June Events 2004

June 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.

Tuesday, June 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Brad Herzog
Small World: A Microcosmic Journey
(Pocket)

Small World is acclaimed travel writer Herzog's unique tribute to the land of the free, featuring a world of stories culled along America's highways and byways. From Rome (Oregon) to Athens (New York), from Moscow (Maine) to Mecca (California), Herzog embarks on a fascinating journey into the nooks and crannies of the nation--- tiny towns struggling to live up to their grandiose names. Shattering the notion that distance alone translates to wonder, this perpetual traveler probes everything from the dark history of Congo (Ohio) to the residue of slavery along the great river in Cairo (Illinois). He encounters a cast of characters as varied as the landscape---devout ranchers and devoted nudists, miners and migrants, artists and activists, hillbillies, hippies, hermits and Hare Krishnas.

Wednesday, June 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Dennis McFarland
Prince Edward
(Holt)

Dennis McFarland is the best-selling author of Singing Boy, The Music Room, School for the Blind, and A Face at the Window. With characteristic elegance, in his new novel, McFarland examines a historic summer in the fight against segregation. In August of 1959, Benjamin Rome is ten years old, and his hometown of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is immersed in a frenzy of activity. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate its public schools; the county has instead voted to close them. With only a few weeks in which to establish a private, whites-only system, most of Ben's family is involved in the effort. Come September, the black children will have no schools to attend, and that includes Ben's close friend Burghardt, the son of the hired hand who works on patriarch's Daddy Cary's farm. Ben has always known that the lives of blacks and whites are separated by a "color line," but none of what he has known seems to make sense anymore. When events lead to an explosive climax, Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years.

Sunday, June 6 at 2:30 p.m.
Kat Meads
Sleep
(Livingston Press)

In The Valley, no one sleeps; at the monastic mountain Retreat, everyone dreams. The future is fraught and filled with fanatics in this Silicon Valley-inspired fiction by a Ben Lomond author who received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts grant and a 2002-2003 California Artist Fellowship. Kat Meads is a local professor and writer who last visited the Book Cafe for her short story collection, Not Waving. We are pleased to host a staged reading of Sleep. The performance features: Laura Jane Bailey, Katy Brown, Davina Cohen, Jennifer Dean, Jean Mullis Forsman and is directed by Virginia Reed of San Francisco's Shee Theatre Company. Join us for a magical celebration and a defining artistic event.

Monday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Calvin Trillin
Obliviously On He Sails
(Random House)

Does the Bush Administration sound any better in rhyme? In this biting array of verse, it at least sounds funnier. Calvin Trillin employs everything from a Gilbert and Sullivan style, for describing George Bush's rescue in the South Carolina primary by the Christian Right ("I am, when all is said and done, a Robertson Republican"), to a bilingual approach, when commenting on the President's casual acknowledgment, after months of trying to persuade the nation otherwise, that there was never any evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11: "The Web may say, or maybe Lexis-Nexis / If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas." Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but also with the people around him. Trillin may never be poet laureate-certainly not while George W. Bush is in office-but his wit and his political insight produce what has been called "doggerel for the ages." Since 1990, CALVIN TRILLIN, author of dozens of other works, has been The Nation's "deadline poet," contributing a verse on the news every week. In discussing his political sympathies, he has said, "I am partial to politicians with iambic names that rhyme with a lot of disparaging words."

Tuesday, June 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Mary Waters
The Laws of Evening: Stories
(Scribner)

Like Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, The Laws of Evening beckons readers into another culture. Set in Japan before, during, and after WW II, these stories chronicle characters whose daily lives and traditions are forever changed by the violence around them. Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an Irish-American father, Waters has been recognized as one of the most important writers to emerge from our multicultural landscape. Writes Terri Gross, "Waters' empathic imagination is so vivid she makes a reader feel like a silent witness to the small acts of cruelty and surrender that the history books can't record."

