RWU Media Room

Posted on: September 21, 2009; In: Academic, Community, On Campus

“Alan Weisman has produced, if not a bible, at least a Book of Revelation.” 
—Newsweek

On Wednesday, October 7th, Alan Weisman, New York Times bestselling author of The World Without Us, will be visiting Roger Williams University for a public lecture. Weisman’s critically acclaimed The World Without Us asks the provocative question: what if the human race simply ceased to exist? “How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it?” Weisman asks. “How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines? Could nature ever obliterate all our traces?”

Alan Weisman’s lecture is part of the University’s Common Reading Program. Adam Braver, a novelist and associate professor of creative writing, founded the program to start students off with something in common—a unified summer reading experience.“Students arrive on campus with the idea that reading is what university life is about,” Professor Braver states. “Books are the weapons of a university. Reading is what we do here.” In June, each incoming student receives a copy of the selection at Orientation. Selections to date have been two works of fiction—“Old School,” by Tobias Wolff, and “Interpreter of Maladies,” by Jhumpa Lahiri. Come the fall semester, students engage in classroom discussions about the Common Reading selection, culminating with a campus visit by the chosen author; this fall, Alan Weisman.

Since its publication in 2007, The World Without Us has been an international phenomenon which has been translated into 30 languages to great critical acclaim. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben described the book as “one of the grandest thought experiments of our time, a tremendous feat of imaginative reporting.” Weisman’s book was named #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007 by both Entertainment Weekly and Time magazine. It spent 16 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and was the most popular nonfiction audio book on iTunes last year. Weisman has appeared on television discussing his new book on both The Today Show and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in the University’s campus recreation center gymnasium on the Bristol campus at One Old Ferry Road. The event is free; tickets are required for the outside public. For more information or to reserve a ticket call (401) 254-3210.

About Roger Williams University
Roger Williams University is a leading independent, coeducational liberal arts university at which students live and learn to be global citizens. With 40 academic programs and an array of co-curricular activities on its Bristol, R.I., campus, RWU is committed to its mantra of learning to bridge the world. Under the leadership of President Roy J. Nirschel, Ph.D., the University has achieved unprecedented academic and financial successes. In 2009, U.S. News & World Report named RWU the seventh-ranked baccalaureate college in the north.