Resources – One Book One Region

Videos:

Podcasts:

After Words, June 30, 2018 – Physician Mona Hanna-Attisha detailed her efforts to provide scientific evidence that children in Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead poisoning through the water supply. She’s interviewed by Senator Gary Peters (D-MI).
The Politics Guys, July 17, 2018 – Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha on Politics, Lead, and the Flint Water Crisis – Mike Baranowski talks to Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha.
Reveal, January 24, 2016 – Do Not Drink: The Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Sharon Kleyne Hour, February 15, 2016 – The Water Crisis in Flint, MI.
So This Happened, January 21, 2016 – An inside look at the Flint water crisis and the latest on the 2016 campaign trail.

Discussion Guides:

For a What The Eyes Don’t See Discussion Guide and Common Read/One Read/Freshman Read inquiries, visit Penguin Random House Common Reads .

Additional What The Eyes Don’t See reader and teacher resources developed by Great Michigan Read, One Maryland One Book, and Reading Across Rhode Island.

Websites:

The Mesothelioma Center – There are an increasing number of ways that drinking water can become contaminated with asbestos and other toxins. It’s more important than ever to learn what regulations are in place to protect your health and what can be done to purify the water. https://www.asbestos.com/exposure/water-supply/

Cerebral Palsy Guide is a national support organization dedicated to educating individuals and their families about cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities. We strive to provide answers and guidance to ensure that families receive the assistance they need to help improve their overall quality of life.

Consumernotice.org – Information on water contamination and the presence of PFAs in our local water sources provided by an organization that is dedicated to providing consumers with reliable health and safety information. Additional information about PFAS and lawsuits can be found at https://www.consumernotice.org/legal/pfas-lawsuit/.

Books on Related Themes for Adults:

(From the 2019 RI Center for the Book Resource Guide)

FICTION

Compiled by Cheryl Stein, Retired Librarian, Rogers Free Library

DRINKING WATER

Freezing Point by Karen Dionne

Salvation and annihilation meet at one degree. One man’s dream of providing

clean drinking water for millions, tapped from the polar ice, sparks a conflict of

humanity, science, big business, and environmental extremism. But no one can

foresee the true danger hidden deep within the ice, an enemy more deadly than

any could imagine, and an apocalyptic horror mankind may not survive.

Silent Justice by William Bernhardt

“I think we’re doing the right thing here. Not the smart thing. Certainly not the

safe thing. But the right thing.” Such is attorney Ben Kincaid’s assessment of the

case he has just taken on—despite his professional belief that the class action suit

is a suicide mission.

Kill Alex Cross by James Patterson

The President’s son and daughter are abducted, and Detective Alex Cross is one

of the first on the scene. But someone very high-up is using the FBI, Secret

Service, and CIA to keep him off the case and in the dark. Meanwhile, a deadly

contagion in the water supply cripples half of the capital, and Alex discovers that

someone may be about to unleash the most devastating attack the United States

has ever experienced.

FLINT, MICHIGAN

Moth to a Flame by Ashley Antoinette

In the little city of Flint, MI, the good die young and the people left standing are

the grimiest of characters. With reign over the city’s drug trade, Benjamin Atkins

made sure that his precious daughter, Raven, was secluded from the grit that the

city had to offer. But when Raven’s young heart gets claimed by Mizan, a stick-up

kid in search of a come-up, there’s nothing Benjamin can do about losing her to

the streets. She chooses love over loyalty and runs off with Mizan, but her new

role as wife soon proves to be more than she can handle.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

The Fracking King by James Browning

The Fracking King follows Winston Crwth–a boarding-school kid, loner, and

Scrabble prodigy – who becomes an unlikely hero in the fight to stop fracking in

Pennsylvania.

Dead Sea: a Richard Mariner Adventure by Peter Tonkin

An ambitious ecological experiment plunges Richard and Robin Mariner in

deadly waters. Heritage Mariner and Greenbaum International have financed

an ecological experiment to prove how swiftly rubbish can foul the oceans by

dropping and tracking a plastic bottle into a Tokyo river.

MEDICAL ETHICS

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel recounts the story of a Midwestern physician

who is forced to give up his profession due to the ignorance, corruption, and

greed of society.

Charlatans by Robin Cook

Newly minted chief resident at Boston Memorial Hospital Noah Rothauser is

swamped in his new position, from managing the surgical schedules to dealing

with the fallouts from patient deaths. Known for its medical advances, the famed

teaching hospital has fitted several ORs as “hybrid operating rooms of the future”

– an improvement that seems positive until an anesthesia error during a routine

procedure results in the death of an otherwise healthy man.

ACTIVISM

The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers

A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about

nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an

ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.

Dissident Gardens : A Novel by Jonathan Lethem

An epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals

At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s superb new novel stand two extraordinary

Women.

NON-FICTION

Compiled by Maggie Browne, Deputy Director, North Kingstown Free Library

The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna

Clark

The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through

the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a story of one

town, but could also be about any American city made precarious by the neglect

of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision-making.

Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

After living away for 15 years, journalist Gordon Young found himself missing

his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that

once boasted one of the world’s highest per capita income levels, but is now one

of the country’s most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint

with the intention of buying a house. What Young found was a place of stark

contrasts and dramatic stories.

the quickest route to neighborhood beautification.

Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint

and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill

In this thought-provoking analysis of state-sanctioned violence, Marc Lamont

Hill carefully considers a string of high-profile deaths in America and incidents

of gross negligence by government, such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Hill digs underneath these events to uncover patterns and policies of authority

that allow some citizens become disempowered, disenfranchised, poor, uneducated,

exploited, vulnerable, and disposable.

Poison on Tap (A Bridge Magazine Analysis): How Government Failed Flint

and the Heroes Who Fought Back by the Staff of Bridge Magazine

Based on the award-winning journalism of Bridge Magazine, Poison on Tap

provides a riveting, authoritative, in-depth account of the government blunders,

mendacity and arrogance that produced the water crisis in Flint. This is a

compelling case study in how government at all levels can go very wrong—and

yet shows the power of the human spirit to overcome.

Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change by Morgan Simon

Impact investment, the support of social and environmental projects with a

financial return, has become a hot topic in the world’s philanthropy and development

circles, and is growing exponentially: in the next decade, it is poised to eclipse

traditional aid by ten times. Yet for all the excitement, there is work to do to

ensure it actually realizes its potential. Will impact investment empower millions

of people worldwide, or will it just replicate the same failures that have plagued

the aid and antipoverty industry?

Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit

With Hope in the Dark, Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to

act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her

decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political

history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative

victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately

seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest

on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next.