Award-Winning Author to Speak at Koeppel Community Sports Center
HARTFORD, Conn. – Elizabeth Kolbert, the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, will be the featured speaker as part of the First-Year Reading Initiative on Friday, September 4, as the Class of 2013 prepares to embark on their collegiate careers. Kolbert will address students at 4 p.m. in the Koeppel Community Sports Center on New Britain Avenue.
Her book, which grew out off a groundbreaking three-part series in The New Yorker, was assigned to the incoming students as their first reading assignment at Trinity. The book was selected by a faculty committee because of its relevance to contemporary life and for the lucidity of its prose.
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Elizabeth Kolbert (photo by Donald Usner) |
In a letter to the members of the First-Year class, Trinity President James F. Jones, Jr., wrote, “The book is often compared to Rachel Carson’s seminal
Silent Spring, which came out in the early 1960s and which was a key element in starting the environmental movement. Nearly 50 years later, Kolbert again offers us an urgent call to action. As you prepare to go on from Trinity and assume the leadership roles that many of you surely will have, I can think of no more appropriate opening reading assignment than this thought-provoking book.”
Not only will Kolbert welcome the members of the Class of 2013 with her semester-opening address, but she will return to campus as their commencement speaker in four years.
In writing her book, Kolbert traveled from Alaska to Greenland, visiting top scientists and cutting to the chase in the debate over global warming. The original three-part series in
The New Yorker won the 2005 National Magazine Award in the Public Interest category.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe brings the environment into the consciousness of Americans and asks what, if anything, can be done to save the planet. She explains the science and the studies, drawing frightening parallels to ancient civilizations. She also presents the material in nonpartisan fashion, and tells the personal tales of those who are most affected – the people who make their homes near the poles and are watching their worlds disappear.
The thrust of her book is that the Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the past 420,000 years and is on the brink of unprecedented “climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience.”
Field Notes from a Catastrophe was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year (2006) by The New York Times Book Review.
Kolbert has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999. She has written dozens of pieces for the magazine, including profiles of Hillary Rodham Clinton (who is now Secretary of State); New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
In addition to being named a Notable Book by The New York Times, Field Notes from a Catastrophe won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine award, as well as the 2006 National Academy of Sciences Communications Award in the newspaper/magazine category. Her stories have also appeared in Vogue and Mother Jones and have been anthologized in “The Best American Science and Nature Writing” and “The Best American Political Writing.”
Prior to joining the staff of The New Yorker, Kolbert was a political reporter for The New York Times. She is a graduate of Yale University, and lives in Williamstown, Mass., with her husband and three sons.
This event is open to the campus community.