The book, Sacrifices Not Forgotten was written by Vietnam Veteran John Kinzinger to honor the 76 Washtenaw County servicemen who were missing or killed in action in Vietnam. This will be a heart-to-heart conversation about the Ypsilanti Memorial dedicated to their service and the book that tells their stories The Memorial is on the grounds of the Ypsilanti Township Civic Center, at 7200 South Huron River Drive. This program is free and open to the public. Bring a friend.
Award-winning filmmaker and author Bridgett M. Davis grew up in Detroit with a secret—one she continued to safeguard into her adult years. Her family’s livelihood was entirely dependent on her mother’s business— a hugely successful underground lottery known as The Numbers, which her mother ran for over three decades from her dining room table.
Davis has written an exquisite memoir of her mother in The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers. Join us as she discusses her mother, the family secret, and this critically-acclaimed new memoir.
Bridgett M. Davis is a Professor of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College, CUNY, where she teaches creative, film, and narrative writing. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she is the director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts and the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow and Shifting Through Neutral.
This event includes a signing with books for sale.
Literati Bookstore is pleased to be on hand to sell books as OLLI Reads, in Collaboration with Michigan Humanities’ Great Michigan Read, presents Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, discussing her Book What the Eyes Don’t See – A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City.
What the Eyes Don’t See is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, is the founder and director of the Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, an innovative and model public health program in Flint. Currently an associate professor of pediatrics and human development at the MSU College of Human Medicine, she has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for her role in uncovering the Flint water crisis and leading recovery efforts. She was one of the first to question whether lead was leaching from the city’s water pipes after an emergency manager switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River in 2014.
OLLI Reads invites OLLI members to read together and discuss two books a year, non-fiction in the fall, fiction in the spring. This fall we are collaborating with Great Michigan Read, and other community partners, to enjoy participating in a wider project. Michigan Humanities’ Great Michigan Read creates a statewide discussion each year on the humanities themes of a selected book. Through partnerships with libraries, schools, book clubs, and a wide range of other non-profit organizations, the Great Michigan Read facilitates statewide reading and programs to bridge communities with a common conversation.
9:30am Coffee
10:00-11:00am Discussion with Mona Hanna-Attisha, followed by Q&A
11:00am-Noon Light Lunch and Book Signing
This event is free and open to the public; advanced registration is required and seating is limited. To register for this event or for more information, please contact olli.info@umich.edu or call 734-998-9351.
In The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum explores the alarming state of food production in early 20th-century America and the titanic battle to make food safe.
At the end of the nineteenth century, food in the United States often contained dangerous, even lethal, ingredients. Then, in 1883, chemistry professor Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley was named chief chemist of the U.S. agriculture department, and under his leadership, the agency began methodically investigating food and drink safety through scientific experiments. Unchecked by government guidelines, basic safety, or even labeling requirements, food manufacturers brazenly sold adulterated products, from expired meats to brown sugar laced with ground insects. In the face of this rampant corruption, the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley was determined to take on powerful corporations and political interests in pursuit of food safety legislation. Over the next thirty years, he campaigned indefatigably for consumer protection, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, “The Poison Squad.” This remarkable story underscores the importance of food and drug safety, Harvey Washington Wiley’s work reminds us of the need for citizen crusaders who are unafraid to defend the systems that protect consumers.
Deborah Blum is director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, and editor of Undark magazine, (undark.org). In 1992, she won the Pulitzer Prize for a series on primate research, which she turned into a book, The Monkey Wars. Her other books include The Poisoner’s Handbook, Ghost Hunters, Love at Goon Park, and Sex on the Brain. She has written for publications including The New York Times, Wired, Time, Discover, Mother Jones, The Guardian and The Boston Globe. Blum is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a lifetime associate of the National Academy of Sciences.
Literati Bookstore is pleased to be on hand to booksell as James Poniewozik visits the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown branch. The event will take place in the lobby and is free and open to the public.
About the book: In his new book Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America, New York Times’s James Poniewozik argues that what made Donald Trump isn’t simply business or politics or populism. To understand President Trump, Poniewozik states, we need to understand modern television itself. In this new book, he breaks down the medium in fresh, piercing ways, finding the parallels between television’s forty-year fracturing and Trump’s ascendancy from gossip item to reality star. Poniewozik traces the culture’s growing fascination with antiheroes and celebrity and demonstrates just how far that has extended into Trump’s presidency.
James Poniewozik has been the chief television critic of the New York Times since 2015. He was previously the television and media critic for Time and a media columnist for Salon. This event includes a signing with books for sale.
AADL hosts best-selling YA author Nic Stone to discuss her latest title, Jackpot. What would winning the lottery mean to you? Nic Stone provides a close view at this thought through the eyes of teenager Rico in Jackpot. Taking care of her little brother, working every day to help her mother with the bills, and keeping up with her schoolwork is Rico’s life these days, and she is feeling anything but lucky. But can a winning lottery ticket change everything?
Nic Stone is the author of the New York Times bestselling Dear Martin. Her second novel, Odd One Out, was hailed as “essential reading” in a starred review from Booklist. Jackpot, her third novel, is a life-affirming story about the humanity in people, no matter how little or how much is in their bank account. In January 2020, Nic will debut in the middle grade arena with Clean Getaway.
This event is in partnership with Literati Bookstore and includes a signing with books for sale.
Clara Parkes, best-selling author on knitting and wool, comes to AADL to discuss her new book Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool, a fast-paced account of the year Parkes spent transforming a 676-pound bale of fleece into saleable yarn, and the people and vanishing industry she discovered along the way. Vanishing Fleece is a travel guide seen through the lens of wool, while telling an inspiring story about American culture.
Author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellingKnitlandia, Clara Parkes has dedicated her life to figuring ourt what makes yarn tick and finding the right words to write about it. Through her writings, workshops and appearances, Clara champions the notion of paying closer attention to what you knit and where it came from. She lives in Portland, Maine.
This event includes a signing with books for sale.
Skazat! is back, and have we got a season lined up for you! Join us at Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea Washington St. on September 24 to celebrate with fabulous poetry and tasty treats. Whether you’re a page poet, slammer, performance artist or refuse a label, we want to hear your new stuff on our open mic. We look forward to sharing great poetry (and great coffee) with you and invite you to join this free open mic and monthly reading series!
Sign up! 7:00 p.m.
7:15 p.m. – Open mic
8:00 p.m. – Featured Reader
This month’s feature: BRYAN THAO WORRA
Charles Eisendrath, retired University of Michigan Knight-Wallace journalism fellows director
Professor Eisendrath discusses his new book “Downstream from Here: A Big Life in a Small Place”, a series of essays about the loves of a place inhabited temporarily, but which shape a person permanently. “Prepare to be inspired.” –JEFF DANIELS
