Union South - Wisconsin Union Great Hall Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. Established in 1998, the lecture was named to honor Charlotte Zolotow, a distinguished children's book editor for 38 years with Harper Junior Books, and author of more than 65 picture books, including such classic works as Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Harper, 1962) and William's Doll (Harper, 1972). Zolotow attended UW-Madison on a writing scholarship from 1933 to 1936 where she studied with Professor…

Discovery Building Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. In this essential look at the regrowth of the American Midwest, tech journalist Rebecca A. Fannin chronicles her return to America’s heartland, revealing the dramatic entrepreneurial comeback that is transforming the Rust Belt into the Tech Belt. Change is sweeping across the American heartland. For too long ignored as “flyover country,” the once-mighty Midwest is experiencing a quiet but compelling revolution powered by savvy venture capital, high-tech innovation, entrepreneurial boldness…

Discovery Building Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. The New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bounty—and now great peril—all over the world. Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer…

Discovery Building Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained? Optimal Illusions traces…

Madison Central Library - Lower Level Program Room Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. A first-of-its-kind handbook, allowing the reader to combine the processes of critical and creative thinking with a detailed discussion of the environmental challenges facing our planet. Planting An Idea is part guidebook for better critical and creative thinking and part overview of the environmental challenges that face our planet today. It is designed to help readers young and old examine and develop opinions on…

Madison Central Library - Community Room 302 Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. The definitive story of the scientists who set out to answer two questions: “Why do we sleep?” and "How can we sleep better?” A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep…

Arts + Literature Laboratory Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. A visionary story of three generations of artists whose search for meaning and connection transcends the limits of life. How do we relate to—and hold—our family’s past? Is it through technology? Through spirit? Art, poetry, music? Or is it through the resonances we look for in ourselves? In Artificial, we meet the Kurzweils, a family of creators who are preserving their history through unusual means. At the center…

There is more overlap between scientific research and creative writing than you may think! Both involve a process of research, creative thought and storytelling, and in this panel we will discuss what these disciplines have in common and what each can take from the other. Acclaimed novelist Chloe Benjamin (THE IMMORTALISTS) uses science to inform her fiction, while data scientist and statistician Claudia Solis-Lemus writes fiction and memoir when she isn’t researching evolutionary biology and microbiome. Moderated by novelist and…