Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for one of our favorite authors, Mary Roach, who’ll discuss her latest book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, at the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library.
Much of military science is necessarily preoccupied with the study of violence, the development of strategy, of weapons and armaments, of warfare. But not all the battles of war involve drone technology and Bradley Personnel Vehicle. On a daily basis, soldiers also fight more esoteric battles against less considered adversaries—for example, exhaustion, shock, panic, disease, extreme heat, cataclysmic noise, gastrointestinal distress, and assorted waterfowl. In Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, America’s favorite science writer Mary Roach explores those aspects of war that no one makes movies about–not the killing but the keeping alive.
Grunt salutes the scientists and surgeons running along in the wake of combat, lab coats flapping and celebrates the courage of people like Navy flight surgeon Angus Rupert, who flew blindfolded and upside down to test a vibrating suit designed to help pilots fly by feel should they become blinded or disoriented, and Captain Herschel Flowers of the Army Medical Research Laboratory, who injected himself with cobra venom to test the possibility of building immunity. With her characteristic sense of humor, her indefatigable enthusiasm, and her sharp eye for telling detail, Roach, as always, proves to be the ideal tour guide. When it comes to military history, not all heroes carry guns, and not all heroism happens in a burst of cinematic glory. In Grunt, the heroes engage in dizzying flights of unorthodox thinking. They experiment with flame-resistant textiles, zippers, earplugs, shark repellent, and erectile tissue. If necessary, they lob chickens at airplanes.
Mary Roach is the New York Times best-selling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. She lives in Oakland, California.
Robert Justin Goldstein is emeritus professor of political science at Oakland University. His many books include Flag Burning and Free Speech: The Case of Texas v. Johnson and American Blacklist: The Attorney General s List of Subversive Organizations, both from Kansas.
Literati is thrilled to welcome Brit Bennett back to Ann Arbor in support of her debut novel, The Mothers, a staff pick and our Literati Cultura selection for October. Brit will be joined in conversation by Chris McCormick, the author of Desert Boys.
Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett’s mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. “All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we’d taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season.”
It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it’s not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt.
In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a “what if” can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.
Reading by high school poets in the after-school program Citywide Poets Detroit,including members of the 2016 Detroit Youth Poetry Slam Team. The program begins with open mike readings.
Literati is pleased to welcome Christine Sneed and Grace Tiffany, reading from their latest work.
Christine Sneed is the author, most recently, of The Virginity of Famous Men. Her story collection Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry won the Grace Paley Prize, Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis Prize, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her debut novel Little Known Facts won the Society of Midland Authors award for best adult fiction and was named a top ten debut novel of 2013 by Booklist. Her latest novel is Paris, He Said. Sneed teaches at Northwestern University and DePaul University and lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Grace Tiffany is the author of six historical novels set in the Renaissance or Middle Ages, including Will (Berkley 2004), My Father Had a Daughter (Berkley 2003), Ariel (HarperCollins 2005), The Turquoise Ring (Berkley 2005), Paint (Bagwyn Books 2013), and Gunpowder Percy (ACMRS 2016). A Shakespeare scholar and editor, a professor of English at Western Michigan University, and the author of two nonfiction works on Renaissance literature and culture, Grace Tiffany uses fiction as an additional medium for exploring the early modern world
Geraldine Markel, PhD, a board certified executive coach, enhances leadership and workplace productivity. As principal of Managing Your Mind Coaching & Seminars, Geri provides systematic processes to enhance business performance and profits. Geri helps leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners cut to core issues and apply practical strategies to move from good intentions to cost-effective actions. Her style of providing feedback using compassionate candor leads to accelerated learning and change.
Dr. Markel is an educational psychologist and served as faculty in the School of Education and as seminar leader of the Instructional Design Workshop at the Executive Education Center, School of Business, University of Michigan. For over 15 years, she helped develop instructor-led and self-directed learning materials to enhance performance, productivity and effectiveness for corporate, governmental and educational organizations. As a consultant and trainer, Geri worked with companies such as Ford Motor Company, Disney Corporation, and Department of Agriculture. As a speaker, she has worked at corporate offices of VIACOM, Time Warner, Merrill Lynch, and TIAA-CREF; educational institutions such as University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Michigan State University; and law firms such as Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Kelly, Drye & Warren.
