporting numerous public events across the U.S. These community-focused events, organized and presented by local artists, scholars, and educators, highlight the incredible breadth of the humanities and demonstrate how they add depth and meaning to our lives, help us understand ourselves and one another, and provide context for the complex world around us. The American edition of the Being Human Festival, begun in 2024, is the latest international expansion of the Being Human effort, launched in the United Kingdom in 2014.

This event was recorded on April 27, 2026

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. Past and current members of the editorial board share readings of their work published in "US1 Worksheets," an annual anthology of poetry compiled by the DVP/US1 Poets Cooperative.

Past and current members of the editorial board stewarding the fifty-three year publishing history of "US1 Worksheets" share their first work published in the anthology and a current poem of their choosing, putting their growth and development as artists into relief through the mirror of the anthology's past issues.

On display at the reading will be a recently donated complete collection of the anthology, from its origin in 1973 to its most recently published seventieth volume, which arrived in the fall last year.

Public Humanities programs are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on April 26, 2026.