George Saunders, author of Liberation Day and Vigil, joined us for our 2026-27 Portland Arts & Lectures on Thursday, September 24, 2026.
We like to ask all of our Portland Arts & Lectures guests to share their reading recommendations with our audience. Here is what Saunders had to share:
Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katharine Hayhoe
United Nations Champion of the Earth, climate scientist, and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe changes the debate on how we can save our future in this nationally bestselling “optimistic view on why collective action is still possible—and how it can be realized” (The New York Times).
Called “one of the nation’s most effective communicators on climate change” by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, she negotiates distrust of data, indifference to imminent threats, and resistance to proposed solutions with ease. Over the past fifteen years, Hayhoe has found that the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it—and she wants to teach you how.
In Saving Us, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. We need to find shared values in order to connect our unique identities to collective action. This is not another doomsday narrative about a planet on fire. It is a multilayered look at science, faith, and human psychology, from an icon in her field—recently named chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
Drawing on interdisciplinary research and personal stories, Hayhoe shows that small conversations can have astonishing results. Saving Us leaves us with the tools to open a dialogue with your loved ones about how we all can play a role in pushing forward for change.
Opening Heaven’s Door: What the Dying Are Trying to Say About Where They’re Going by Patricia Pearson
The first book by a respected journalist on Nearing Death Awareness—similar to Near-Death Experience—this “fascinating” (Kirkus Reviews) exploration brings “humor, sympathy, and keen critical intelligence to a topic that is all too often off-limits” (Ptolemy Tompkins, collaborator with Eben Alexander on Proof of Heaven).
People everywhere carry with them extraordinary, deeply comforting experiences that arrived at the moment when they most needed relief: when they lost a loved one. These experiences can include clear messages from beyond, profound and vividly beautiful visions, mysterious connections and spiritual awareness, foreknowledge of a loved one’s passing—all of which evade explanation by science and logic. Most people keep these transcendent experiences secret for fear they will be discounted by hyperrational scrutiny. Yet these very common occurrences have the power to console, comfort, and even transform our understanding of life and death.
Prompted by her family’s surprising, profound experiences around the death of her father and her sister, reporter Patricia Pearson sets out on an open-minded inquiry, a rare journalistic investigation of Nearing Death Awareness, which Anne Rice praises as “substantive, eloquent, and worthwhile.” Opening Heaven’s Door offers deeply affecting stories of messages from the dying and the dead in a fascinating work of investigative journalism, pointing to new scientific explanations that give these luminous moments the importance felt by those who experience them. Pearson also delves into out-of-body and near-death experiences, examining stories and research to make sense of these related but distinct categories.
Challenging current assumptions about what we know and what we are still unable to explain, Opening Heaven’s Door will forever alter your perceptions of the nature of life and death.
