HOWARD MARKEL, M.D., Ph.D., is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, and editor in chief of The Milbank Quarterly. His books include Quarantine!, When Germs Travel, and An Anatomy of Addiction. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Markel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Book: The Kelloggs: Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
From the much admired medical historian (“Markel shows just how compelling the medical history can be”–Andrea Barrett) and author of An Anatomy of Addiction (“Absorbing, vivid”–Sherwin Nuland, The New York Times Book Review, front page)–the story of America’s empire builders: John and Will Kellogg. John Harvey Kellogg was one of America’s most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother, Will, was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which revolutionized the mass production of food and what we eat for breakfast. In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping saga of these two extraordinary men, whose lifelong competition and enmity toward one another changed America’s notion of health and wellness from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and who helped change the course of American medicine, nutrition, wellness, and diet.
Part of the 30th Annual Jewish Book and Arts Festival, $
U.S. News correspondent Ken Walsh, one of the longest-serving White House correspondents in history, discusses his new book about presidential photographers and their power to define an era and make or break a presidential administration. Book sale, signing, and reception.
7 p.m., Ford Library, 1000 Beal. Free. 205-0555.
Sweetwaters and Toastmaster community members are creating a new Toastmasters Club at Sweetwaters! We will have 1 or 2 prepared speeches, showcase some of our (kind, encouraging and gentle) evaluations of the speeches, and some opportunities for people to have impromptu speaking fun. There will also be a chance for Q & A during the meeting too.
Come a little early and pick-up a beverage or snack from the cafe and have fun making new friendships with encouraging and supportive people!
Sweetwaters Washington St., 123 W. Washington St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Free.joshs@sweetwaterscafe.com https://www.facebook.com/events/1053675414768433/
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writers Michelle Cheever and poet Colin Walker.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 764-6330
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Nov. 4 & 18. All adults and teens in grade 9 & up invited to work on their novel for this nonprofit promotion (also known as National Novel Writing Month) challenging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.
1-3 p.m., AADL Westgate Branch West Side Room, Westgate shopping center, 2503 Jackson. Free. 327-8301.
Readings by 9 authors being published by the AADL’s new imprint. Books and authors include Rebecca G. Biber’s Technical Solace (poetry), Virginia Ford’s Ginger Stands Her Ground (memoir), R.J Fox’s Tales From the Dork Side (memoir), Meg Gower’s Michigan Moon (picture book), Jeff Kass’s Takedown (murder mystery), Carolyn Nowak’s Chad Agamemnon (locally set graphic novel), Rich Retyi’s The Book of Ann Arbor: An Extremely Serious History Book, Emily Siwek’s A Monster on Main Street (locally set picture book), and Judy Patterson Wenzel’s Light from the Cage: 25 Years in a Prison Classroom.
1-3 p.m., AADL 3rd floor, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555.
U-M percussion professor Michael Gould performs his compositions, inspired by recently retired RC instructor Ken Mikolowski’s poems, that revolve around his own experiences with loss, illness, and recovery. With narration by U-M theater professor Malcolm Tulip, and dance accompaniment by the Berlin-based Tangente Dance Company choreographed by U-M dance professor Amy Chavasse. The project title takes its inspiration from the “Dido’s Lament” aria from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Local mezzo-soprano Deanna Relyea opens the program with a performance of the aria, accompanied by cellist Katri Ervamaa.
7 p.m., U-M Residential College Keene Theater, East Quad, 701 East University. Free. 763-0176
Literati is excited to host a discussion of German author Siegfried Kracauer’s novel Georg. We will be joined by the translator Carl Skoggard, publisher Patrick KIley, and Chair of the Department of German Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan, Johannes von Moltke
About Georg:
Best remembered today for his brilliant study of early German cinema, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological Study of the German Film, and for his involvement with the Frankfurt School (he mentored Theodor Adorno), Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) was the editor for cultural affairs at Germany’s leading liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung, during the Weimar Republic until its disastrous end.
