Wednesday, April 4th at 7:30pm
Megan Seely
Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist
(NYU)
As a Watsonville High graduate, Seely’s first taste of activism was with the United Farm Workers, and she learned then the power of her voice. She would later become the youngest-ever elected president of California National Organization of Women (NOW). She now offers a fearless vision for the future of feminism, speaking to young women who embrace feminism in substance but not necessarily in name. For novice and committed activists alike, the book focuses on what it takes to create change and explores issues from body image to economic justice to violence against women. Fight Like A Girl looks at the challenges that women and girls face while emphasizing the strength that they independently, and collectively, embody.
Thursday, April 5th at 7:30pm
Carla King
American Borders: A Solo-Circumnavigation of the United States on a Russian Side Car Motorcycle
(Motorcycle Misadventures)
What begins as a serious exploration of the borders between the US, Canada and Mexico quickly becomes a comedy of mechanical, social, and natural disasters. King’s four-month, ten-thousand-mile solo test ride of the newly-imported Russian Ural sidecar motorcycle is punctuated by cracked welds and electrical gremlins, evil tow truck drivers, roadside romances, even tornadoes and hurricanes. With humor and guts, this travel writer with a love of hogs (Wild Writing Women) begins and ends her distinctive travelogue right here in Santa Cruz!
Tuesday, April 10th at 7:30pm
Helen Garvy
Rebels With a Cause: A Collective Memoir of the Hopes, Rebellions, and Repression of the 1960s
(Shire Press)
Based on the film directed and produced by Santa Cruz filmaker Helen Garvy, this book explores the movements for social change of the sixties that began with the civil rights movement and culminated with the angry protests against the US war in Vietnam. Told through the experiences of Students for a Democratic Society, it is about the values, motivations, and actions of a generation that lost its innocence but gained a sense of power and purpose. Rebels with a Cause is not only for those who lived through the sixties but also for those who did not, as the impressive impact of SDS activists is still felt today.
Thursday, April 12th at 7:30pm
Steven Hiatt, editor, and authors Antonia Juhasz & Ellen Augustin
A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption
(Berrett-Koehler)
John Perkins's New York Times bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man revealed just a hint of the secret world of global deceit and economic corruption. With an introduction by Perkinsand contributions from fellow economic hit men, journalists and investigators, A Game As Old As Empire exposes more shocking schemes that multinational corporations, governments, powerful individuals, and financial institutions agencies use to enrich themselves behind a façade of "foreign aid" and "international development." Hiatt explains the debt enslavement of Third World Countries; Augustine proves the World Bank’s meddling in the Philippines was disastrous for both democracy and economic development; and Juhasz argues that we have the power to end the exploration and create global justice.
Monday, April 16th at 7:30pm
Morton Marcus & Daniel Meyers, editors
With poets Joseph Stroud, Gary Young & Ellen Bass
In a Dybbuk's Raincoat: Collected Poems, by Bert Meyers
(University of New Mexico)
Rediscover a great American poet. The late Bert Meyers is well known for his surprising, succinct observations on the state of the world and the human condition. His poems, be they purely lyrical or full of social commentary, are short bursts of vivid imagery. A friend of Bert’s, Marcus was asked by his surviving family to work on this collection of his poems, letters, and essays. Tonight’s readers include our area’s best national award-winning poets.
Tuesday, April 17th at 7:30pm
Elizabeth Kolbert
Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
(Bloomsbury USA)
Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, Kolbert tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe helps define the greatest challenge of our times.
Wednesday, April 18th at 6:30pm *
Book Club
Howards End by E. M. Forster
(Modern Library)
This month’s selection is Howards End by E. M. Forster. A chance acquaintance brings together the prosperous bourgeois Wilcox family and the clever, cultured, and idealistic Schlegel sisters. As clear-eyed Margaret develops a friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, the impetuous Helen brings into their midst a young bank clerk named Leonard Bast, who lives at the edge of poverty and ruin. When Mrs. Wilcox dies, her family discovers that she wants to leave her country home, Howards End, to Margaret. Thus Forster sets in motion a chain of events that will entangle three different families and brilliantly portrays their aspirations for personal and social harmony. Read the book and join the discussion.
* Please note time
Thursday, April 19th at 7:30pm
Jeff Johnson
Bend to Baja: A Biodiesel Powered Surfing and Climbing Road Trip
(Moonlight)
The Malloy Brothers were among the first to reject conventional contest surfing, pioneering new approaches to big-wave riding, adventure travel, shortboard surfing, paddle boarding, and body surfing. In February 2005, together with Jeff Johnson, they left Bend, Oregon in their bio-diesel-powered pickup, and headed down the Pacific Coast surfing, camping and climbing the whole way to Baja. They met an array of characters, found rich, road-weathered experiences, and suffered setbacks against the backdrop of the captivating ocean. The author/photographer of this ode to a nontraditional lifestyle centered on the search for waves, Jeff Johnson, is a passionate surfer, climber, and world traveler whose work appears in The Surfer’s Journal, Surfer and Alpinist. Slides will be shown.
