February 11, 2005
Author Nicholas A. Basbanes to speak at Howe Society dinner
Award-winning author and leading authority on books about books, Nicholas A. Basbanes, will be the guest speaker at the George A. Smathers Libraries’ Howe Society annual dinner. The dinner will be Saturday, March 5, 2005 at 6:00 p.m. in the Smathers Library (East) Special Collections Research Room. Reservations are required. For tickets or further information, call (352) 392-0342.
Basbanes’ first book, now in its eighth edition with more than 80,000 copies in print, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
A companion volume, released in 2001, Patience & Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture, prompted the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian David McCullough to write that “Nicholas Basbanes has become our leading authority of books about books and this, his latest, is a jewel.”
Basbanes’ third book, Among the Gently Mad: Perspectives and Strategies for the Book-Hunter of the 21st Century, was released in 2002. His latest book, A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, was released in the fall of 2003.
In addition to his books about books, Basbanes has written for numerous newspapers, magazines, and journals, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Civilization, and New England Quarterly among them, and lectures widely on book-related subjects. With his wife, Constance Basbanes, he writes a monthly review of children’s books for Literary Features Syndicate, which they established in 1993.
Well known for writing about books and bibliophiles, Basbanes has worked as an award-winning investigative reporter, a literary editor, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