She is an award winning author; her most recent books are:
Actions Against Distractions: Managing Your Scattered, Distracted and Forgetful Mind
Defeating the 8 Demons of Distraction: Proven Strategies to Increase Productivity and Reduce Stress
Finding Happiness with Aristotle as Your Guide: Action Strategies Based on 10 Timeless Ideas
Finding Your Focus: Practical Strategies for the Everyday Problems Facing Adults with ADD
This event will take place on Literati’s main floor.
Literati and the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School are pleased to welcome Rackham alumna Melanie Sinche to discuss her latest book, Next Gen PhD: A Guide to Career Paths in Science.
For decades, top scientists in colleges and universities pursued a clear path to success: enroll in a prestigious graduate program, conduct research, publish papers, complete the PhD, pursue postdoctoral work. With perseverance and a bit of luck, a tenure-track professorship awaited at the end. In today’s academic job market, this scenario represents the exception. As the number of newly conferred science PhDs keeps rising, the number of tenured professorships remains stubbornly stagnant. Only 14 percent of those with PhDs in science occupy tenure-track positions five years after completing their degree.
Next Gen PhD provides a frank and up-to-date assessment of the current career landscape facing science PhDs. Nonfaculty careers once considered Plan B are now preferred by the majority of degree holders, says Melanie Sinche. An upper-level science degree is a prized asset in the eyes of many employers, and a majority of science PhDs build rewarding careers both inside and outside the university. A certified career counselor with extensive experience working with graduate students and postdocs, Sinche offers step-by-step guidance through the career development process: identifying personal strengths and interests, building work experience and effective networks, assembling job applications, and learning tactics for interviewing and negotiating—all the essentials for making a successful career transition.
Sinche profiles science PhDs across a wide range of disciplines who share proven strategies for landing the right occupation. Current graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, mentors, and students considering doctoral and postdoctoral training in the sciences will find Next Gen PhD an empowering resource.
Melanie V. Sinche is Director of Education at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including Rwandan fiction writer Clarisse Baleja Saidi, who writes about homes and faithfulness, and Academy of American Poets Prize winner Courtney Faye Taylor.
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.
All invited to listen to guild members swap stories or bring their own to tell.
Literati is thrilled to welcome artist Michele Oka Doner in support of her most recent work, Into the Mysterium, a book that reveals the wondrous marine creatures deep in the heart of the endangered oceans that cover most of our planet.
With the oceans covering over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, our planet can be called a marine planet. Beneath the waves are millions of remarkable creatures—beautiful big whales, dangerous jellyfish, legions of phytoplankton—but also, perhaps least known, are the marine invertebrates who make up an essential part of marine life. At the University of Miami, Florida, one museum is devoted to the study of Atlantic and Eastern Pacific marine invertebrates—over 93,000 specimens. Many of them were pulled from the Gulf of Panama, throughout the Caribbean, the Florida Keys, and the eastern Pacific over the last fifty years. They represent creatures that may never be seen again as the oceans grow ever more polluted and as global warming wreaks havoc on these ecosystems. Here, in lavishly beautifully photographs, nearly 100 of the rarest, most wondrous, mystifying, and entrancing specimens are brought into the light. From rare seahorses to now extinct corals, these invertebrates leave one gasping again at the extraordinary beauty and mystery of our world.
Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans four decades. The breadth of her artistic production encompasses sculpture, furniture, jewelry, public art, functional objects, video, as well as costume and set design. She is well-known for creating numerous public art installations throughout the United States, including Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square subway, Flight at Washington’s Reagan International Airport, and A Walk on the Beach at the Miami International Airport. Her artwork can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Louvre, the Yale Art Gallery, the Princeton University Art Museum, and many others. (Author photo: Bruce Weber.)
