Chandler Davis & Joshua Lukin, It Walks In Beauty

Talking Leaves…Books is pleased to welcome author Chandler Davis and editor Joshua Lukin to our Main Street store on Wednesday, August 11, at 7 pm to celebrate publication of It Walks in Beauty (Aqueduct Press), a selection of Davis’s writings on science, politics, human rights, and of some of his groundbreaking science fiction stories. Copies of the book will be available for purchase; the reading and book signing is free and open to the public.

In 1953, the Harvard-educated mathematician Chandler Davis was served with a subpoena as a result of his having paid for the printing of a pamphlet critical of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His subsequent ordeal included the loss of his job at the University of Michigan and a six-month imprisonment in 1960 for contempt of Congress. Blacklisted from full-time academic jobs in the US, he ultimately found employment in 1962 at the University of Toronto, where he is now an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics. It Walks in Beauty features Professor Davis’s essays and speeches on academic freedom, human rights, the social responsibilities of scientists, and the legacy of the Red Scare in U.S. politics, as well as several of his science fiction stories, which probe such social and political issues as nuclear escalation, gender roles, and eugenics.

In addition to his lifelong activism as a civil libertarian, Davis is a poet, a composer, and a trustee of the Davis-Putter scholarship fund, founded by his father in 1961 to award grants to students working for peace and social justice. He also leads an annual workshop on Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science at Canada's Banff Centre.
Joshua Lukin, who earned his PhD in English at UB and currently teaches at Temple University, includes a long interview with Davis, along with critical and historical background, to round out this stellar collection, which has earned this advance praise:

Although Chandler Davis has published less than a score of science-fiction short stories, some of us have long treasured them as brilliant gems. Josh Lukin's thoughtful collection of Davis's fiction and nonfiction offers 21st-century readers a fine introduction to the work of this neglected and invaluable writer.
— H. Bruce Franklin, author of War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination and Vietnam and Other American Fantasies