Join us for a conversation with award winning writer Simon Winchester about his brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does Rene Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum—“I think therefore I am,” the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment—still hold? And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise? 

In-Person Event: $10 non-members, $5 members. REGISTER HERE.  

Livestream: $5 non-members, free for members. REGISTER HERE.  

Copies of Knowing What We Know are available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so. 

_____________________________________________________________ 

 About the Author: Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Land, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts. 

About the Moderator: Bridget Quinn is the CEO of Hartford Public Library and serves as secretary of The Mark Twain House & Museum’s Board of Trustees.