John Janovy

Letter to a Child Born Today (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In despair over his nation sliding into authoritarian rule, an 82-year old scientist writes a letter to a new-born child whose name he's just read in the paper. His nation is the United States; his letter is what life has taught him about what this child can expect if she lives to her own 82nd birthday on March 21, 2100, during a global pandemic and our ongoing assault on the American Dream by people elected to preserve that dream and make it achievable for all. The letter takes two years to write and ends up a hundred pages long. From his memory of a mother crying, shoulders heaving, while listening to a broadcast of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and photographs from liberated Nazi death camps, to his knowledge of how infectious agents, including infectious words and ideas, spread through populations, he is able to envision this child's life based largely on factors completely beyond her control. New parents rarely if ever consider the global forces that will have a major impact on their child's life; but we live in a time when the world comes through our front doors whether we want that to happen or not. That world includes a virus-COVID-19-as well as the infective words of hatred, racism, dehumanization, and disdain for Mother Nature. On the day he starts to write, however, he tells her his hopes based on a teacher's experience: "But like those other 360,000 babies born today, you have the potential to be a great artist, a great musician, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, the head of some multibillion-dollar company, a famous actor, a poet, a writer who influences the way all humanity reacts to its image in our collective mirror. That potential is my dream. So I decided to write you this long, long, letter."

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Janovy, Jr
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Juni 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780463162286
• Artikelnr.: 74383130

Autorenporträt

About the author:

John Janovy, Jr. (PhD, University of Oklahoma, 1965) is the author of seventeen books and over ninety scientific papers and book chapters. These books range from textbooks to science fiction to essays on athletics. He is now retired, but when an active faculty member held the Paula and D. B. Varner Distinguished Professorship in Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interest is parasitology. He has been Director of UNL's Cedar Point Biological Station, Interim Director of the University of Nebraska State Museum, Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences, and secretary-treasurer of the American Society of Parasitologists.
His teaching experiences include large-enrollment freshman biology courses, Field Parasitology at the Cedar Point Biological Station, Invertebrate Zoology, Parasitology, Organismic Biology, and numerous honors seminars. He has supervised thirty-two graduate students, and approximately 50 undergraduate researchers, including ten Howard Hughes scholars.
His honors include the University of Nebraska Distinguished Teaching Award, University Honors Program Master Lecturer, American Health Magazine book award (for Fields of Friendly Strife), State of Nebraska Pioneer Award, University of Nebraska Outstanding Research and Creativity Award, The Nature Conservancy Hero recognition, Nebraska Library Association Mari Sandoz Award, UNL Library Friend's Hartley Burr Alexander Award, and the American Society of Parasitologists Clark P. Read Mentorship Award.