BOOK EVENTS

An Evening of Storytelling with Lulu Miller, winner of the 2019-20 William Block Sr. Award
7:30-9:30 p.m. Nov. 7, Frick Fine Arts Building

Lulu Miller is a George Foster Peabody Award-winning journalist at NPR and cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, a long-form radio show and podcast about “the unseen forces that control human behavior.” She is a contributor to WNYC Studio’s Radiolab, where she worked as a founding producer, and a freelance reporter for NPR’s science desk. Her first book, “Why Fish Don’t Exist,” is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in 2020. Presented by the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series.

Center for African-American Poetry and Poetics presents Marilyn Nelson and Sonia Sanchez

Nelson, author or translator of 17 poetry books and the memoir “How I Discovered Poetry,” and winner of the Robert Frost Medal and Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and Sanchez, legendary writer of the Black Arts Movement, author of 16 books and recipient of awards including the Robert Frost Medal, and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, will present workshops and talks.

2-2:45 p.m. Nov. 12: Marilyn Nelson’s Master Class on the Sonnet, 501 Cathdral of Learning

6 p.m. Nov. 13: Co-lab with Marilyn Nelson, who will share work in progress with responses from students in the course Studio in African American Poetry and Poetics, 501 Cathedral of learning.

7 p.m. Nov. 14: Sonia Sanchez and Marilyn Nelson reading and conversation, Carnegie Library Lecture Hall. Co-presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures

3:45 p.m. Nov. 15: Hands-on Community Workshop with Sonia Sanchez

Workshop, presented in partnership with the August Wilson House and Hill District Community Engagement Center.

NEW BOOKS

“Small Actions Big Difference,” (Routledge, 2019) by CB Bhattacharya, H. J. Zoffer chair in Sustainability and Ethics and professor of Marketing and Management, Katz Graduate School of Business.

“Small Actions Big Difference” focuses on leveraging corporate sustainability to drive business and societal value. It is Bhattacharya’s third book on the subject of corporate sustainability. Based on interviews with 25 global multinational corporations — as well as employees, middle managers, and senior leaders across multiple sectors — it is the first book to connect sustainability to the theory and principles of psychological ownership and to propose a succinct, easy-to-digest model for managerial use.

“Voices of Change in Cuba from the Non-State Sector” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, former director of the Pitt Center for Latin American Studies.

Mesa-Lago is a Pitt professor emeritus of economics and renowned scholar on Cuban studies. His newest book looks at the one million Cubans, or 30 percent of the labor force, who work in the country’s nonstate sector, including self-employed workers and micro-entrepreneurs, sharecropping farmers, members of new cooperatives, and buyers and sellers of private dwellings. The group’s rise represents a key structural reform implemented by Raúl Castro since he became Cuba’s leader in 2006.

“The Shale Dilemma: A Global Perspective on Fracking and Shale Development,” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), edited by Shanti Gamper-Rabindran, associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

“The Shale Dilemma” brings together experts working at the forefront of shale gas issues on four continents to explain how countries reach their decisions on shale development. Using a common analytical framework, the authors identify both local factors and transnational patterns in the decision-making process. Eight case studies reveal the trade-offs each country makes as it decides whether to pursue, delay, or block development.