#reading allowed

A Fathers’ Day Reading For Grown-ups 

Sunday • June 21 • 5pm University Book Store Social Media Channels Online Reading

We can't all be where we want right now, or with the ones that matter most. This in mind, please join the University Book Store family and our own Brad Craft, senior used book buyer, for a special Fathers Day "virtual" event for grown-ups, to be played on our social media channels. Brad will read a selection of poetry and prose, celebrating our Dads, with material from two superb anthologies from Everyman's Library, Fatherhood: Poems About Fathers, from their Pocket Poets series, and Stories of Fatherhood, from Everyman's Pocket Classics. He'll close the evening out with a reading from his own most recent book, The Hat and Other Sentimental Essays for my Father. Pour yourself a scotch or what you will – and join us as we toast the Old Man. Here's to you, Dad!

Through forty years of New York Times best-selling Shannara novels, Terry Brooks always had an ending in mind: a series that would bring it all to a grand conclusion. Now that time has arrived. The Skaar Invasion is the second book of his epic four-part conclusion to the series. The Four Lands are under siege. Wielding a magical ability virtually impossible to combat, mysterious invaders defeat the most fearsome Troll armies, then focus their savagery on the Druid order—and all hope seems lost. Dar Leah, once the High Druid's Blade, has crossed paths—and swords—with their ruthless leader before. So he knows that if any hope exists, it rests in the hands of the Druid Drisker Arc, now trapped inside vanished Paranor. Watch Terry Brooks, a longtime friend of the University Book, read from his newest novel.

Cocaine & Surfing (RARE BIRD BOOKS)

Tuesday • August 28 • 7pm

U District store

Reading & Book Signing

Former war correspondent and current Editor at Large at Surfing Magazine Chas Smith peels the curtains back on a hopped up, sometimes sexy sometimes deadly relationship with his new book Cocaine + Surfing. Using cocaine as the vehicle, he exposes and explains the utterly absurd surf industry to outsiders and explores where dreams go when they die.

New York Times bestseller, Georgetown University sociology professor, and one of America's premier public intellectuals, Michael Eric Dyson, joined us for a discussion of his new book, What Truth Sounds Like. In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out James Baldwin to explain the rage that threatened to engulf black America. Baldwin brought along some friends, including playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark, and activist Jerome Smith. It was Smith's relentless, unfiltered fury that set Kennedy on his heels. Kennedy walked away from the nearly 3-hour meeting angry that the black folk assembled didn't understand politics and weren't as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King. But his anger quickly gave way to empathy, especially for Smith. He set about changing policy, the meeting having transformed his thinking in fundamental ways.

Venerated television journalist Dan Rather celebrates what matters most in our great country with his collection of original essays, What Unites Us. Writing about the institutions that sustain us, such as public libraries, public schools, and national parks; the values that have transformed us, such as the struggle for civil rights; and the drive toward science and innovation that has made the United States great, Rather brings to bear his decades of experience on the frontlines of the world's biggest stories, and offers readers a way forward. With his famously plainspoken voice and a fundamental sense of hope, he has written the book to inspire conversation and listening, and to remind us all how we are ultimately united.