April 2001

Monday, April 2 at 7:30 pm
Ruthanne Lum McCunn
The Moon Pearl (Beacon Press)

Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Language of Threads, offers this high praise for Ruthanne Lum McCunn's newest work. "Ruthanne Lum McCunn's new novel, The Moon Pearl, is filled with the heart and songs of old China. Wonderfully researched, it is the vivid and courageous tale of three Chinese girls who struggle against all odds to forge the beginnings of a powerful silk sisterhood in nineteenth-century China. It is a lovely addition to the growing stories of women who have found the strength to discover new lives." Please join us for a festive celebration of these women, both real and imagined.

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Thursday, April 5 at 7:30 pm
Susie Bright
The Best American Erotica 2001 (Touchstone)

Boundary-breaking and captivating Susie Bright is back. In this eclectic and startling collection of erotic short stories, Susie has gathered the best works from authors who prove that a story can be both arousing and literary at the same time. Publisher Weekly's starred review says, "These intoxicating stories, so diverse in style and content...[are] guaranteed to stimulate both hormones and funny bones."

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Thursday, April 7 at 10:45 am
Storytime with Billie Harris and Brett Taylor

We invite children and adults alike to join us for a grand time. Billie Harris--whose marvelous, whimsical voice can be heard on KUSP's Castle Cottage---joins us for another monthly story time for young children. She is joined by the amazing Brett Taylor whose Latin beat can be heard on KUSP's The Global Village. He joins us to read some delightful books in Spanish for those who love to hear that lyrical language as much as English.

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Tuesday, April 10 at 7:30 pm
Sahara Sunday Spain
If There Would Be No Light (Harper SanFrancisco)

Before she could even write, Sahara was recording her poetry on an answering machine. Now, at a mere nine years old, this child prodigy is shocking and soothing world readers with her lyrical gift of words and emotion. Also an artist, ballerina and talented singer, Sahara has traveled in Thailand and Bali, studied meditation with Buddhist monks, and witnessed healing ceremonies with Australian aborigines. Her insight has been praised by Iyanla Vanzant and Bonnie Raitt, and her warmth will make you feel "beautiful love, streaming down my body, like an ocean of pearls."

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Tuesday, April 17 at 7:30 pm
Randy Shaw
The Activist's Handbook (University of California Press)

Treating strategic problems that grassroots activists face since 1996, this activist's bible has been updated and features a new, powerful preface. Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, praises it as "a unique book, wise, realistic, and enormously valuable for anyone interested in social change. It is practical in its advice, and inspiring in its stories of ordinary people successfully confronting powerful interests."

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Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm
Andrew Harvey
The Direct Path: Creating a Journey to the Divine Through the World's Mystical Traditions (Doubleday)

World-renowned religious scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey has spent twenty-five years studying the world's mystical traditions, from Buddhism to Kabbalah. He now teaches us how to create an individual, illuminating spiritual map without relying on churches, gurus, or other intermediaries. This intelligent book is for anyone who yearns for insight into the meaning and purpose of life. Anne Lamott praises Harvey's masterpiece, "The Direct Path arrived one day when I need a spiritual shot in the arm...It is a marvelous book to which I will turn again and again."

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Thursday, April 19 at 6:30 - 8pm
Writing Group

Every third Thursday of the month, join Book Cafe's Wendy Mayer as she leads our writer's group, which meets upstairs in the back of the store. These meetings are free and open to everyone. The intent is to provide an opportunity for local writers at any stage to come together and write. Due to the limited amount of time, the group will focus on short exercises and sharing of information rather than group critique. Putting pen to paper is the name of the game.

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Friday, April 20 at 7:30 pm
Alma Guillermoprieto
Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America (Pantheon)

Mexican journalist Alma Guillermoprieto has written about Latin America for the last twenty years. Today her reporting stands as the best informed and most admired for her region of the world. In her newest collection, she writes in depth about three countries that are in deep difficulty: Cuba, Colombia and Mexico. She also looks at the stories of Eva Peron, Che Guevara, and Mario Vargas Llosa to encapsulate a region. Looking for History is stunning personal reportage that infuses Guillermoprieto's unique understanding of the region with the eye of an keen observer who can stand apart and sympathetically witness the changes.

