Winona State’s Common Book Project announces its selection for 2008-09: Dr. Robert Morris’s The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink. The Common Book Project brings together a large community of readers in the discussion of a single work.
Dr. Robert Morris, MD, PhD, is an environmental epidemiologist and a leading researcher in the field of drinking water and health. He has taught at Tufts University School of Medicine, Harvard University School of Public Health, and the Medical College of Wisconsin and has served as an advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the President’s Cancer Panel. His work has been featured in the New York Times and the London Times, and on Dateline NBC and the BBC.
His book, The Blue Death, has been recommended by the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, Science News, Booklist, and Kirkus. With compelling narratives both historical and recent, Morris examines the infrastructure of our drinking water supply and calls for widespread action to preserve this most precious of natural resources. Morris’s book can be addressed from a range of perspectives, and faculty will be adopting The Blue Death in disciplines as diverse as nursing, biology, chemistry, physics, statistics, education, history, and first-year composition. Additionally, Winona State University will be participating in a year-long community project, Our Drinking Fountains, Our Water. All three local postsecondary institutions, the city of Winona, the Southeast Minnesota Water Resource Board, and In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre of Minneapolis will be working together to engage our community in education, discussions, and celebrations of drinking water. The year will culminate with the decoration of a public drinking fountain and a community-wide celebration on Earth Day, 2009. Readers of The Blue Death can expect a wide array of artistic, scientific, and civic-oriented programming related to the topic of water safety and stewardship.
“The Blue Death chronicles the story of drinking water in terms of compelling accounts of early cholera epidemics, how scientists solved the mystery of the microbes in water, and the economic and political forces at play both then and now in controlling our water,” observes Computer Science Professor Joan Francioni. “It provides science in the form of a fast-moving narrative by giving a fascinating history of water-borne diseases and mankind’s quest for safe drinking water.”
The Blue Death is currently available from booksellers in hardcover and will be published in paperback by HarperCollins in July, 2007. Dr. Morris is scheduled to visit WSU in October, 2008, and again in March, 2009. More information about The Blue Death is available from the author’s website, http://web.mac.com/drrdm/Site/The_Blue_Death.html. Additionally, a packet of teaching and contextual materials for prospective adopters will be available by midsummer. Faculty adopters should simply list the book (ISBN 9780060730901) on their book request form through the WSU Bookstore. For more information about the project, please contact Dr. J Paul Johnson at pjohnson@winona.edu or visit the Common Book website at www.winona.edu/commonbook.
-—J Paul Johnson
