Thursday, January 4th at 7:30pm
Peter Laufer
Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq
(Chelsea Green)
Vietnam War resister and former NBC News correspondent Peter Laufer has won awards for his coverage of Americans in prisons overseas, migration, and Vietnam vets suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. He now turns his proven talents to the turmoil of U.S. troops confronting the Iraq War. Some have decided not to fight; others did but were so appalled by the experience that they refuse to return. Several of the trained warriors turned activists profiled in the book are local Santa Cruz residents, and Santa Cruz’s GI Rights program at the Resource Center for Nonviolence figures prominently. Mission Rejected probes the universal issue of resistance to war by the very men who chose to defend the nation.
Monday, January 8th at 7:30pm
Kat Meads
The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan (Chiasmus Press)
and
Lolly Winston
Happiness Sold Separately (Warner)
Local author Kat Meads (Not Waving, Sleep) returns with a quirky and hilarious mock biography of rebel-in-her-own-time Kitty Duncan, a gal who has no interest in acting docile, playing dumb, losing her suntan, remaining a virgin, and doing anything anyone insists she should do. Appalled by Kitty's rudeness and questionable hygiene yet willing to admire that she is hardly dull, college freshman Mo begins a biography of the unforgettable Kitty, and learns that storytelling of all types is a liberating act.
Los Gatos resident and New York Times bestselling author Lolly Winston tackled sudden loss with kindness, grace, and humor in Good Grief. She now similarly reshapes the issues of infertility and infidelity by introducing us to Ted and Elinor, a California couple struggling with the realities of marriage and a childless family. “Lolly Winston has such a light touch that it's easy to forget just how intense this book really is. In her delicate excavation of a marriage, don't be surprised if you find yourself laughing at one moment, your heart caught in your throat the next.” —Dani Shapiro (Family History)
Tuesday, January 9th at 7:30pm
Poetry Santa Cruz
Kathleen Lynch's Hinge won the Black Zinnias National Poetry Award. From Sacramento, Lynch is also the recipient of numerous other poetry prizes and the author of several chapbooks, including Kathleen Lynch: Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications). Doren Robbins, professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Foothill College in Los Altos, is the award-winning author of nine collections, including Parking Lot Mood Swing and Driving Face Down. His poetry, prose poetry and critical essays have appeared in over seventy literary journals.
Thursday, January 11th at 7:30pm
Rudy Rucker
Mathematicians In Love
(TOR)
"Rudy Rucker writes like the love child of Philip K. Dick and George Carlin. Brilliant, frantic, conceptual, cosmological . . . like lucid dreaming, only funny.”—Walter John Williams.
This riveting novel from a former SJSU professor who twice won the Philip K. Dick Award stars Bela and Paul, two wild young mathematicians in love with the same woman. Their world is not quite this one, but much like Berkeley, California, and the two graduate students are trying to finish their degrees and get jobs while fighting to get the girl by changing reality using cutting edge math. It doesn't help that their unpredictable advisor Roland is a mad mathematical genius who has figured out a way to predict future events, causing a whole different type of trouble.
Tuesday, January 16th at 7:30pm
editors Nancy N. Chen & Helene Moglen with contributors
Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations
(New Pacific Press)
In the twenty-first century, the body is experienced less as a fixed entity than it is as a project of technological, medical and artistic invention. Think tattoos and piercing but also anorexia, self-cutting, cosmetic and transsexual surgery, prosthetics, organ transplants and life extension technologies. UCSC Associate Professor of Anthropology Chen and Professor of Literature Moglen, along with other members of the Institute of Advanced Feminist Research, tackle the psychological, social, and aesthetic aspects of voluntary changes to the body (face-lift), as well the involuntary ones (crows feet), and discuss the changing attitudes towards the body and its meaning in our society.
Wednesday, January 17th at 6:30pm *
Book Club
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
(Oxford)
This month’s selection is Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. Set partly in the United States, this novel includes a searing satire on mid-nineteenth-century America. Martin Chuzzlewit is the story of two Chuzzlewits, Martin and Jonas, who have inherited the characteristic Chuzzlewit selfishness. It contrasts their diverse fates: moral redemption and worldly success for one and increasingly desperate crime for the other. Read the book and join the discussion.
* Please Note Time
Wednesday, January 17th at 7:30pm
Ivano Franco Comelli
La Nostra Costa: (Our Coast)
A Family's Journey to and from the North Coast of Santa Cruz, California (1923-1983)
(Author House)
Santa Cruz is known today as a relaxed college town, but this coastal city has also become home to numerous Italian immigrants working towards their American dream. Comelli, a retired San Jose police officer, tells the fascinating true story of his family, beginning with his father, a northeastern Italian man who chose an unknown life in America over reenlistment in the army at the time of Mussolini’s ascent. From hard ranching during the Great Depression and what it felt like to be declared enemy aliens during World War II, to relatives still in Italy living under Nazi occupation, La Nostra Costa weaves personal stories with local history and animated storytelling. Join Ivan for a lively night of Italian song and story!