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Saturday, April 21 at 7:30 pm
Nicholson Baker
Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Random House)

In Double fold, Nicholson Baker masterfully describes our libraries systematic destruction of America's most important archive, our newspapers. For the past fifty years, America's libraries have been dismantling their collections of original bound newspapers and replacing them with microfilmed copies. These copies are difficult to read, sacrifice all the color and quality of the original paper, and ultimately deteriorate with age. Full of colorful characters, digital futurists, and paper politics, Doublefold comes from a personal crusade by Baker, best-selling author of The Fermata, Vox, and The Everlasting Story of Nory. He is the founder of the American Newspaper Repository for which he emptied out his retirement account, remortaged his house, leased warehouse space and has taken delivery of ten of tons of old newspapers. This is an inspiring tale with profound consequences to all lovers of the printed page.

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Monday, Apirl 23 at 7:30 pm
Gray Brechin
Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (University of California Press)

We're pleased to welcome back Gray Brechin for an entirely new slide show on this bay area bestseller. For those of you who missed the first presentation of Imperial San Francisco, you have a chance now-don't miss it. This urban biography provides an entirely new vision of San Francisco's history, laying bare its inner dynamics. In it, Gray Brechin examines the far-reaching environmental impact that one city and its powerful families have had for over a century and a half. Written in a lively, accessible style, the narrative is filled with vivid characters, engrossing stories, and a rich variety of illustrations.

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Tuesday, April 24 at 7:30 pm
David Abernethy
Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980 (Yale)

For centuries Europeans ruled vast portions of the world. This magisterial survey of the rise and decline of European overseas empires asks how and why these empires took shape, persisted, and finally fell. In a discussion that encompasses European and non-European actors as well as the economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of empire, David B. Abernethy, professor of Political Science at Stanford, explains Europe's long occupation of global center stage and throws new light on today's postcolonial world and the legacies of empire.

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Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 pm
Christopher Hitchens
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso)

With the detention of Augusto Pinochet, the possibility of international law acting against tyrants around the world is emerging as a reality. Yet, as Christopher Hitchens demonstrates in this compact, incendiary book, the West need not look far to find suitable candidates for the dock. The U.S. is home to an individual whose record of war crimes bears comparison with the worst dictators of recent history: Ex-Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Henry A. Kissinger. Weighing the evidence with judicial care, Hitchens takes the floor as prosecuting counsel. He investigates, in turn, Kissinger's involvement in the war in Indochina, mass murder in Bangladesh, planned assassinations in Santiago, Nicosia and Washington, D.C., and genocide in East Timor. Drawing on first-hand testimony, previously unpublished documentation, and material released under the Freedom of Information Act, he mounts a devastating indictment of a man whose ambition and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter.

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Friday, April 27 at 7:30 pm
Tad Williams
Otherland: Sea of Silver Light, Volume 4 (Daw Books)

We have been waiting impatiently for the fourth volume of Otherland to be released ever since Volume Three arrived. Who could blame us? Tad Williams has written such an intriguing and epic saga that even readers who have never been science fiction fans are turning into hungry converts. His ideas challenge, and his sense of character is as varied as it is irresistible, which isn't surprising coming from someone who has been a singer in a band, designed military manuals, worked in television and taught grade school.

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Sunday, April 29 2:30 pm
Susan Herrmann Loomis
On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town (Broadway)

What began as a poor student's apprenticeship at Paris's La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine became a lifelong immersion into French cuisine and culture. Susan Herrman Loomis, acclaimed cookbook author, tells the tales of her meticulous restoration of a medieval convent in Normandy and her wooing of suspicious neighbors by the sweet seduction of baking. Surrender to her talents yourself and join us at our own French picnic featuring recipes from the book. The special serving time is 2:30! Bon Appetite!

*Please Note Time

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Monday, April 30 at 7:30 pm
James Houston
Snow Mountain Passage (Knopf)

The most harrowing of all pioneer stories - the ordeal of the Donner Party - has finally been retold in the intimate, brilliant writing of the nationally acclaimed and local novelist, James Houston. We follow the Frazier family's 1846 crossing of the country, watching their optimism and dreams turn toward ingenuity, courage, and terror. The mix of history and myth within their fateful choice of a wrong mountain pass - and the violent story of survivors - is gripping and ever timely.