His novel Georg is a panorama of those years, as seen through the eyes of a rookie reporter working for the fictional Morgenbote (Morning Herald). In a defeated nation seething with extremism right and left, young Georg is looking for something to believe in. For him, the past has become unusable; for nearly everyone he meets, paradise seems just around the corner. But which paradise? Kracauer’s grimly funny novel takes on a confused and dangerous time which may remind us of our own.
Carl Skoggard was trained as a musicologist and for many years served as an editor for the music bibliography Repértoire International de la Littérature Musicale (RILM), New York, where he was responsible for German materials. His translation of Ein Jahr in Arkadien, an 1805 gay fiction by Duke August of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg, appeared in 1999 as Year in Arcadia. More recently he was also the staff writer for Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, an award-winning magazine created by his partner Joseph Holtzman. Over the last decade Skoggard has prepared translations with extensive commentary for the three major autobiographically-oriented writings of the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin. These include Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin Childhood circa 1900), Berliner Chronik (The ‘Berlin Chronicle’ Notices), and a bilingual edition of Benjamin’s Sonnets, which has made this little-known but important body of poetry available to readers of English for the first time. Skoggard’s latest project, is a translation of Siegfried Kracauer’s Weimar novel Georg. This is a brilliantly cinematic, darkly comic evocation of that troubled era. Skoggard lives in Valatie, New York, with Holtzman and assorted animals.
Patrick Kiley is a UofM Grad (English, ’02) and has served as a research curator and writer for books and exhibitions at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the New York Public Library. In 2014 he opened Publication Studio Hudson, one of several in a network of on-demand book publishers in the Americas and Europe. PS Hudson focuses especially on prose, poetry, artist books and translation. PS Hudson and Patrick have since moved slightly north to Troy, New York.
Johannes von Moltke is the Chair of the German Department at U-M and the author, most recently, of The Curious Humanist: Siegfried Kracauer in America.
Literati is thrilled to launch the latest book from New York Times-betselling author John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion. This event, on November 7th, 2017, at 7pm in Rackham Audiotorium, is free and open to the public. Literati Bookstore will be on hand to sell copies of the book, which is releasing the day of the event. Following the book talk will be a Q&A and signing. There are no tickets associated with this free event, but we encourage you to RSVP on Facebook.
About the Book: On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship, including 2,300 tons of picric acid, an unstable, poisonous chemical more powerful than TNT. The U.S. had just recently entered World War I, and the ordnance was bound for the battlefields of France, to help the Allies break the grueling stalemate that had protracted the fighting for nearly four demoralizing years. The explosives were so dangerous that Captain Aimé Le Medec took unprecedented safety measures, including banning the crew from smoking, lighting matches, or even touching a drop of liquor.
Sailing north, the Mont-Blanc faced deadly danger, enduring a terrifying snowstorm off the coast of Maine and evading stealthy enemy U-boats hunting the waters of the Atlantic. But it was in Nova Scotia that an extraordinary disaster awaited. As the Mont-Blanc waited to dock in Halifax, it was struck by a Norwegian relief ship, the Imo, charging out of port. A small fire on the freighter’s deck caused by the impact ignited the explosives below, resulting in a horrific blast that, in one fifteenth of a second, leveled 325 acres of Halifax—killing more than 1,000 people and wounding 9,000 more.
In this definitive account, Bacon combines research and eyewitness accounts to re-create the tragedy and its aftermath, including the international effort to rebuild the devastated port city. As he brings to light one of the most dramatic incidents of the twentieth century, Bacon explores the long shadow this first “weapon of mass destruction” would cast on the future of nuclear warfare— crucial insights and understanding relevant to us today.
About John U. Bacon: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Three and Out (“An epic piece of reporting” — New York magazine); Fourth and Long (“Wonderfully reported, engagingly written, and utterly persuasive.”— Daniel Okrent), and Endzone. He appears often on NPR and national TV, and teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan. He lives in Ann Arbor, with his wife and son.
Nov. 7 & 21. Monthly open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. Nov. themes: “Promises” (Nov. 7) & “Revelations” (Nov. 21). The 3 teams of judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. $8. 764-5118.