Thursday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Michelle de Kretser
The Hamilton Case
(Little, Brown)

A brilliant novel of identity and culture, this second book by Sri Lanka native and Melbourne University professor Michelle de Krester is comparable to Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Mistry's A Fine Balance. Sam Obeyesekere's Oxford education will not save him from his family's terrible secrets or his nation's unrest. He has striven to become the finest of English gentlemen, a future leader in the colonized nation of Ceylon - modern day Sri Lanka - his native homeland. He exiles his prodigal mother to their jungle estate; separates himself from his brother-in-law who is agitating for unrest amongst the fragile stratums of Ceylon's populace; and marries an unremarkable woman, who bears him a son. His undoing comes from a case he is warned not to take: the murder of an English tea planter. His prosecution sends shock waves through the higher echelons of the island society and reveals fault lines in the culture of the British occupation. "An utterly captivating blend of intellectual muscle and storytelling magic" - Boyd Tonkin, Independent.

Sunday, June 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Barry Lopez
Resistance
(Knopf)

From National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez comes a spare, timely volume of fiction: nine interrelated stories told in the first person by those who have become "parties of interest" to their governments. Resistance is Barry Lopez's dramatic response to the recent ideological changes in our society and as Publishers Weekly writes, "these testimonials feel like haunting fragments of committed lives . . . they are powerful as artistic argument, suggesting that resistance is the natural state of the conscious and thoughtful." In Resistance, Barry Lopez has invented characters forced to deal with the kind of harrowing situations that are easy to imagine in these times punctuated by war, global terrorism, and the Patriot Act. They each bear witness, telling their stories in letters which serve the primary purpose of leaving an historical record. The telling itself is by turns passionate and resigned--and above all, topical, timely, and surprisingly familiar. The desire for dignity and personal freedoms becomes a shared mantra. It is deeply unsettling, arousing, and finally inspiring.

Tuesday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Geoffrey Nunberg
Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times
(Public Affairs)

The words that echo through Geoffrey Nunberg's brilliant new journey across the landscape of American language evoke exactly the tenor of our times. Nunberg has a wonderful ear for the new, the comic and the absurd. At the heart of the entertainment and linguistic slapstick that Nunberg delights in are the core concerns that have occupied American minds. "Going Nucular," the title piece, is more than a bit of fun at the President's expense. Nunberg's analysis is also a succinct summary of the questions that hover over the administration's strategy. It exemplifies the message of the book: that in the smallest ticks and cues of language the most important issue and thoughts of our times can be heard and understood. Geoffrey Nunberg is a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University and a Consulting Full Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. He is chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Since 1989, he has done a regular language feature on NPR's "Fresh Air," and more recently he has been doing regular features for the Sunday New York Times "Week in Review."

Wednesday, June 16 at 6:30 p.m. *
Book Club
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. "Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
* Please Note Time

Wednesday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Timothy Tyson
Blood Done Sign My Name
(Crown)

Like many small Southern towns in 1970, Oxford, North Carolina was virtually untouched by the civil rights movement. But when a Klansman and his sons kill a young black man in the town square and an all-white jury acquits them, both blacks and whites are swept into a firestorm. Timothy Tyson is the son of the pastor of the all-white Methodist Church who pleaded for peace and justice in Oxford in that day, only to be labeled a traitor. Now, thirty years later, Tyson returns to his hometown to make sense of the brutal past, even interviewing the still unrepentant murderers, and sheds new light on America's struggle for racial justice.

Thursday, June 17 at 7:00 p.m. *
Foreign Affairs Book Club
More Terrible Than Death: Violence, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia by Robin Kirk

This group meets every month to discuss a book relevant to current events 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 More Terrible Than Death: Violence, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia by Robin Kirk. More Terrible Than Death is a gripping work that maps the dramatic new relationship between the United States and Colombia in human terms, using portraits of the Colombians and Americans involved, the author's experiences in Colombia as a writer and human rights investigator and an insider's analysis of the political realities that shape the expanding war on drugs and the growing U.S. military presence there. Looking at the war from the ground up, interviewing and profiling human rights activists, guerrillas, and paramilitaries to explain how it has changed their lives, Robin Kirk gives depth and meaning to the headlines that leave unexplained the intimate dimension of the U.S./Colombian relationship.
* Please Note Time

