Calendar
Check here for all of the upcoming events at UCPL. If you have questions about any of them, give us a call at 314-727-3150.
Join us for an online discussion with prominent cultural writer and bestselling author David Brooks on his book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply, in which he helps us pose essential questions: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?
Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.
The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them and, in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.
Jump start your new year with us as we chat virtually with journalist and author Julia Hotz about her book The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.
The Connection Cure combines diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery to help us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing. Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?”
Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness. By integrating age-old medicines like art, nature, movement, and volunteer service into patient’s daily lives, social prescriptions are radically changing health and healthcare in more than thirty countries. Julia Hotz travels around the world to survey them —sea-swimming lessons for depression, “culture vitamins” for anxiety, a fishing club for ADHD, a farm-based day-care for dementia, a phone-buddy program for social isolation, and many more.
As the first book on social prescribing, The Connection Cure empowers you to find, experience, and implement this revolutionary medicine in your own community. The success stories Julia finds bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can all start to feel better.
Join us online for a thrilling discussion with bestselling author Liz Moore to discuss her latest work, The God of the Woods, an instant New York Times bestseller and one of NPR’s 2024 “Books We Love” highlights.
Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
Join us in conversation with Liz as we embark on a tale of thrilling twists and disturbing disappearances.
