Wednesday, June 18, 2014

You are invited to a post-attendance of Lester Brown’s 80th birthday celebration. Over the next few blog postings, we are going to share some of the memories and comments people at the party gave.

Today’s release, however, is not from the formal event. Lester has not just been a researcher on global environmental issues over the course of his life. He has been a tomato farmer, a college student, headed a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and founded two think tanks. He has worked with the media and he has published over 50 books in over 40 languages.

We invited our national and international publishers to the celebration. Alas, only a few were able to attend. But we wanted to honor these individuals for their commitment over the years, and sometimes decades. So we held a lunch in their honor and asked them to share their stories.

We’d like to share some of them with you.

Gilberto Rincon of CEID, a Colombian research institute, has been publishing the Spanish edition of our books for eight years.

Kiril Ivanov, founder and head of Paper Tiger, a publishing house in Bulgaria, has been publishing since the 1990s.

Wei Lin represented his father Lin Zixin, who began publishing books by Lester in the 1980s when he worked with the International Scientific and Technical Information Center. Since his retirement, he has secured publishing houses and headed the translation team for Lester’s books published in this century.

Amy Cherry representing W.W. Norton and Company, our U.S. publisher, noted that they had been publishing books by Lester and his organizations for forty years.

Some of our publishers who could not attend, posted messages in the birthday guestbook on our website. Please check them out … and possibly add your OWN sharing of how Lester’s work has influenced you.

Cheers,

Reah Janise Kauffman

P.S. Our thanks to Michael Moser of Moser Media for his great video work!