Consider this your invitation to read and discuss narrative nonfiction with us! In the Narrative Nonfiction Book Club we will be reading across the genres of nonfiction, from history to adventure, memoir/biography, and beyond with books that read like a novel.

Join us on Saturday, July 12th at 4pm in the Hermann room as we discuss our latest book pick Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley. For the first portion of book club discussion, author Nicola Twilley will be joining us via Zoom to discuss her book with us!

"In Frostbite, Nicola Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves.  Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration.  It's impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it.  Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment."

"Nicola Twilley is the author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (2024), and co-host of the award-winning Gastropd podcast, which looks at food through the lens of history and science, and which is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with Eater.  Her first book, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, was co-authored with Geoff Manaugh and was named one of the best books of 2021 by Time Magazine, NPR, the Guardian, and the Financial Times.  She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of Edible Geography."