Elizabeth Kolbert, climate journalist and author of “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change” will be the featured speaker for the fall 2008 Mary Catherine Gerhold Annual Lecture in the Humanities.
The Gerhold lecture selection committee chose Kolbert as the featured speaker because of her book’s focus on global warming and sustainability. The book was chosen as this year's common reading assignment for incoming first-year students in concert with the Unified Theme, "Seeing the World's Need; Taking the Next Step."
In 2006, it was selected as one of the 100 notable books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.
In “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” Kolbert chronicles her travels from Alaska to Greenland, where she visited with top scientists and documented the observations of longtime locals to bring new understanding to the debate over global warming. Kolbert simplifies the science, studies and politics of the issue, and reports the personal accounts of those who live near the poles.
The book grew out of a National Magazine Award-winning three-part series that appeared in The New Yorker, where Kolbert has been a staff writer since 1999. Her series on global warming, “The Climate of Man,” appeared in spring 2005 and has won the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences magazine award and the 2006 National Academy of Sciences Communication Award for magazines and newspapers.
The lecture will be at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 15, in Mess Hall, located on the Capital University campus, 1 College and Main in Bexley. It is free and open to the public.
Edward L. and Mary Catherine Gerhold established the Mary Catherine Gerhold Annual Lecture in the Humanities at Capital University to promote peace and human understanding through higher education. Funds from the endowment also support symposia, conferences, study projects and other scholarly activities in Mrs. Gerhold’s honor.
The couple also established an endowed chair in the humanities at Capital. They were longtime Bexley residents, and Edward Gerhold was a lifelong Lutheran. The Gerholds were awarded honorary alumni status in 1996.
For more information, please call Dr. Kay B. Slocum, professor of history and Gerhold Professor of Humanities, at (614) 236-6286.