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.
Monday, May 7th at 7:30pm
Alisa Smith & J. B. Mackinnon
Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
(Harmony)
When Smith and MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. It took serious resolve to make it a year without sugar, olive oil, rice, beer, and much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They got personal with global economics and biodiversity, met revolutionary farmers, and tried gooseberry wine to sunchokes. The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe.
Wednesday, May 9th at 7:30pm
Don Evans
Good Money After Bad
(Atomic Quill Press)
The list of Don Evans’s past and current pursuits includes sports reporter, humorist, gambler, bookie, literature professor and writer. Pour all this into a novel, and you get a character like Chance Skinner who aspires to something vaguely like success (respect, love, integrity, meaningful work) and who sees gambling as a good shortcut to all that. When losses mount, however, and his good credit standing with bookies is in jeopardy, Chance submits himself as guinea pig to human medical studies for a little extra cash. With a cast of colorful characters that includes the City of Chicago itself, Good Money After Bad is a novel that skewers political correctness and revels in the ribald and ridiculous.
Thursday, May 10th at 7:30pm
Katherine Ellison
The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter
(Perseus)
A real Mother’s Day event! Generations of mothers have been told that having a baby means checking their own brains at the delivery room door. Recent scientific research paints a dramatically different and far rosier picture. With neuroscience studies as well as often hilarious stories to back her up, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Ellison argues that raising children may make moms smarter, from enhanced senses, alertness and memory skills, to a greater aptitude for risk-taking and a talent for empathy and negotiation.
Saturday, May 12 at 7:30pm
SECOND SATURDAY SALE
Celebrate all the new happenings at Capitola Book Café
AND SAVE!
20% OFF ALL HARDCOVERS*
10% OFF ALL PAPERBACKS*
*Inventory items only. Not valid with any other offer
Also, introducing a NEW CAFÉ MENU & FREE WIRELESS ACCESS
Second Saturday Sales run through August 2007 and fall on the following dates:
May 12, June 9, July 14, August 11
Monday, May 14th at 7:30pm
Amdreo S. Markovits
Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America
(Princeton)
From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. Markovits, former Chair of the UCSC Politics Department, argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776.While Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. He shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday European life, like sports and, language, that are beyond even Bush’s policies.
Tuesday, May 15th at 7:30pm
Riane Eisler
The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics
(Berrett-Koehler)
With her mega-bestseller The Chalice and the Blade, eminent social scientist Eisler inspired a generation of women and men to envision a truly egalitarian society by exploring the legacy of the peaceful, goddess-worshipping cultures from our prehistoric past. Now she shows that the great problems of our time—such as poverty, inequality, war, terrorism, and environmental degradation—are due largely to flawed economic systems that set the wrong priorities and misallocate resources. Conventional economic models fail to value and support the most essential human work of caring and caregiving, so basic human needs are increasingly neglected and the resulting social tensions fuel many of the conflicts we face today. Eisler offers a caring economics that transcends traditional categories like capitalist and socialist and offers enormous economic and social benefits.
Wednesday, May 16th at 6:30pm *
Book Club
The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
(Random House)
This month’s selection is Cloud Atlas by Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell. A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. Read the book and join the discussion.
* Please Note Time
Wednesday, May 16th at 7:30pm
Steve Ettlinger
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats
(Hudson Street Press)
From the phosphate mines in Idaho to the corn fields in Iowa, Twinkie, Deconstructed is a fascinating, thoroughly researched romp of a narrative that demystifies some of the most common processed food ingredients. Beginning at the source (hint: they’re often more closely linked to rock and petroleum than any of the four food groups), we follow each Twinkie ingredient through the process of being crushed, baked, fermented, refined, and/or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name—all for the sake of your cake. Cellulose gum: good for rocket fuel and sugary snacks. Yum.
Sunday, May 20th at 7:30pm
William Langewiesche
The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
(FSG)
"Langewiesche has evolved into perhaps our leading forensic journalist, a voracious student of all that can go wrong. Like a literary-minded accident investigator, he digs for every shred of evidence, without worrying about whom his conclusions might offend." —Bill Gifford, The Washington Post Book World.
