Talking has nothing to do with conversation.
GERTRUDE STEIN

 

Events

 

 

 

January 2004 Author Events

Please let us know at least 7 days in advance if you would like an autographed copy. This will allow us sufficient time to have enough copies of the book in stock. Thank You.

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Thursday, January 8th 7:30 p.m.
Mark Arax
King of California
(Public Affairs)

Over the past 50 years, J. G. Boswell has built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, labor unions, and every journalist who tried to expose the "factory in the fields." Now 80 years old and easing his pathological bent towards privacy, Boswell has confided in Los Angeles Times writer Mark Arax with one of the great stories of the American West: how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California, drained one of America's biggest lakes, and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. This is a sweeping history that features cameos from Cesar Chavez and Cecil B. DeMille and tells the tale of fortune and devastation in the San Joaquin Valley.

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Wednesday, January 14th 7:30 p.m.
Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark
Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power
(Routledge)

In their fascinating narrative of a growing movement, Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark show how the Seattle protests and subsequent mass demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are the dramatic result of a full decade of growing agitation over corporate sponsored globalization. From uncovering major retailers' links to sweatshop abuses and revealing the deception of American tobacco companies, to questioning corporations' ties to repressive dictators, shaming food processors into selling dolphin-safe tuna, and demanding that businesses stop destroying old growth forests, citizens have become far more aggressive in directly challenging corporate behavior. Kevin Danaher is the author or editor of 10 books about globalization, and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. Jason Marks, a former reporter, is the Communications Director for Global Exchange. Please join us in welcoming these innovative thinkers and their real stories of hope and struggle.

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Thursday, January 15th 7:30 p.m.
Anthony Swofford
Jarhead
(Scribner)

When the U.S. Marines - or, 'jarheads" - were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the first Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. He lived in the sand for six months; he was punished by boredom and fear; he considered suicide, pulled a gun on a fellow marine, and was targeted by both the enemy and friendly fire. As engagement with the Iraqis drew near, he was forced to consider what it means to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. About this best selling memoir Newsweek wrote, "If you want a clear-eyed sense of what might be going on today in the staging areas surrounding Iraq, a view stripped of cant, hypocrisy, and the bloated lies of officialdom, read Jarhead."

 

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Tuesday, January 20th 7:30 p.m.
Vijay Vaitheeswaran
Power to the People
(FSG)

Global warming, rolling black outs, massive tanker spills, oil dependence: our profligate ways have doomed us to suffer such tragedies, right? Perhaps, but Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the energy and environment correspondent for The Economist, sees great opportunity in the energy realm today, and Power to the People is his fiercely independent and irresistibly entertaining look at the economic, political, and technological forces that are reshaping the world's management of energy resources. Vaitheeswaran documents an energy revolution already underway--a revolution as radical as the communications revolution of the past decades. By avoiding the traditional binaries that pit free markets against the wisdom of conservation and the need for clean energy, Power to the People is a book that debunks myths without debunking hope. It is a true gift to open debate.

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Wednesday, January 21st 7:30 p.m.
Ron Hansen
Isn't it Romantic?
(Harper)

Universally praised by reviewers from the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, People, Book List and Kirkus Reviews, Isn't it Romantic? is the perfect read for the new year. Readers deserve to indulge the senses in this delightful comedy of manners by one of our finest. cclaimed novelist Ron Hansen demonstrates his masterful versatility as a writer, with Isn't It Romantic?, a screwball comedy in the tradition of filmmaker Preston Sturges. Mistaken identities, botched schemes, and hilarious misunderstandings all play a part as Parisian sophistication collides with the affability and simple pleasures of the Great Plains. Come welcome back the author, most recently, of A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction and of the novel Hitler's Niece. Ron Hansen's previous novel, Atticus, was a National Book Award finalist.

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Thursday, January 22nd 7:00 p.m. *
World Affairs Book Club
Pathologies of Power
by Paul Farmer

This group meets every month to discuss a book relevant to current event(s) around the world. To date, we have examined books focusing on a variety of events in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe. This month's selection is Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other. As always, we welcome people from all backgrounds and affiliations to participate. For more information you may email Graham Parsons at parsons402@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.
*Please Note Time

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Sunday, January 25th 2:30 p.m. *
Dr. Dean Edell
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Healthiness
(Harper)

After 25 years on radio, and television, no one knows the minds of his audience better than Dr. Dean Edell who now reveals 500 pressing health questions culled from Dr. Dean's popular radio show. Each chapter includes quizzes, recommended reading lists, links to the most current and reliable medical resources, symptom checklists, and "Dr. Dean Reports": detailed yet informal reports on the latest developments in medicine. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Healthiness uncovers Dr. Dean's health philosophies and details the answers to all the worrisome, frequently-asked questions that pop up daily in modern households.
*Please Note Time

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Monday, January 26th 7:30 p.m.
Samina Ali
Madras on a Rainy Day
(FSG)

Author Chitra Divakaruni writes, "Samina Ali has created...a compelling story filled with psychological insight and deep understanding of the conflicts that plague all of us who inhabit two worlds at the same time." Raised in both Hyderabad, India and the US , Ali writes of an American life of a young Muslim woman who returns to her native land for an arranged marriage. Family secrets, temptations denied, passions and loyalties reign behind the veil in this dazzling story by an arresting new voice.

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Thursday, January 29th 7:30 p.m.
A Conversation with Saul Landau

US Foreign Policy: Extra Brutal Empire or Routine imperialism? That's the topic of our intimate conversation with one of the left's leading scholars and writers. Saul Landau is an internationally known scholar, author, journalist, poet and activist. An Emmy-award-winning film maker, he does frequent radio and TV shows, and his work on human rights and Latin America have won him acclaim the world over. He is a senior fellow for the Institute for Policy Studies, and the director of digital media arts for college of letters, arts and social sciences at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His latest book is The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom

 

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