For thousands of years people mostly avoided the lava fields of Idaho. Artifacts indicate that native people passed through, but they did not remain for long due to the lack of water. Later the trails that the Shoshone-Bannock created around the northern edge of the lava provided a path for Oregon bound migrants and ultimately highway motorists. Eventually curiosity about this unknown area led scientists and others to seek it out. In the 1920s, Robert Limbert explored the area and shared his adventures with a wider audience through his photography and writing. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge established Craters of the Moon National Monument, ushering in a new era of National Park Service management. Three other presidents expanded the boundary, leading to a much larger Monument and Preserve. Ted Stout, author of the new book, “Craters of the Moon National Monument,” celebrates more than one hundred years of Craters of the Moon’s history with this engaging presentation. To illustrate the presentation, Stout draws extensively from park archives as well as collections at Boise State University, the USGS and other institutions. This program will be livestreamed and recorded for later viewing. Books will be available for sale and a book signing …
“A Future We Can Love” with Susan Bauer-Wu
When the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg spoke for the first time in January 2021, millions of people around the world took notice. “It is encouraging to see how you have opened the eyes of the world to the urgency to protect our planet, our only home,” the Dalai Lama wrote to Greta before their meeting. In her new book, “A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts and Minds,” Susan Bauer-Wu shares the words of these two great figures, generations apart, bringing them into dialogue with cutting-edge climate scientists, activists, and spiritual leaders to start a world-changing conversation. Readers embark on a four-part journey toward active hope in the face of the climate crisis: from knowledge of climate science through the capacity for change, to the will that is needed and the actions we can take. In partnership with the Flourish Foundation. Registration is recommended to save your seat. Book signing to follow. This event will be livestreamed and available to view later. Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the president of the Mind & Life Institute, which serves as the primary convener, catalyst and community builder for the …
Hemingway Distinguished Lecture: LUIS ALBERTO URREA
The annual Hemingway Distinguished Lecture is presented each July, honoring the month of Ernest Hemingway’s birth and death. The event celebrates the power of words and the creative spirit in a landscape that Hemingway loved. This year, The Community Library welcomes LUIS ALBERTO URREA: hailed by NPR as a “literary badass” and a “master storyteller with a rock and roll heart,” Urrea is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. A 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Urrea is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 17 books, including “Good Night, Irene” (2023), “The House of Broken Angels” (2018), “Into the Beautiful North” (2009), “The Hummingbird’s Daughter” (2005), and “The Devil’s Highway” (2004). Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.” Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana and a film …
Cruising to Idaho via the Columbia and the Snake Rivers with Marc Onetto In-Person
In 2021, as the border with Canada was still closed, Marc Onetto decided to head south and reach Idaho with his boat. This cruise took him from Seattle to the open Pacific Ocean off the Washington coast, to the famous bar at the Columbia River estuary and Astoria where the river cruise began. The 450-mile river navigation included 8 locks on the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers before he finally arrived in Lewiston, Idaho, at an elevation of 740 feet. Marc will share this navigation adventure and many beautiful pictures from the Columbia gorge waterfalls to semi-desertic landscapes in Eastern Washington and Oregon. In his talk Marc will also cover the controversial topic of the impact of the dams on the economy and on the salmon population. Marc Onetto, originally French, is based in Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho. He is now retired after serving in senior management positions in major U.S. companies. Every summer, for many years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Marc cruised the Inside Passage between Seattle and Southeast Alaska on his boat: a 65-ft Marlow Explorer. He named his boat Lapérouse after a famous French captain who explored the Pacific Northwest coast from Alaska to California …
Ike and Winston: Friends and Leaders in War and Peace with Lee Pollock
One was born in a small town in Texas, in a family with little to its name; the other, sixteen years earlier, was the grandson of a Duke whose ancestral home was one of Britain’s greatest palaces. When the Second World War began, Dwight David Eisenhower was a little-known Lt. Colonel in a United States Army which numbered under 200,000, just the 19th largest in the world. Winston Spencer Churchill was approaching his 65th birthday, with a mercurial political career that had already spanned four decades. Just a few months later, he and Britain would stand alone against a totalitarian power the likes of which the world had never seen. The leadership of Winston Churchill in the critical days of 1940 ensured that the free world would survive its greatest challenge. Four years later, it fell to Dwight Eisenhower to command the largest amphibious invasion in history. Had either of them failed, the course of modern history would have been radically different. Despite their disparate backgrounds, fate and destiny brought these men together. Sometimes they agreed and other times stood apart but together they helped determine the future of the world for much of the 20th century. Join acclaimed Churchill …
Together We Read: “The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang
The Community Library’s Together We Read book club is hosted the third Tuesday of every other month and led by a diverse range of library staff. Books cover all genres from new fiction to classics to nonfiction, young adult, graphic novels, and everything in between. Join us for one discussion or many! June’s pick is “The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang. The discussion will be led by operations director Nicole Lichtenberg. The Library has multiple copies available for checkout. Please come in or talk to our librarians about reserving a copy.
Community Speaker Series: “Romantic Comedy” with Curtis Sittenfeld
In bestselling author CURTIS SITTENFELD’s much-loved new novel, she explores – with her typically keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page – the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age. Sittenfeld sits down with Sun Valley Writers’ Conference Literary Director JOHN BURNHAM SCHWARTZ – a former professor of hers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as it happens – to discuss what makes Romantic Comedy a romantic comedy, her approach to genre and craft in previous novels such as American Wife, Rodham, and Eligible, and other stories from her literary journey. Presented in partnership with the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, the Community Speaker Series welcomes speakers from the annual conference to The Community Library for a free community event. This year’s series features Javier Zamora on July 19 and Curtis Sittenfeld on July 25. Registration is required. Events will be livestreamed, and a book signing will follow each event. Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of six novels, including Prep, American Wife, Eligible and Rodham, and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her books have been selected …
Community Speaker Series: “Solito” with Javier Zamora
In 1999, a nine-year-old boy left his tiny village in El Salvador to join his parents who had emigrated to America some years before. His astonishing nine-week, 3,000-mile journey, without friends or family, is the heart of JAVIER ZAMORA’s riveting memoir. Zamora writes in the pitch-perfect voice of that child as he makes his perilous way, on foot and by boat and bus and truck, recalling moments of true terror and of unexpected tenderness. In conversation with executive director of The Community Library JENNY EMERY DAVIDSON, Zamora will speak about the book, about how he was finally able to write it, about trauma and healing and hope, and about becoming the celebrated poet and writer that he is. Presented in partnership with the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, the Community Speaker Series welcomes speakers from the annual conference to The Community Library for a free community event. This year’s series features Javier Zamora on July 19 and Curtis Sittenfeld on July 25. Registration is required. Events will be livestreamed, and a book signing will follow each event. Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was …