In his shocking new work, former national correspondent for Atlantic Monthly and current international correspondent for Vanity Fair, Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning global threat of nuclear weapons production. As more unstable nations and stateless guerilla groups find ways of acquiring the ultimate arms, the stakes have soared to frightening heights. From Hiroshima to the present day North Korea and Iran, Langewiesche (OutlawSea, American Ground) describes a reality of urgent consequence to us all.
Also, this title will be discussed by Capitola Book Café’s World Affairs Book Club on Thursday, May 31 at 7:00pm.
Monday, May 21st at 7:30pm
Russ Parsons
How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table (Houghton Mifflin)
Featuring Locally grown food prepared by Severino's Community Butcher and River Cafe & Cheese Shop
One of the foremost food journalists of the nation and the food and wine columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Parsons gave us a smart and fun exploration of culinary science in How to Read a French Fry. Now, Parsons takes us from the produce fields to the pan. How do we cook that artichoke? How many varieties of pears are there? Parsons helps the cook sort through the produce in the market by illuminating the issues surrounding it and providing instructions on how to choose, store, and prepare these items. Whether explaining why potatoes should never be refrigerated or exploring organic farming and its effect on flavor, How to Pick a Peach is Parsons at his peak.
Area culinary talents Heidi Schlecht of River Café & Cheese Shop and Justin Severino of Severino's Community Butcher will present the audience with tasty reminders of why we really love to support local farms and farmers, specifically the generous folks at Lindencroft Farm and Everett Family Farm. Don’t miss this very special event
Celebrate the food as well as the art of our area farmers:
Capitola Book Café will be displaying paintings from
Market Motion: The Art of the Farmers’ Market
throughout the month of May.
Tuesday, May 22nd at 7:30pm
Tickets on-sale for Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead)
Event Date: Tuesday, June 19th at 7:30pm
The author of the sensational bestseller The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini returns with a haunting that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of two women, born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, who are brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. In 2006 he received the Humanitarian Award from the United Nations Refugee Agency and was named a U.S. goodwill envoy to that agency.
- This is a ticketed event. For $30.00, patrons receive one copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns, an entrance ticket, and the option of purchasing a second, single entrance ticket for $10.00.
- Tickets must be presented to enter the store and to proceed through the signing line.
- Only copies of A Thousand Splendid Suns purchased at Capitola Book Café will be signed by the author. Copies of The Kite Runner bought at Capitola Book Café and those that are personal copies may be signed, time permitting.
Friday, May 25th at 7:30pm
Natalie Angier
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
(Houghton Mifflin)
"Every sentence sparkles with wit and charm…it all adds up to an intoxicating cocktail of fine science writing." --Richard Dawkins.
With the singular intelligence and exuberance that made Woman: An Intimate Geography an international sensation, Angier takes us on a “guided twirligig through the scientific canon.” She draws on conversations with the world’s top scientists, and her own work as a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the New York Times, to create a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy, touching on physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. It’s vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time, from stem cells to global warming. It’s also one of those rare books that reignites our childhood delight in figuring out how things work: we learn what’s actually happening when our ice cream melts and how the horse shows evolution at work.
Thursday, May 31st at 7:00pm *
World Affairs Book Club
The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche
(FSG)
This month’s selection is The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche. Langeweische will be discussing his book at Capitola Book Café on Sunday, May 20 at 7:30pm. Join him, then join your peers on Thursday May 31 to continue this deeply important conversation.
* Please Note Time
In his shocking new work, former national correspondent for Atlantic Monthly and current international correspondent for Vanity Fair, Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning global threat of nuclear weapons production. As more unstable and undeveloped nations and even stateless guerilla groups find ways of acquiring the ultimate arms, the stakes have soared to frightening heights. From Hiroshima to the present day North Korea and Iran, Langewiesche (OutlawSea, American Ground) describes a reality of urgent consequence to us all.
