ASU Common Read with Eliot Stein: 'Custodians of Wonder'

Описание: ASU hosted journalist and BBC editor Eliot Stein, author of "Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive," for a virtual visit on Oct. 1, 2025. ASU's Writing Programs has selected Stein's nonfiction book as its 2025-2026 common read and Stein discussed the book and answered questions from faculty and students at this event.

About the common read
The goal of a common read program is to encourage first-year students to write about pressing social problems that are relevant to ASU’s mission as a public enterprise. By learning to write about such problems as a community, we increase the probability of finding solutions to them. This year, we will write about the importance of cultural traditions.

About the book and its author

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.

Stein is a journalist and editor at BBC Travel. His book "Custodians of Wonder" was inspired by a column he created for the BBC called "Custom Made" in which he profiles remarkable people upholding ancient traditions around the world. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, The Guardian, The Washington Post, National Geographic, The Independent, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and young son.

This event is hosted by Writing Programs in the Department of English with support from The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU.