Episodios

  • UMRA Reads: Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom by Carl Bernstein
    Sep 27 2024

    "Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men and pioneer of investigative journalism, recalls his beginnings as an audacious teenage newspaper reporter in the nation’s capital―a winning tale of scrapes, gumshoeing, and American bedlam."

    "In Chasing History, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. He spins a buoyant, frenetic account of educating himself in what Bob Woodward describes as “the genius of perpetual engagement.” "Funny and exhilarating, poignant and frank, Chasing History is an extraordinary memoir of life on the cusp of adulthood for a determined young man with a dogged commitment to the truth."

    -- Goodreads

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    56 m
  • UMRA Reads: Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber
    Sep 6 2024

    "Andy Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades." "Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now."

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    1 h y 4 m
  • UMRA Reads: Into the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
    Jul 30 2024

    From Goodreads: "The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women. As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change."

    Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

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    1 h y 1 m
  • UMRA Reads: Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade
    Jun 27 2024

    In Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America, University of Michigan Law professor, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it. The book breaks down the ways disinformation has become a tool to drive voters to extremes, disempower our legal structures, and consolidate power in the hands of the few. Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country’s hard-won democracy.

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    1 h y 29 m
  • UMRA Reads: Says Who? A Kinder, Funner, Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words by Anne Curzan
    May 23 2024

    "A kinder, funner usage guide to the ever-changing English language and a useful tool for both the grammar stickler and the more colloquial user of English, from linguist and veteran U-M Professor Anne Curzan." "Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living, breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes beyond “right” and “wrong” to empower us to make informed language choices. Never snooty or scoldy (yes, that’s a “real” word!), this book explains where the grammar rules we learned in school actually come from and reveals the forces that drive dictionary editors to label certain words as slang or unacceptable."

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    1 h y 15 m
  • UMRA Reads: The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
    Apr 26 2024

    The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is a poetic novel about a real telephone booth in Otsuchi, Japan, a rural town decimated by the 2011 tsunami. Known as the “Wind Phone,” the disconnected rotary telephone allows grieving family members to speak, in a way, to loved ones who have passed on.

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    1 h
  • The Health and National Security Risks of Drug Shortages
    Apr 22 2024

    Andrew G. Shuman, MD, FACS, HEC-C

    Associate Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery Chief of the Clinical Ethics Service in the Center for the Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM)

    Dr. Shuman is a cancer surgeon and bioethicist at the University of Michigan and the VA Ann Arbor Health System. He is internationally recognized as a thought leader in ethical issues arising within the field of surgical oncology. His greatest impact involves applying his perspective as a practicing surgeon and clinical ethicist to bioethics research. He has a portfolio of publications in leading journals in the fields of ethics, oncology and otolaryngology including The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.

    On Wednesday, March 22, 2023, Dr. Shuman testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at a hearing, titled "Drug Shortage Health and National Security Risks: Underlying Causes and Needed Reforms". During his testimony, Shuman discussed his experiences dealing with drug shortages in his work and how they affected his patients, explaining the complex decisions physicians and other medical professionals face when confronted with drug shortages.

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    51 m
  • UMRA Reads: Lost Horizon by James Hilton
    Apr 5 2024

    The story follows four Europeans stranded at a Tibetan lamasery for several months after their plane is hijacked and flown into the Himalayas. With time, they learn that not everything is as it seems at this Utopian lamasery.

    Hilton's magnum opus was a timely novel, written in the wake of WWI and amidst the Depression. It was a much needed escape for all sorts of readers. But more than just an escape, this book is also a careful dissection of Western and Eastern cultures.

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    1 h y 6 m