2026
Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors
Some book events are about looking for your next book, while others are about meeting the people who make those books possible. Bookmarks Festival of Books & Authors brings both together, creating a place where readers can meet writers, listen to their stories, and enjoy books with other people who love them. The festival has become the largest annual book festival in the Carolinas, welcoming more than 30,000 attendees each year and bringing together authors from different parts of the country.
The value of the festival comes from the simple connection between readers and authors. With talks, discussions, signings, and events for different ages, Bookmarks gives people a chance to experience books in a more personal way. The 2026 festival is also bringing well-known voices such as John Green for its opening keynote and Jodi Picoult for its closing keynote, giving readers even more reasons to come together around stories.
For Kravitz and Sons, being part of a celebration like this means more than simply putting books on display. It means giving our authors and their stories another chance to meet readers who may be looking for something new.
And speaking of stories worth discovering, Human Nature and the Potential in Nurture by David L. Hawk brings its own special idea to the festival. The book looks at the connection between humans and nature, asking how the way people treat each other can also affect the way they treat the natural world. It takes readers into questions about threats, regulation, human behavior, and the problems that happen when people try to solve every issue by forcing control instead of finding better ways to work together. As we take a closer look at the book, it is also the perfect time to learn about the author whose work has crossed engineering, architecture, planning, business, education, and systems science.
A Career Built Across Many Fields
A person who has studied engineering, architecture, city planning, and corporate planning already has a lot of different ways to look at the world. David L. Hawk went even further. Born and raised on an Iowa farm, Hawk later earned degrees across several fields before completing a PhD in Systems Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. His doctoral research became an important part of the ideas behind this book, with research carried out in Sweden through the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics. The project involved 20 firms and six governments, giving his research a much wider view than a simple classroom study.
His career also took him far beyond one country or one profession. Hawk worked on the 1972 Olympic Competition winner in Stuttgart, Germany, served as a city planner for Westminster City Council in London, and worked as a city designer with a Philadelphia firm. He later taught at universities in the United States, Sweden, Finland, Japan, England, and China. He also served as an associate dean of an architecture school during its first accreditation and later became dean of a business school that received recognition as the most improved AACSB business school.
When Human Problems Become Nature's Problems
At the center of Human Nature and the Potential in Nurture is a question that sounds simple but can get complicated very quickly: How do humans treat each other, and how does that affect the way we treat nature? Hawk begins with the relationship between people and the wilderness, looking at how disrespect toward the natural world can grow into larger environmental damage. From there, the book moves into the way people try to control one another through rules, threats, and pressure.
The book’s main idea is that threats do not always fix problems. In fact, Hawk’s research argues that using threats as a way to control relationships can make those relationships worse. The same problem can then carry over into the relationship between humans and nature. Instead of simply asking how to control the environment, the book asks readers to think about how human behavior created some of these problems in the first place.
The setting of the book is not one single place. It moves through research, business, government, education, human relationships, and the natural environment. The people involved in the research, including corporations and governments, become part of a much bigger look at how decisions are made and how those decisions can affect others. The lesson is not simply about saving nature. It is also about understanding people. If humans keep using fear, threats, and force to solve problems, the problems may only grow. Hawk instead pushes readers to think about better relationships, better choices, and better ways of working together. And honestly, that is a topic that still feels pretty close to home today.
A Book That Makes You Look Twice
Human Nature and the Potential in Nurture is the kind of book that gives readers something to think about after the page is finished. It connects human behavior, nature, leadership, business, and the problems of control in a way that comes from decades of research and real-world experience. For readers interested in environmental issues, leadership, systems thinking, or the way people affect the world around them, David L. Hawk’s work offers a different way to look at problems that many people already see every day.
Human Nature and the Potential in Nurture
A thoughtful look at human behavior, nature, and the choices that shape both. Explore the Book