NOVEMBER 2001

Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 pm
Lisa Jensen
The Witch from the Sea (Beagle Bay Books)

Her film and book reviews have appeared in The Good Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Cinefastastique. She has appeared on Monterey Bay area radio and TV stations. Now, in a new novel, Lisa Jensen brings to life the colorful, courageous days of pirates and kidnapping along the shores of 19th century America. "Better than Diana Gabaldon --The Witch from the Sea is a rare creation, a historical romance with guts as well as glamour," says Joan Druett, author of Hen Frigates and She Captains. Cheer on a local celebrity and her wild-spirited, adventurous leading woman, Tory!

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Saturday, November 3 at 10:45 am
Bilingual Storytime with Billie Harris and Brett Taylor

We invite children and adults alike to join us for a grand time. Billie Harris and Brett Taylor---both of KUSP fame--- join us to read some delightful new tales in English and Spanish.
Please Note: There will be no storytime for the month of December. It will resume in January, 2002.

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Monday, November 5 at 7:30 pm
Victor David Hanson
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (Doubleday)

Why is it that, during the Gulf War, GIs from icy Minnesota were better equipped to fight in the desert than recruits from nearby sweltering Baghdad? Why is that time and again, Western armies have been able to claim astonishing victories against non-Western adversaries, even when far from home and vastly outnumbered? The reason has less to do with luck, geography and genetics, and extends beyond technology and military prowess. Instead, asserts acclaimed author and historian Victor David Hanson, these victories indicate a cultural heritage at work, one forged in antiquity and cultivated over time. Highly readable, lucid, and timely, Carnage and Culture goes beyond the conventions of "guns and trumpets" and explores nine historic battles, offering compelling results.

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Tuesday, November 6 at 7:30 pm
Robert Wilson
The Company of Strangers (Harcourt)

In The Company of Strangers, Gold Dagger award-winner Robert Wilson takes the chilling irony of "secret intelligence" to a new and more poignant human level as he shows that the heart is both more knowing and more secretive than the mind. The author of A Small Death in Lisbon has crafted a thriller that moves from the outside of the Third Reich to postwar Berlin, crackling with spycraft and international intrigue. Math wizard Andrea Aspinall, plucked out of academia by British intelligence to help in the hunt for atomic secrets, disappears under a new identity in Lisbon, where such secrets are easily bought and sold. Karl Voss, already experienced in the illusions of intrigue when he arrives in Lisbon, is an attaché at the German Legation, though he is secretly working against the Nazis. Their lives and fates intertwine as they discover the deepest secrets aren't held by governments----and that death is a relative term.

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***** CANCELLED *****

Wednesday, November 7 at 7:30 pm
Gary M. Pomerantz
Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds: Tragedy and Triumph of ASA Flight 529 (Crown)

In times of great tragedy, ordinary people behave in extraordinary ways. We know this now more than ever, and Gary M. Pomerantz takes us deep inside the hearts and minds of 19 people who acted quickly and bravely in the few short minutes that it took for their plane to crash into a Georgia field due to mechanical failure. How would I act? Would someone help me? Judging from this moving and thought-provoking book, the outlook is surprisingly optimistic. Of Pomerantz' new book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David J. Garrow says, "A deeply moving account of the extraordinary strengths that ordinary people can display when tragedy confronts them. As emotionally powerful a book as you are likely ever to read."

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Thursday, November 8 at 7:30 pm
Barbara Joans
Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society (University of Wisconsin)

As an anthropologist, Barbara Joans untangles the rules, rituals, and rites of passage of the biker culture. As a new member of that American subculture, she struggles to overcome fear, physical weakness, and the tendency to shoot her mouth off - a tendency that very nearly gets her killed. Introducing us to the women who ride the rear, including the backseat Betty and the biker chic, Joans also gives us a close look at the women who ride on their right, courageous in their defiant presence in a man's world, lusting for risk and freedom. Cofounder of National Women's health Network Phyllis Chesler says, "Bike Lust shatters myths and introduces us to a new generation of 'gender traitor bikers'...Joans has found her tribe and she loves them."

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Friday, November 9 at 7:30 pm
Jill Fredston
Rowing to Latitude: Journey's Along the Arctic's Edge (North Point Press)

Jill Fredston has traveled more than twenty thousand miles of the Arctic and sub-Arctic - backwards. With her oceangoing rowing shell and her husband, Doug Fesler, in a small boat of his own, she has disappeared every summer for years, exploring the rugged coastlines of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Norway. Carrying what they need to be self-sufficient, the two of them have battled mountainous seas and hurricane-force winds. They have also been serenaded by humpback whales and scrutinized by puffins. Jill Fredston has ventured into some of our last and most breathtaking, unspoiled places, and Rowing to Latitude is her lyrical, vivid celebration of her northern journeys and the insights they inspired. This presentation will include a slide show.

