Daniel Brook (he/him) is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His most recent book is The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Visionary of Weimar Berlin, an illuminating portrait of a lost thinker, German-Jewish sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld. In an era when gay sex was a crime and gender roles rigid, Hirschfeld taught that each of us is their own unique mixture of masculinity and femininity. Through his public advocacy for gay rights and his private counseling of patients toward self-acceptance, he became the intellectual impresario of Berlin’s cabaret scene and helped turn his hometown into the world’s queer capital. But he also enraged the Nazis, who ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science and burned his books. Brook's evening reading/talk will be a presentation with images on Magnus Hirschfeld's prescient research and life.
