Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950

What do Barack Obama Samuel Beckett Fidel Castro Joan Baez Conan OBrien Natalie Portman and Dwight D. Eisenhower have in common? Their footsteps have all crossed paths in Harvard Square. This well-trod patch of Cambridge turf at the corner of the United States most renowned university has long been a crossroads where poetry retailing politics design performance and every other cultural endeavor intersect. From the squares tweedy aspect in the 1950s through its many transformations in the 60s 70s and beyond author Mo Lotman gives a decade-by-decade account of Harvard Squares history traditions and lore. The bookstores the billiard parlors the barbershops the booze and burger joints: theyre all here. Based on interviews with more than a hundred of the squares denizens illustrated with archival photographs and graced with texts by John Updike Bill McKibben Governor Bill Weld and others Harvard Square brings the smartest urban space in America to vivid life.