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 online for a special conversation between award-winning journalist Shoshana Walter and bestselling and award-winning author Barbara Kingsolver as they chat about Walter’s book Rehab: An American Scandal. In this work, Walter, a Pulitzer finalist, exposes the country’s failed response to the opioid crisis, and the malfeasance, corruption, and snake oil which blight the drug rehabilitation industry.
Today, more people have access to treatment than ever before. So why isn’t it working? The answer is that in America—where anyone can get addicted—only certain people get a real chance to recover. Despite record numbers of overdose deaths, our default response is still to punish, while rehabs across the United States fail to incorporate scientifically proven strategies and exploit patients.
In this book, you’ll find the stories of four people who represent the failures of the rehab-industrial complex, and the ways our treatment system often prevents recovery. April is a black mom in Philadelphia, who witnessed firsthand how the government’s punitive response to the crack epidemic impeded her mother’s recovery—and then her own. Chris, a young middle-class white man from Louisiana, received more opportunities in his addiction than April, including the chance to go to treatment instead of prison. Yet the only program the judge permitted was one that forced him to perform unpaid back-breaking labor at for-profit companies. Wendy is a mother from a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, whose son died in a sober living home. She began investigating for-profit treatment programs—yet law enforcement and regulators routinely ignored her warnings, allowing rehab patients to die, again and again. Larry is a surgeon who himself struggled with addiction, and would eventually become one of the first Suboxone prescribers in the nation, drawing the scrutiny of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 31 in the UCPL auditorium for an in-person visit from local author Alan Kretchmar, who will discuss his new book, Restoring the Glory: Forest Park from 1986 to 2026.
Coming out just in time for the park’s 150th anniversary this year, the book details the last 40 years of Forest Park as it rose from its run-down condition in the 1980s to a beloved regional destination today.
Alan Kretchmar spent 35 years in St. Louis as a practicing ophthalmologist. As he slowed down in his profession, he began living his dream of world travel, visiting 40 countries on 5 continents. Many of his experiences were on a bicycle with his wife, Karen. These experiences inspired his first book, A Leisurely Ride Across France, which told of the misadventures of two inexperienced, middle-aged travelers as they crossed the French countryside on two wheels.
Since retirement in 2011, Alan has volunteered in Forest Park. He knows the love and admiration the people of St. Louis have for our Forest Park and has seen first-hand the effect our park has on visitors to our city.
This program is intended for adults, but free and open to all. Copies of Restoring the Glory will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
The Friends of University City Public Library will welcome author best-selling author Sarah Kendzior to discuss her latest book, The Last American Road Trip. The free program will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15 in the UCPL auditorium.
The Last American Road Trip is part memoir, part travel adventure, and a prescient and alarming political critique of the decline of America. Written with both anger and deep affection for her beloved country, the book chronicles the trips she, her husband, and their two children took to National Parks and historic sites; along Route 66; and to obscure and weird roadside attractions, like the giant praying hands sculpture in Webb City, Missouri. Beginning in 2016, through the pandemic years, and as the children grew into teenagers, they continued exploring America with a sense of seeing it before it was too late. She has a PhD. in Anthropology from Washington University and lives and works in University City. She will be interviewed by STLPR’s Rod Milam.
This program is intended for adults, but is free and open to all. Refreshments and book signing after the presentation. Book sales courtesy of Subterranean Books.
