We love the concept of Eliot Stein's most recent book, Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive - a vivid look at 10 astonishing people who are maintaining some of the world's oldest and rarest cultural traditions! We hope you can join us for what will be a fascinating conversation.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

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About the book:

Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our most extraordinary cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to tracking down Cuba's last official cigar factory “readers” more than a century after they spearheaded the fight for Cuban independence, Stein uncovers an almost lost world.

Climbing through Peru’s southern highlands, he encounters the last Inca bridge master who rebuilds a grass-woven bridge every year from the fabled Inca Road System. He befriends a British beekeeper who maintains a touching custom of "telling the bees" important news of the day. And he crunches through a German forest to find the official mailman of the only tree in the world with its own address – to which countless people from across the world have written in hopes of finding love. These are just some of the last custodians preserving age-old rites on the brink of disappearance against all odds. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them.

About Eliot:

I'm a writer and editor who thinks compelling storytelling makes the world hum.

My work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, Condé Nast Traveler, CNN, USA Today, National Geographic, The Independent, and elsewhere.

I'm also a deputy editor at BBC Travel, where I write a column called Custom Made that highlights creative characters and cultural custodians making our world a more interesting place. One of my stories for the column recently won the grand prize at the 87th annual Writer's Digest Competition.

I'm happiest in a kayak, a treehouse, or a bike lane. I recently moved from Berlin to Brooklyn.

Presented in collaboration with the Ashland Public Library and other area libraries.