People keep talking about Egan’s ‘Great Lakes’
More than a year after its publication, Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan’s book “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” continues to stimulate public discussion about the imperiled freshwater ecosystem.
The University of Wisconsin in Madison has selected Egan’s book as the Go Big Read selection for 2018’19. Copies will be given to first-year students at the Chancellor’s Convocation for New Students, and the book will be incorporated into some classes. (Past Go Big Read selections include Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted.”)
Shortly after its paperback release in April, “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” climbed to No. 7 on The New York Times’ paperback nonfiction bestseller list. Also that month, his book won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history.
Egan will speak 7 p.m. May 17 at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, 1111 E. Brown Deer Road, Bayside. Registration is required for his talk, which is included with nature center admission. Call (414) 352-2880, Ext. 0.
“Death and Life of the Great Lakes” also was the April selection of the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club. “Egan likes to say that he may be the only journalist in America whose beat is the Great Lakes,” Elizabeth Flock wrote in introducing her interview with Egan for the book club website.
“A recurring theme in the book is the invasive species that have been brought to the lakes from ships arriving from ports all over the world,” Flock wrote in the book club’s set of discussion questions. “Today, the Great Lakes are home to 186 nonnative species — the worst being the zebra and quagga mussels.”
In his New York Times review, Robert Moor likened Egan’s book to Rachel Carson’s landmark book “Silent Spring” (1962), “that ur-classic of red-flag-raising eco-journalism.”
“A chronicle of natural disasters shouldn’t make compelling reading, but Egan’s book is an ecological page-turner,” writes Wisconsin essayist John Hildebrand in his review of “Death and Llfe” for the Journal Sentinel.