Tracy Kidder • Nicholas Kristof • Dr. Wangari Maathai
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Wednesday, September 9th
(7:30 pm, McGaw)
Over his long career, Kidder’s writing has been prolific and outstanding. The Soul of New Machine– a book celebrated for its insight into the world of high tech cooperate America-earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award in 1982. His enormously influential book, Mountains Beyond Mountains captures two global health crisis, tuberculosis and AIDS through the eyes of a single-minded physician bent on improving the health of some of the poorest people on the planet. Tracy Kidders’ writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Granata and the New York Times Book Review and The New York Times op-ed page.
Half the Sky
Tuesday, September 22th
(7:30 pm, McGaw)
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist
for The New York Times since November 2001, writes op-ed columns that appear twice each week. A two time Pulitzer Prize winner, he previously was associate managing editor of The Times, responsible for the Sunday Times. He is temporarily on leave to write a book with his wife about women in the developing wold. Kristof has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Clubaward, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News association award, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn are authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power and Thunder from the East:Portraits of a Rising Asia.
The Greenbelt Movement
Tuesday, September 29
(7:30 pm, McGaw)
Wngari Maathi was born in 1940 in Kenya. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai pioneered the concept of mobilizing communities to protect their environment through tree planting in 1976, while an active member of the National Council of Women of Kenya. A year later, she developed this idea into a grassroots organization, the Green Belt Movement. Dr. MAathai’s memoir, unbowed, shows that she is a magnificent and courageous leader who stood up for the oppressed and provided hope for better tomorrows. In 2004, Dr. Maathai was awarded the prestigious Noble Peace Prize for her “contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”, steaming from her work on community empowerment and environmental conservation. She is the first African woman to receive this prestigious award.
