Non-Fiction: East Meets West Night

Nina Burleigh (Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt) + Zachary Karabell (Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence in the Middle East)

Nina Burleigh is the author of three nonfiction books, including The Stranger and the Statesman, about the mysterious life of 18th Century scientist James Smithson, and A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Mary Meyer, the true story of the unsolved murderof an American aristocrat in 1964, set in the bizarre and exclusive world of the wives of the Cold Warriors in Washington, D.C. Her newest book, Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (HarperCollins, 2007), chronicles the first large-scale interaction between Western civilians and Islam in the modern era. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in Time, People, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Details, the New York Observer, Elle, More, Jane, the Huffington post, Salon, and other publications. She is currently a staff writer at People Magazine in New York covering human interest stories, and an adjunct professor of journalism at ColumbiaUniversity.

Zachary Karabell was educated at Columbia; at Oxford, where he received a master’s degree in modern Middle Eastern studies; and at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Dartmouth. He is the author of several books, including The Last Campaign, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for best nonfiction book of the year. His essays and reviews have appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Foreign Affairs. He lives in New York City.

The KGB Nonfiction Reading Series is the city's premier outlet for the most talented contemporary nonfiction writers working today. Hosted by Kelly McMasters and Lisa Selin Davis, books are provided by Mobile Libris.