“It’s like a little scrapbook of the history of CBGB’s,” said Punk Magazine’s founding editor, John Holmstrom, at a reception for the book “CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years From the Home of Underground Rock” (Harry Abrams). The book captures the energy of the New York City punk scene at its birthplace.

CBGB’s launched the musical careers of the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, and others. For the past 31 years, the club on the Bowery has featured approximately 75 bands a week. That’s a lot of loud music. The acronyms in the book title – for the uninitiated – stand for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues & Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.”

The book features an introduction by CBGB’s owner, Hilly Kristal, and an afterword by David Byrne of the Talking Heads. It contains photos of musical acts and famous patrons including the Police, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Spinal Tap, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Springsteen, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, the Goo Goo Dolls, Iggy Pop, Live, B-52s, the Dave Matthews Band, Joan Jett, and the Strokes.

The walls of CBGB’s 313 Gallery had many photographs from the book. Rockers like Debbie Harry were both at the party and on the walls. Photographer Joe Stevens said his own favorite photo was of Johnny Rotten shooting pinball at CBGB’s during a blizzard. Rotten, he said, had at first thought, wrongly, that CBGB’s was a hippie club.

Stephanie Chernikowski had photos in the show. Her favorites included Debbie Harry blowing a kiss and Patti Smith brandishing a fist. Also present was a photographer named Godlis, who said CBGB’s still looks the same. “That’s rare for clubs. Most clubs have a half-life of about five years.”

B.J. Papas came to the event with her mother, Irene, who was making her first visit to CBGB’s. She has now seen where her daughter spent her youth, B.J. Papas said. Also seen were Danny Fields, manager of the Ramones from 1975 to 1980; musician and actor Steven Van Zandt; Charlotte Lesher, Joey Ramone’s mother; cosmetic entrepreneurs Tish and Snookie Bellomo of Manic Panic, and Tony Mann of the group She Wolves.

MTV was busy interviewing Legs McNeil, co-editor of “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk” (Penguin Books).He signed Abrams editor Tamar Brazis’s copy of the CBGB’s book as follows: “I’ll never forget last night. You were the best!”

Mr. Holmstrom said that Punk Magazine, which ran for 15 issues between 1976 and 1979, gave the punk movement its name. The Knickerbocker asked Mr. Holmstrom to define “punk music.” He said, “Loud, fast, and noisy – like your little brother.”

Vivien Goldman, has taught a course at New York University called “Classic Punk and Beyond.” Asked to describe punk, she said the music was rebellious underground music. In America, it exemplified living in a state of extended hedonism, perpetuating one’s teens years for as long as possible. But in the United Kingdom, she said, punk “was more overtly political.” Ms. Goldman’s forthcoming book is called “The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley’s Album of the Century” (Three Rivers Press).

On August 31, CBGB’s lease ends and eviction is possible, due to payment defaults and a rent increase by its landlord, the Bowery Residents’ Committee.

“I think CBGB’s should become a punk museum,” said photographer Janette Beckman, whose book “Made in the UK” (PowerHouse) comes out in September. Kabi Jorgensen of SaveCBGB.org said 100 people visit CBGB’s a day just to see the birthplace of the New York punk scene. She is trying to make CBGB’s a city landmark.

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BOMBSHELL AUTHOR

Sixty years ago this weekend, the first atomic bomb was detonated. Earlier this week at Coliseum Books, novelist Lydia Millet read from her book “Oh Pure and Radiant Heart” (Soft Skull), which imagines atom-bomb scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard as houseguests in Santa Fe, N.M., in 2003, embarking on a worldwide tour for nuclear disarmament.

In the audience was Peter Galvin, who works at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz. Also seen was Bert Aubrey, who is retired from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. His physics mentor at New York University was Benjamin Bederson, who served in the Army’s Special Engineering Detachment on Tinian Island, where the Hiroshima bomb was assembled.

The author said she had visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and met with survivors, but did not incorporate this into the book. She also said her novel was going to be translated into French, but that there was no Japanese translation planned yet.

She said that for the Manhattan Project physicists and others who witnessed the first atomic tests, “it was a moment they felt in the pit of their stomachs.” As they later sought to describe the mushroom cloud, she said, “scientists turned into poets,” using various metaphors and similes.

During the question and answer period, Ms. Millet was asked, “Are you hopeful?” The author responded: “I think the word ‘hope’ is misused in a facile way too often in American culture. What about ‘reason’? Let’s move beyond hope and use more reason.”