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Dear Friends,
 On behalf of the City of Austin, I would like to invite you to participate in the fifth annual Mayor’s Book Club and Keep Austin Reading program presented by the Austin Public Library. The Mayor’s Book Club is designed to bring readers from throughout our community together to create a citywide book club. This year, we have selected The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea. We invite all of Austin to read the book over the next few months, and in April, we ask you to join together and discuss the book at your local library. The University of Texas Humanities Institute will unite with the Austin Public Library, for the fifth consecutive year, to assist with the discussion groups and activities about the book. We will host the award-winning author in a special event in April here in Austin.
The Devil’s Highway provides a story of astonishing courage and strength, of an epic battle against circumstance. In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, though the deadliest region of the continent, a place called the Devil’s Highway. That May, twenty-six men went entered the Highway, but only twelve came back out. Urrea tells the story of this modern odyssey in the The Devil’s Highway.
The book is available at all Library locations and area bookstores. This book is spectacularly written, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction in 2005. It’s an astonishing piece of investigative reporting, but also a literary tour de force.
Please join one of the many book discussions and special programs planned for our local public libraries in April. The Keep Austin Reading program will culminate with a free public program with the author at a local venue to be announced.
Thank you for participating in the Mayor’s Book Club and our Keep Austin Reading program.
Regards,
Will Wynn
Mayor
Visit our previous Mayor's Book Club resource guides online:
Spring 2005: Writing Austin's Lives by Metro Austin Residents
Spring 2004: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Spring 2003: Holes by Louis Sachar
Spring 2002: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
To view what other cities across the country are reading visit
The Center for the Book |
