Events
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18
Start: 2:00 pm
The glory days of Treadwell, Alaska once a featured stop on steamship cruises, and the beneficiary of productive goldmines on Douglas Island, were over once mining ceased early in the twentieth century. In Treadwell Gold: An Alaska Saga of Riches and Ruin (University of Alaska Press), Seattle writer Sheila Kelly, whose father and grandfather lived in Treadwell, presents first-person accounts from the sons and daughters of the miners, machinists, hoist operators, and superintendents who all dug and blasted the gold that made Treadwell rich. Alongside these stories are vintage photos that capture both the industrial vigor of the mines and the daily lives that made up Treadwell society. This is a family story that also—with its inclusion of stories about mine accidents, shipwrecks, fires, labor troubles, Native land rights struggles, and changing technology—tells an important story about the western U.S. | 19
| 20
Start: 7:00 pm
Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. Historian David Herlihy presents an illustrated talk this evening, drawn from his new book, The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). This story of Pittsburgh-based long-distance racer Frank Lenz, whose dream of cycling around the world in 1892 ended with his mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey, continues long afterward with attempts to solve the mystery and bring the accused murders to justice. "Fascinating ... Herlihy combines an admirable talent for sleuthing with the narrative skills of a first-rate storyteller." - Library Journal. David Herlihy is also the author of Bicycle: The History (Yale University Press), a long-standing reader and cyclist favorite. His work has also been featured on National Public Radio, and in The New York Times and Boston Globe. Free admission. $5 parking for the Central Library garage is available on a limited basis for those attending. The Microsoft Auditorium of the Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). For more information, please see www.spl.org or call (206) 386-4636. | 21
Start: 7:00 pm
Even without the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, award-winning Mother Jones journalist Julia Whitty's eloquent Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) would be timely and vital. The author of an earlier book, The Fragile Edge, which received the John Burroughs Medal (foremost nature writing award), the PEN/USA Award, and the Kiriyama Prize, she draws on her thirty years of work as a diver and documentary filmmaker to report on the humbling, awe-inspiring encounters one has in the depths of the oceans. "Mingling mythology and science, Whitty pulls readers into the water depths of the oceans, home to the birds, whales and other mysterious creatures that have been her lifetime passion ... This luminous prose is disturbed by accompanying reports of human-induced damage of oceanic ecosystems, where 'market economics relentlessly drives commercially desirable species towards extinction' like a modern plague, exemplified by the collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery, which caused a 'trophic cascade' transforming all aspects of the ecosystem 'from crab to zooplankton to phytoplankton to nitrates.'" - Publishers Weekly. | 22
Start: 7:00 pm
A longtime Californian who now calls Austin home, Doug Dorst visited with his smart, eye-opening debut novel, Alive in Necropolis, and now makes this welcome return for his first book of stories, The Surf Guru (Riverhead). "The Surf Guru is one of the best collections I've read in years. Formally innovative, full of humor and terror and compassion in equal measure, these stories renewed my faith in the short story as an art form. Dorst's work is utterly unique and visionary." - Dan Chaon. "The stories in The Surf Guru are unusual not just for the frequent genius of their conceits, but for the tremendous sympathy they demonstrate toward characters who struggle with love, loneliness, and disappointment. Doug Dorst writes with a big, unbridled imagination and a big, commiserating heart, and the results, by turns devastating and hilarious, are always deeply moving." - Chris Adrian. | 23
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