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Monday, November 12 at 7:30 pm
Melanie J. Mayer
Staking Her Claim: The Life of Belinda Mulrooney, Klondike and Alaska Entrepeneur (Ohio State University Press)

Join UCSC Professor Emerita Melanie Mayer for a sweeping American saga of determination and will. In July of 1897 news reached Seattle and San Francisco of Klondike gold. But Belinda Mulrooney had arrived in Dawson in June -- way ahead of the crowd. Possessing no money or education but ample amounts of ingenuity, ambition, and competitiveness, this legendary pioneer was on her way to building two towns, two businesses, and two fortunes. Staking Her Claim is a triumphant gold rush biography and a testament to the human spirit and to the frontier experience. This presentation will include a slide show.

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Tuesday, November 13 at 7:30 pm
Gregory Crouch
Enduring Patagonia (Random House)

This remarkable book details a breathtaking odyssey through the beautiful and terrible peaks of Patagonia, one of Earth's last few wild places, a land that requires great sacrifice but offers great rewards to those who dare to challenge it. Within these pages, Crouch explores the world of cutting-edge alpinism and takes us along on his many notable Patagonian climbs - he completes a successful climb up the Compressor Route of Cerro Torre; a first ascent of the north face of Aguja Poincenot; and a treacherous winter ascent of the west face of Cerro Torre, another first. His vivid accounts of the perils of ice, storms, and gravity on every handhold illustrate the crucial alpine balance between physical danger and mental agility. This presentation will include a slide show.

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Wednesday, November 14 at 7:30 pm
Akhil Sharma
An Obedient Father (Harcourt)

This stunning novel about family secrets in impoverished India has been highly praised. Ram Karan, a corrupt official in the New Delhi school system, is a bumbling, sad, ironic man consumed by a terrible secret. With the assassination of politician Rajiv Gandhi, Ram is plunged into a series of escalating and possibly deadly political betrayals. Eventually, his own daughter discovers a crime Ram committed years ago forcing him to make amends after a life of deception. Publisher's Weekly gave an Obedient Father a starred review saying, "this caustic yet darkly comic story resonates powerfully, as the reader comes to sympathize with fallible human beings trapped in circumstances that corrupt the soul." Mesmerizing, cunning, and humorous, An Obedient Father is a small masterpiece.

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Wednesday, November 14 at 7:30 pm
Howard Zinn and Dana Frank at the Civic Auditorium in Santa Cruz

Howard Zinn is one of the country's most beloved and respected historians and a passionate activist for radical change. His classic, A People's History of the United States, has gone into more than 25 printings and is widely used in college and university classrooms. His newest book, Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century, is a collaboration with acclaimed American historians Dana Frank, UCSC professor of American Studies, and Robin D.G. Kelley, New York University professor of history. Howard Zinn tells the grim tale of the Ludlow Massacre, a drama of beleaguered immigrant workers, Mother Jones, and the politics of corporate power in the age of robber barons. Dana Frank brings to light the little-known story of a sit-in conducted by the counter girls at the Detroit Woolworth's during the Great Depression.
*Please Note: This event will be a Fundraiser for the Resource Center for Non-Violence. Tickets are required for admittance. For ticket information, please call 423-1626. Bookshop Santa Cruz and Capitola Book Cafe will be providing books for this event.

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Thursday, November 15

The November and December Sessions of our monthly writing group have been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience. The group will resume in 2002.

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Thursday, November 15 at 7:30 pm
Michael P. Branch, editor
John Muir's Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa (Shearwater Books)

"A remarkable manuscript. It is astonishing that at the age of 73 the man associated with the forests and mountains of the West, whose dreams and spirit inspired the birth of the environmental movement, made a trip such as this to the Amazon and Africa. John Muir's Last Journey provides insights into the mind and soul of one of the greatest figures in American conservation history." Wade Davis, author of The Serpent and the Rainbow, had this to say about this surprising collection of unpublished journals and letters of John Muir. Hear the vigor and insight of this legendary American naturalist yourself by joining the man who knows his words and letters the best, Michael P. Branch.

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Monday, November 26 at 7:30 pm
Peter Kurth
Isadora: A Sensational Life (Little, Brown)

Isadora Duncan - her name is synonymous with originality, spontaneity, drama, and sensuality. The founder of modern dance, she truly lived a sensational life with her many loves, her passion for art, her vibrant performances, and her personal tragedies. Acclaimed author Peter Kurth, author of Tsar, Anastasia, and American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson, masterfully reveals the dramatic story of this passionate artist set against the sweeping backdrop of Europe and the US in the early twentieth century.

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Friday, November 30 at 7:30 pm
Frances Mayes
The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poetry (Harcourt)

Before she fell in love with Tuscany, she fell in love with verse. Frances Mayes, The New York Times best-selling author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, has been a creative writing professor for over twenty-five years, emphasizing the art of poetry. The esteemed creator of five poetry books, she has blended her talents in an accessible "field guide" to reading and writing poetry, beginning with a new look at the basics, leading us to many creative composition ideas, and following up with a thoughtful selection of poems from Jamaica Kincaid to Shakespeare. Join the beloved Frances Mayes for an evening of what she calls "the natural pleasure of language - a happiness we were born to have."