Harvardwood Presents

Harvard History Professor JOYCE CHAPLIN


"ROUND ABOUT THE EARTH"

When:     Friday, December 7 at 7 p.m.

Where:    New York Institute of Technology, 16 West 61st Street
               11th floor penthouse, New York 10023

Cost:       $3 for Full Members and Friends of Harvardwood (and their guests);
               $9 for Affiliates and Others

Advance registration is REQUIRED--no tickets will be sold at the door.


In her new book, ROUND ABOUT THE EARTH: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit, Harvard History Professor Joyce Chaplin tells the enthralling 500-year story of around-the-world travel.  Chaplin's book has been hailed by Sir Harold Evans as "a treasure of thrilling stories, replete with insights into the advances of science, technology and medicine" and saluted by Publishers Weekly for "its profusion of entertaining travel picaresques with their gallery of colorful figures on grand, eccentric, or piratical quests."

Walter Isaacson writes, "Joyce Chaplin shows the interplay of aspirations and technology, from sail and steam to jets and rockets.  More profoundly, she explores what it means to circle our globe, act on a planetary scale, and encompass, both figuratively and literally the whole earth."

Joyce Chaplin is Harvard's James Duncan Phillips Professor of History.  Her four previous books include The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Portrait of Genius (2006), which won the Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize.  Evan Thomas, the author of Ike's Bluff, calls her "a great historian with a fresh eye and a sure touch.  She is a story teller with keen insight, command of the material, a sense of whimsy, and a flair for portraying human drama."

Professor Chaplin's book will be available for purchase, and her talk will be followed by a booksigning.

Special thanks to the New York Institute of Technology, and to Andy Goodwin and the Plymouth Hill Foundation.