Monday, June 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Rosemary Altea
Soul Signs
(Atria)

In Soul Signs, internationally renowned spiritual medium Rosemary Altea introduces a system of soul typing that encompasses all living beings and explores the true nature of the soul-in a radiant style familiar to the legion of fans who have made her a best-selling author (The Eagle and the Rose) and an enormous hit on such shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, and Larry King Live. Which energy group do you belong to--the strategic and grounded earth signs, passive and charming air signs, compromising yet unstoppable water signs, the ever-changing emotional fire signs, or the destructive dark sign-or sulfur group? What about your mate? Once readers learn the science behind soul typing, they will enjoy "typing" their friends, family, and even celebrities to better understand why some people seem so happy, others at war with themselves, and-the most fun-who belongs together.

Sunday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Robert Reich
Reason
(Random House)

From Robert B. Reich, passionate believer in American democracy, and public servant in both Democratic and Republican administrations, comes this urgent call to liberals to reclaim their political clout. Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what Reich sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by radical conservatives currently dominating public discourse. With clean prose, passionate arguments and thoughtful analysis, Reich, author of The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and The Future of Success, offers a bold plan for reinstating the traditional American politics of reason. Al Franken says, "We've got Reason, they've got Treason. We've got Reich, they've got Coulter. We win. A brilliant and passionately argued book. Read it." Robert B. Reich is currently a University Professor at Brandeis University and a Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis's Heller Graduate School. He is co-founder of The American Prospect which began in 1990 as an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics.

Monday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m.
Peretz Kidron, editor
REFUSENIK! Israeli's Soldier's of Conscience
(St. Martins)

REFUSENIK! Israeli's Soldier's of Conscience, compiled and edited by Peretz Kidron with a forward by Susan Sontag, is a moving, first-time look at Israeli soldiers who have refused orders on moral grounds, thus earning them the name 'Refusenik'-along with a prison sentence. REFUSENIK! tells the different stories of the Israelis who believe in their country but not in its actions beyond its borders. Journalist Peretz Kidron, a long-time Israeli citizen, retells the stories of these 'Refuseniks' from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon up to the current Palestinian situation. The stories, experiences, viewpoints, and even poetry from a great spectrum of Israelis are presented, including officers, ordinary foot soldiers, men, and women, all from various ethnic backgrounds and classes. REFUSENIK! also reveals the cautious and embarrassed response of the authorities and the wider implications of the philosophy of selective refusal for conscientious citizens in every country where conscription still exists. This event is a benefit for the Resource Center for Non-Violence.

Tuesday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Sharon Shipley
The Lavender Cookbook
(Running Press)

"Many people have experienced lavender only in the classic herbes de Provence mixture, but there are many more uses for this versatile herb," writes Shipley, whose love affair with lavender began in 1992 when she started traveling and teaching cooking in Provence, France. In The Lavender Cookbook, Shipley traces the history of lavender to the days of the Roman Empire where it was gathered for its healing and soothing properties as well as a culinary herb. She also describes how to cultivate, harvest, and dry your own lavender and includes resources for buying and cooking with lavender. Come feast on a few of the many treats included in this delightful volume.

Wednesday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Dan Neuharth, PhD
The Secrets You Keep From Yourself: How to Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness
(St. Martin's Press)

Self-sabotage and self-deception are curious human abilities. You have the capacity to focus your attention as well as distract yourself, embrace the best in life as well as undermine cherished goals, and act with self-confidence as well as sink into worry and guilt. When you don't do what is good for you, you are consciously or unconsciously keeping something from yourself, and keeping secrets only causes you trouble. Written in a compassionate tone, this book by a psychotherapist and best selling author (If You Had Controlling Parents) is packed with powerful techniques to help you conquer the fears that have stopped you in the past and act now in your own best interests. Dan Neuharth is a marriage and family therapist in the Bay Area and a frequent guest on Oprah and Good Morning America.