SCHRADER CENTER CONTINUES
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION BOOK CLUB

WHEELING, W.Va. (March 2, 2009)- - In order to provide a venue for discussion on issues involving the environment and how it impacts our daily lives, a new book club has been formed as an outshoot of Oglebay Institute’s Schrader Environmental Center.

The book club met recently to discuss Thomas Friedman’s "Hot, Flat & Crowded," and organizers say much enthusiasm was generated to make this a monthly event.  The next discussion takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 19 at the Schrader Center.  The featured book is "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. 

Free and open to the public, the event includes coffee, snacks and invigorating discussions. Guests can meet new people and share ideas for books to be included in the series, which continues on the third Thursday of each month at the Schrader Center.

Kingsolver is a well-known author of fiction, however; "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is a memoir, which chronicles a year in the life of her family after they decided to move from Arizona to “live off the land” on a small farm in Appalachian Virginia. 

The decision to move from Arizona resulted from her and her husband’s recognition that most every bit of the food and water the family needed to survive on in Arizona had to be trucked or piped in from far-flung environs, given their desert locale.  Kingsolver and her husband wanted their daughters to understand what true food really was and where it came from.  So, in a month by month chronicle, Kingsolver takes the reader through the seasons- planting seeds in early spring, harvesting early vegetables, canning summer’s bounty, and learning how to construct meals only from food that was either raised by them or that came from farms within a nearby radius.  Interspersed in this chronicle of the seasons are valuable and sometimes shocking facts about the environmental cost of the global agricultural system. 

"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" can be purchased locally at Books-A-Million, and by mentioning that the purchase is for this Schrader Center Environmental Education Book Club, an additional 10% will deducted from the purchase price.

Upcoming book selections include: "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria; "The Hawk's Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster" by Martin Cherniack; "When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution" by Devra Lee Davis; "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" by Eric Brende; "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart; "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan; "The Omnivore's Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan and "Massive Change" by Bruce Mau and Jennifer Leonard.

For questions or additional information about the book club or any of the numerous public programs offered at the Schrader Center, call 304.242.6855.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the members of the Institute as well as with financial assistance from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the WV Commission on the Arts.