Monday, April 23rd at 7:30pm
Local Women Novelists & Small Presses That Support Them:
Rosa Martha Villarreal, The Stillness of Love and Exile (Tertulia Press)
Victoria Tatum, The Virgin's Children (Rain Publishing)
Leba Wine, Stitches in Time (Many Names Press)
Rosa MarthaVillarreal follows the escape of young Lilia from the wrath of a Mexican drug lord to a small rural Mexican town where a series of events that started in Medieval Spain come to fruition, leading Lilia to her final journey of love and magic. The author is the co-founder of Tertulia Press and online Magazine, dedicated to the tradition of independent, non-ideological discourse through art and written word.
Victoria Tatum tackles the questions and truths within a close-knit group of gay and straight friends and neighbors, exploring what makes or breaks the bonds that bind. Ontario’s Rain Publishing focuses on compelling contemporary poetry, mysteries, fiction, non-fiction and children’s books.
Leba Wine spins her personal history into a fictionalized multi-generational story of her Jewish immigrant grandmother and the family quilt, a real piece of art and history that resides in the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Many Names Press in Watsonville holds tightly to the belief of freedom of expression, advancement of education and the wonders of letterpress printing.
Thursday, April 26th at 7:00pm *
World Affairs Book Club
Oil on the Brain by Lisa Margonelli
(Nan A. Talese)
This month’s selection is Oil on the Brain by Lisa Margonelli. Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day. Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred thousand mile journey from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. In search of the truth behind the myths, she wriggled her way into some of the most off-limits places on earth: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela, to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform where the United States fought a forgotten one-day battle.
* Please Note Time
Thursday, April 26th at 7:30pm
SARK
Fabulous Friendship Festival: Loving Wildly, Learning Deeply, Living Fully with Our Friends
(Three Rivers Press)
"SARK is such a real, rare light in our world, and she offers practical spiritual wisdom, using uncommon humor and authenticity.” —Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.
Beloved for her handwritten, hand-drawn, and vibrantly illustrated books (Succulent Wild Woman, Eat Mangoes Naked), SARK now inspires us to create new friendships, deliciously celebrate the ones you have, and practice new ways to be a better friend…with others and yourself. Let’s praise as well as reinvigorate those relationships that bring us joy, challenges, and a great reason for lingering over a cup of tea at your local bookstore. Bring your pals and tales of your experiences together to this fun, interactive, full-of-surprises event!
Sunday, April 29th at 7:30pm
Steven Bach
Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl
(Knopf)
Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as “Hitler’s filmmaker,” is one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. Two of her films, Olympiaand Triumph of the Will, are universally regarded as the most innovative documentaries ever made, but they are also insidious glorifications of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Now, in this masterful new biography, Bach reveals the truths and lies behind this gifted woman and her life-long claim to be an apolitical artist who knew nothing of the Holocaust and who denied complicity with the criminal regime she both used and sanctified. It is the story of talent and ambition, one that probes the sometimes blurred borders dividing art and beauty from truth and humanity.
Steven Bach is the author of two previous biographies, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend and Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart. He was in charge of worldwide production for United Artists, where he was involved in such films as Raging Bull, Manhattan, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Heaven’s Gate, about which he wrote the bestseller Final Cut. He teaches at Bennington College and Columbia University and divides his time between New England and Europe.
Tuesday, May 1st at 7:30pm
Nathaniel Philbrick
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
(Penguin)
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author and National Book Award winner Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea, Sea of Glory) reveals, the true story of the Pilgrims is more than a tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that includes ethnic cleansing, bloody wars, environmental ruin, and the deterioration of English-Indian relations. Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history—a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.
Wednesday, May 2nd at 7:30pm
Douglas C. Abrams
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
(Atria)
During the decadence of 16th century Spain, Juan Tenorio is raised by a convent where he learns to love and worship all women. He is later recruited to be a spy by the powerful Marquis de la Mota, who also teaches him to become the world's greatest libertine and seducer of women. His diary reveals his greatest adventures and the Arts of Passion he mastered, but it will be the irresistible madness of unmatched love that compels him to risk everything in face of the violent purge of the Spanish Inquisition. Based on the myth and the history of Don Juan and the Spanish Renaissance, this novel is by a Santa Cruz author who has co-authored books of love, sexuality, and spirituality, including books with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Yogacharya B. K. S. Ivengar, and Taoist Master Mantak Chia.
Thursday, May 3rd at 7:30pm
Tony Cohan
Mexican Days: Journeys into the Heart of Mexico
(Broadway)
“Cohan describes life in Mexico as ‘intimate, voluptuous, sense driven,’ a phrase that also describes On Mexican Time.”—Boston Sunday Globe.
Cohan’s On Mexican Time, his chronicle of discovering a new life in the small Mexican mountain town of San Miguel de Allende, has beguiled readers and become a travel classic. Now, in Mexican Days, point of arrival becomes point of departure as—faced with the invasion of the town by tourists and an entire Hollywood movie crew—Cohan undertakes a richer, wider exploration of the country he has settled in. From the misty mountains and coastal Caribbean towns of Veracruz to the stirring indigenous world of Chiapas to the haunted city of Guanajuato, Cohan rediscovers this inexhaustibly interesting country.
