Join Karen Weintraub and Michael Kuchta for a discussion of their book Born in Cambridge: 400 Years of Ideas and Innovators on Tuesday, September 20 at 7PM at the Main Library (129 Main St., Concord).

Cambridge, Massachusetts is a city of “firsts”: the first college in the English colonies, the first two-way long-distance call, the first legal same-sex marriage. In 1632, Anne Bradstreet, living in what is now Harvard Square, wrote one of the first published poems in British North America, and in 1959, Cambridge-based Carter’s Ink marketed the first yellow Hi-liter. W.E.B. Du Bois, Julia Child, Yo-Yo Ma, and Noam Chomsky all lived or worked in Cambridge at various points in their lives. Born in Cambridge tells these stories and many others, chronicling cultural icons, influential ideas, and world-changing innovations that all came from one city of modest size across the Charles River from Boston. Nearly 200 illustrations connect stories to Cambridge locations.

Karen Weintraub is a journalist, now working as health reporter at USA Today. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American, and STAT, and she is the coauthor of The Autism Revolution and Fast Minds.

Michael Kuchta is an architect and campus planner.