Knit Night (Crocheters, too!)
All skill levels welcome. See you there!
Michael Hastings
Michael Hastings will visit Phoenix to speak about his new book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan.
General Stanley McChrystal, the innovative, forward-thinking commanding general of international and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was living large. He was better known to some as Big Stan, M4, Stan, and his loyal staff liked to call him a "rock star." During a spring 2010 trip across Europe to garner additional allied help for the war effort, McChrystal was accompanied by journalist Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone. For days, Hastings looked on as McChrystal and his staff let off steam, partying and openly bashing the Obama administration for what they saw as a lack of leadership. When Hastings's piece appeared a few months later, it set off a political firestorm: McChrystal was ordered to Washington, where he was fired unceremoniously.
In The Operators, Hastings picks up where his Rolling Stone coup ended. He gives us a shocking behind-the-scenes portrait of our military commanders, their high-stakes maneuvers and often bitter bureaucratic infighting. Hastings takes us on patrol missions in the Afghan hinterlands, to late-night bull sessions of senior military advisers, to hotel bars where spies and expensive hookers participate in nation-building gone awry. And as he weighs the merits and failings of old-school generals and the so-called COINdinistas-the counterintelligence experts-Hastings draws back the curtain on a hellish complexity and, he fears, an unwinnable war.
Michael Hastings is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He regularly covers international affairs for the magazine, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. In 2011, he received the George Polk Award in journalism for his Rolling Stone story “The Runaway General.” His work has appeared in Newsweek, GQ, Men’s Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and a number of other publications. In 2010, Hastings was named one of The Huffington Post’s Game Changers of the year. His GQ story “Obama’s War” was selected for Best American Political Writing 2009. The author also of I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story, Hastings lives in Vermont.
Newt Night
We invite budding scientists, concerned citizens, and naturalists-at-heart to learn about Vermont's Amphibian Monitoring Program. This is a perfect opportunity to get hands-on experience, become educated about Vermont's amphibian population, and learn how to assist in their protection/preservation.
Space is limited; please contact Rachel at rachel@phoenixbooks.biz or 872-7111 to reserve a spot. This demonstration involves delicate critters, so is best for ages 5 and older.
Newt Night will be hosted by the North Branch Nature Center of Montpelier, as part of Citizen Science, a partnership between scientists and the broader community. Citizen Science allows the every-day person to participate in exciting research projects, and to experience the natural world in a new way. It allows the scientist to enlist a small or, in some cases, a large army of volunteers to help collect data that wouldn't be possible without the help of the community.
Last spring, an Amphibian Monitoring Program volunteer found a Jefferson Salamander hybrid in Essex. It was the first of that species ever found in the town! Neato mosquito!!
Knit Night (Crocheters, too!)
All skill levels welcome. See you there!
The Great American Book Tour with Howard Frank Mosher (offsite)
Please join us in welcoming Vermont's own Howard Frank Mosher! Howard will give a slideshow and talk, and will read from his new book The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home at Memorial Hall here in Essex Junction. A cover charge of $5 will be credited toward a book purchase.
Several months before novelist Howard Frank Mosher turned sixty-five, he learned that he had prostate cancer. Following forty-six intensive radiation treatments, Mosher set out alone in his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity on a monumental road trip and book tour across twenty-first-century America. From a chance meeting with an angry moose in northern New England to late-night walks on the wildest sides of America's largest cities, The Great Northern Express chronicles Mosher's escapades with an astonishing array of erudite bibliophiles, homeless hitchhikers, country crooners and strippers, and aspiring writers of all circumstances. Full of high and low comedy and rollicking adventures, this is part travel memoir, part autobiography, and pure, anarchic fun. From coast to coast and border to border, this unforgettable adventure of a top-notch American writer demonstrates that, sometimes, in order to know who we truly are, we must turn the wheel towards home.
Bestselling, nationally celebrated author Howard Frank Mosher is the author of ten novels and two travel memoirs. Three of his novels, Disappearances, A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North, have been made into acclaimed feature movies by the Vermont independent filmmaker Jay Craven.
