East Greenwich Reading Across RI: Rising - 2020
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore - Interviews and Discussions
Author Elizabeth Rush on her book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. (2019; 75 min)
Elizabeth Rush: Rising (2018; 51 min).
Panel: The Reality of Retreat (2017; 40 min).
Video Series
- Our Changing Climate (You Tube series)
Our Changing Climate is a weekly video essay series that investigates humanity's relationship to the natural world. - Green Matters: What in the World Is Going On? (2008; 15 episodes; Kanopy or DVD)
Log in to Kanopy with your public library card. Check with your local public library to find out if your library has the subscription.
Reading Across Rhode Island 2020 Selection
Thanks to the generous support of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, the EGHS Library has 25 copies of the book Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, by Elizabeth Rush, available for check out to faculty, staff and students.
For over 18 years, Rhode Island's only One Book One State program focuses on a single book selected to stimulate meaningful discussions across our state.
Please stop by the library to check out a copy of the book and to sign up to participate in our Breakfast with a Book discussion group to take place in late April.
Nonfiction Books on Related Themes
The End of Ice by A firsthand chronicle of the catastrophic reality of our planet's changing ecosystems and the necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile Earth while we still can.
Great Tide Rising by Even as seas rise against the shores, another great tide is beginning to rise - a tide of outrage against the pillage of the planet, a tide of commitment to justice and human rights, a swelling affirmation of moral responsibility to the future and to Earth's fullness of life.
Inconspicuous Consumption by This is a book about the power we have as voters and consumers to make sure that the fight against climate change includes all of us and all of our stuff, not just industry groups and politicians. If we have any hope of solving the problem, we all have to do it together.
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.
The Uninhabitable Earth by The author describes possible ways global warming will affect the Earth and people, including scientific research that support his theories.
Fiction Books on Related Themes
American War by Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be.
Annihilation by Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition, consisting of four women, hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
Flight Behavior by Tired of living on a failing farm and suffering oppressive poverty, bored housewife Dellarobia Turnbow, on the way to meet a potential lover, is detoured by a miraculous event on the Appalachian mountainside that ignites a media and religious firestorm that changes her life forever.
Exodus by In the year 2100, as the island of Wing is about to be covered by water, fifteen-year-old Mara discovers the existence of New World sky cities that are safe from the storms and rising waters, and convinces her people to travel to one of these cities in order to save themselves.
Rising Webinar - May 13 at 2p.m.
Join the University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute and the Rhode Island Center for the Book’s Reading Across Rhode Island program on May 3 at 2pm for Rising Waters: Stories from America’s Frontline – a film screening and conversation with Elizabeth Rush.
The webinar will begin with a screening of the powerful short film, Home or High Water. After the screening, Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Rush will share her experience in coastal communities large and small, from the storm-ravaged eastern shore of Staten Island to the disappearing bayous of Louisiana.
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
Rising by With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. InRising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice--a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago--with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.
Podcasts
In episode 58 of America Adapts, Doug Parsons talks with author and lecturer Elizabeth Rush, of Brown University. Elizabeth is the author of the upcoming book, Rising – Dispatches from the New American Shore. Topics discussed in this episode:
- What is ‘creative non-fiction.’
- Elizabeth explains how humans have or don’t have the emotional resilience to respond to climate change
- Writing “adaptation metaphors.”
- Narrative devices like “The Hero’s Journey” to make climate change resonate.
- The emerging role of Cli- Fi, climate science fiction.
- And much more!
In this episode of the podcast, Elizabeth Rush reflects on climate change as a transformational force on our landscapes and the words we might use to grasp this shifting reality. Her book Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore was recently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its rigorous reporting on America’s vulnerability to rising seas. This narrated essay is an account of the days she spent driving through the Pacific Northwest while on a tour for the book—a time of wildfires, loss, and possible futures.