Book reading by "Nation" writer Eyal Press, April 25th at 6:30

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:

Elizabeth Creely
Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights
bacorrinfo [at] riseup.net


Author Appearance and Reading
Eyal Press, author of “Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City and the Conflict that Divided America”

Valencia Street Books
569 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-552-7200
April 25th, 2006 @ 6:30

Hosted by Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights

In 1973, Eyal Press and his family arrived in Buffalo where his father, Shalom, had accepted a three-year residency in obstetrics and gynecology, only three weeks after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade. Leaving Israel, a country where militants routinely invoke religion to justify force, the family expected that life in Buffalo would be tranquil. They weren’t prepared for what the next three decades held in store—protesters outside their home, mock funerals at Shalom Press’s office and the 1998 threat on his life, which came shortly after his colleague was killed by James Kopp. The shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian haunted Eyal, now a journalist, and compelled him to understand why the abortion conflict has sparked such passion and fierce moral convictions on both sides of the issue.

In his new book, ABSOLUTE CONVICTIONS: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America Press weaves together vivid details of his father’s experience as an obstetrician with firsthand accounts and interviews with the protestors who were arrested outside his father’s office, patients who braved the gauntlet of demonstrators, and politicians on both sides. Press’s work shows how the more peaceful demonstrations of Operation Rescue gradually gave way to the bombings and shootings of the 1990s, and traces the rise of the new form of conservative populism that has come to dominate American politics. Through the Press family and the city of Buffalo, a blue-collar city undergoing wrenching changes, we come to see the people behind an issue that has divided our nation unlike any other.

A gripping narrative account of a family and a city caught in the crossfire of moral fervor and individual rights, ABSOLUTE CONVICTIONS is an incisive history that offers new insight into an issue that continues to dominate headlines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Eyal Press is a journalist based in New York City. A regular contributor to The Nation whose work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine, he was a finalist for the 2004 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism and the Science-in-Society award from the National Association of Science Writers and Editors.