September 2002

Monday, September 9 at 7:30p.m.
Gary Young
No Other Life (Creative Arts)

No Other Life gathers in a single volume two earlier works by Gary Young, Days and the award-winning Braver Deeds with the final book in his trilogy, If He Had. Utilizing what Jane Hirshfield calls," a sinuous, brief prose-poem form that carries a flavor uniquely its own", Young weaves a pattern of compelling and often harrowing correspondences that Ethan Paquin described in Quarterly West as "an exploration of thresholds, of human endurance." Although every poem stands as an independent utterance, each book suggests a discrete poetic unit, and the entire trilogy can be read as a long poem in three parts. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and many other journals.

 

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Tuesday, September 10 at 7:30p.m.
Ann Packer
The Dive from Clausen's Pier (Knopf)

"The Dive from Clausen's Pier is one of those small miracles that reinforce our faith in fiction. It does what the best novels so often do, making the largest things visible by its perfect rendering of life on the smaller scale. It is witty, tragic and touching, and beguiling from the first page," writes Scott Turow. A longing for a change in the once satisfying sameness in her life comes crashing into Carrie Bell just as her fiancé is seriously injured in an accident, and now she must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need? Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex, this national bestseller marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist.

 

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Thursday, September 12 at 7:30p.m.
John Keahey
Venice Against the Sea: A City Besieged (St. Martins)

Award winning journalist John Keahey explains how the beautiful and historical city of Venice is slowly, irreversibly sinking. A natural geologic tendency coupled with the human elements of exploiting underground water resources and global warming have locked scientists, engineers, preservationists, and politicians in a world debate over how to ease this crisis. A riveting history and extensively researched report on a beloved city that is slipping away into the Adriatic.

 

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Tuesday, September 17 at 7:30p.m.
Gregg Herken
Brotherhood of the Bomb (Holt)

The story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction, which is now told in vivid detail by Gregg Harken. "Brotherhood of the Bomb is fast-paced, deeply researched, and resolves many longtime mysteries. More authoritatively than any previous history..." writes Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

 

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Wednesday, September 18 at 7:30p.m.
Antonio and Jonna Mendez
Spy Dust (Atria Books)

Three American intelligence officers - Aldrich Ames, Edward Howard Lee, and Robert Hanssen - endangered the lives of countless fellow agents working abroad when they shared highly sensitive information with the Soviet Union. For the first time, CIA officers Antonio and Joanna Mendez, husband and wife, offer an insider's account of the effect of the spies' betrayals and disclose their personal experiences as secret agents who created new operational techniques during the close of the Cold War. Spy Dust is a tribute to all men and women who serve in intelligence and detailed look at the risks and dangers international spies encounter.

 

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Saturday, September 21 at 7:30p.m.
Chuck Palahniuk
Lullaby (Doubleday)

"Imagine a plague that you catch through your ears...imagine an idea that occupies your mind like a city" writes the electric author of Fight Club and Choke in his latest thriller Lullaby. Another provocative, blackly comic take on contemporary culture, Lullaby reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times, delivering a parable on the sensory overload in the age of information.

 

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Sunday, September 22 at 2:30p.m. **
H. W. Brands
The Age of Gold (Doubleday)

In a spellbinding narrative that spans several continents and chronicles one of the most exciting periods of American history, Brands brings the fervor and power of the California Gold Rush vividly to life, revealing the ways it has permanently reshaped the American landscape. Weaving the politics of the time with the gripping stories of individuals who forsook families and farms to cross the seas and wilderness in the hopes of striking it rich, the Pultizer Prize finalist and author of The First American shows us how Californians and their golden land forever changed America.
** Please Note Time **

 

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Monday, September 23 at7:30 p.m.
Gaby Wood
Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (Knopf)

Could an eighteenth-century mechanical duck really digest and excrete its food? Was "the Turk," a celebrated chess-playing and -winning machine fabricated in 1769, a dazzling piece of fakery, or could it actually think? Why was Thomas Edison obsessed with making a mechanical? Can a twenty-first-century robot express human emotions of its own? Taking up themes long familiar from the realms of fairy tales and science fiction, Gaby Wood traces the hidden prehistory of a modern idea -- the thinking, hoaxes, and inventions that presaged contemporary robotics and the current experiments with artificial intelligence. Informed by the author's scientific and historical research, Edison's Eve is also a brilliant literary, cultural, and philosophical examination of the motives that have driven human beings to pursue the creation of mechanical life, and the effects of that pursuit.

 

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Tuesday, September 24 at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Santa Cruz

Poetry Santa Cruz presents poetry readings and workshops in the Santa Cruz area. This month Poetry Santa Cruz begins a bi-monthly series of readings at Capitola Book Cafe. Pulitzer Prize nominee Cornelius Eady and BOA Editions poet Meg Kearney will launch the series. Ascending stars in America's poetry firmament, Kearney is an ex-nun, and Eady is the founder of Cave Canem, and a prize--winning playwrite as well. This is a must see event for poetry lovers. Arrive early to secure a seat.

 

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Wednesday, September 25 at 7:30p.m.
Robert Clark
Love Among the Ruins (Vintage)

Memorably rendering the idealistic young love, realistic adult love, and the turbulent unrest and earth moving sense of purpose of the 1960's, award-winning novelist Robert Clark has crafted a work that is intimate, indelible, and grand. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes this novel "grapples with important issues of real life (love, passion, faith, responsibility). Yet it still manages to tell its old story in refreshing new ways, while, slowly and inexorably, gripping the reader's emotions in an ever-tightening vise."

 

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Thursday, September 26 at 7:30 p.m.
World Affairs Book Club
Cancelled in September

Last March, the Book Cafe began a new book club focusing on global current history with Graham Parsons facilitating the discussion. To date, the group has read books on Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the border dispute between India and Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Latin America. The group is taking a break for the month of September and will meet again on Thursday, October 24 at 7:00p.m. As always, we welcome people of all backgrounds and affiliations to come participate. For more information you may email Graham Parsons at parsons402@yahoo.com or call Jenn Ramage at 462-6297.

 

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Thursday, September 26 at 7:30p.m.
Jonathan Schorr
Hard Lessons: The Promise of an Inner-City Charter School (Ballantine)

A decade ago there were only two charter schools in the United States. Today there are more than 2,400, serving more than half a million students. Still, few Americans understand what a charter school really is, or what is involved in trying to create, attend, and teach in one. Written by a renowned journalist and education writer, and a former inner-city school teacher himself, Hard Lessons is the first book to capture the human drama of the entire experience. For three years, Jonathan Schorr was allowed complete access to the students, teachers, and parents of the E.C. Reems Academy in Oakland, California, making him uniquely qualified to tell their fascinating story. Through successes and setbacks, Hard Lessons reveals just how difficult it is, even with the best of intentions, to offer a quality education to every child in America. The story of E.C. Reems Academy offers invaluable lessons for anyone interested in the U.S.'s most pressing domestic concern.