Thursday, January 18th at 7:00pm *
World Affairs Book Club
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
(Times)
This month’s selection is Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. With the reality of Iraq and Afghanistan today, this is a timely book that also highlights U.S. intervention throughout history. “Stephen Kinzer’s crisp and thoughtful Overthrow undermines the myth of national innocence. Quite the contrary: history shows the United States as an interventionist busybody directed at regime change.”—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Seymour Hersh cites the book as a reminder that “Bush has had plenty of company in the past century—presidents who believe that America, as Kinzer tells us, has the right to wage war wherever it deems war necessary.” For more information you may email Jenn Ramage at jenn_ramage@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.
* Please Note Time
Tuesday, January 23rd at 7:30pm
Elizabeth de la Vega
United States v. George W. Bush et al.
and
Dennis Loo
Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney
(Seven Stories)
"In her truly engrossing study, [de la Vega] conducts a hypothetical but technically impeccable grand jury indictment. She marshals the evidence to show that Bush et al. deliberately misinformed the people about the reasons for our war against Iraq. It is much more powerful than the 9/11 report. A tour de force.”—Chalmers Johnson (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire). The crime is tricking the nation into war, or, in legal terms, conspiracy to defraud the United States. A veteran federal prosecutor, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, and a former member of Organized Crime Strike Force and Branch Chief in San Jose, Elizabeth de la Vega has reviewed the evidence, researched the law, drafted an indictment, and presented it to a grand jury. If the indictment and grand jury are both hypothetical, the facts are tragically real.
In the face of the threats the White House presents to civil liberties, the Constitution, and international law, Dennis Loo’s persuasive collection makes the case that a drastically different political dynamic must be created right now. Contributors include Howard Zinn Peter Phillips, Judith Volkart, Dahr Jamail, Greg Palast, Mark Crispin Miller, and Michael Nagler. "An eye-opening, multi-layered indictment of the lawless rule of the Bush White House reactionaries. A well-edited, well-substantiated, a well-argued offering of hard-hitting truths that can serve as a manual for political action."—Michael Parenti, (The Culture Struggle, Superpatriotism).
Thursday, January 25th at 6:00pm *
Jerry Rice
Go Long: My Journey Beyond the Game and the Fame **
(Ballantine)
Jerry Rice won three Super Bowls and was an integral part of one of the top offenses in football history. He has played for the San Francisco 49ers, the Oakland Raiders, the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos and holds an unprecedented number of NFL records, including those for touchdowns, receptions and consecutive games with a reception. Now the legendary football star draws on the highlights, triumphs, and disasters of his long and illustrious career to reveal how ambition, work ethic, and humility have played a key role in his success both on and off the playing field.
* Please Note Time
** This is a book-signing only and Jerry Rice will sign only books purchased at Capitola Book Café. Books go on sale 1/16/07. Each book purchased at Book Café will include the required signing-line entrance ticket. Jerry will stay on the field until all his fans have cleared the stadium!
Monday, January 29th at 7:30pm
Ed Brodow
Negotiation Boot Camp: How to Resolve Conflict, Satisfy Customers, and Make Better Deals
(Currency Doubleday)
Every day, every one of us negotiates: haggling for a used car, buying a house, disputing the latest cell phone bill, navigating a disagreement with your children, making compromises with a spouse, requesting a promotion at work. From the corner office to the dinner table, Ed Brodow (Beating the Success Trap) works at settling the large and small conflicts of life amicably—by collaborating not by bullying. Brodow, a Monterey resident, is a renowned and innovative negotiation expert who has taught at Microsoft and Starbucks, appeared on PBS and Inside Edition, and been featured in SmartMoney and the Washington Post. Witty and incisive, this work emphasizes that in both personal relationships and pivotal career moments, knowing your own communication style, learning to listen, and creating trust can lead to more goals reached—and maybe even lower credit card rates!
Something to look forward to in 2007…
UPCOMING EVENTS AT BOOK CAFÉ!
Thur, Feb 8: Jonathan Raban, Surveillance
Wed, Feb 21: Peter Dexter, Paper Trails
Thurs, Feb 22: James Swanson, Manhunt
Tues, Feb 27: Sarah Dunant, In the Company of the Courtesan
Wed, Mar 7: Judith Levine, Not Buying It
Thur, Mar 8: Jane Smiley, 10 Days in the Hills
Thur, Mar 22: Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential
Thur, Mar 26: James Houston, Bird of Another Heaven
Tues, April 17: Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes From a Catastrophe
Tues, May 1: Nathanial Philbrick, Mayflower
