Photo Credit: Fenia Hiassen 

Carl Hiaasen  

Sunday, August 15, 2:00 p.m.

Star Island   BUY NOW

Meet twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye (née Cheryl Bunterman), a pop star since she was fourteen—and about to attempt a comeback from her latest drug-and-alcohol disaster.

Now meet Cherry again: in the person of her “undercover stunt double,” Ann DeLusia. Ann portrays Cherry whenever the singer is too “indisposed”—meaning wasted—to go out in public. And it is Ann-mistaken-for-Cherry who is kidnapped from a South Beach hotel by obsessed paparazzo Bang Abbott.

Now the challenge for Cherry’s handlers (über–stage mother; horndog record producer; nipped, tucked, and Botoxed twin publicists; weed whacker–wielding bodyguard) is to rescue Ann while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry’s public—and from Cherry herself.

Will Bang Abbott achieve his fantasy of a lucrative private photo session with Cherry Pye? Will Cherry sober up in time to lip-synch her way through her concert tour? Will Skink track down Ann DeLusia before Cherry’s motley posse does?

All will be revealed in this hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane.

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of eleven previous novels, including the best-selling Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and three best-selling children’s books, Hoot, Flush, and Scat. His most recent work of nonfiction is The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport. He also writes a weekly column for The Miami Herald.

Chef Rick Bayless  

Monday, August 16

6:30 p.m.: Check-in

7:00 - 8:30 p.m.: Reception with Chef Bayless 

Fiesta at Rick's: Fabulous Food, Luscious Libations, and Great Times with Friends   BUY NOW

Green Dream Team Panel

Speaker: Twana Karney, Green@Home Program Director

For more information, contact Rich Wingerter at 650-207-8014 or visit http://www.meetup.com/Green-Making-for-the-Silicon-Valley-Area/calendar/13974324/

Mary Roach  

Monday, August 23, 7:00 p.m.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void   BUY NOW

The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity.

Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour?

To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.

Mary Roach is the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. She lives in Oakland.

Photo Credit: PhyllisChristopher.com

MOCKINGJAY RELEASE PARTY - WITH PIZZA!

Tuesday, August 24, 6:30 p.m.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 

When you read The Hunger Games you become obsessed.  And if you are anything like as obsessed as we are, then you will be counting down the days until you can lay your hands on Mockingjay, the final installment in this fabulous series.

And the wait is almost over. Mockingjay will be released on August 24^th. Have you preordered your book yet? Preorder from Kepler’s and we will serve you pizza as you come to pick up your book. Really, we’ll have pizza and a place to chat if you come to pick up your copy of Mockingjay after school on August 24^th at 6.30 p.m.

Sound good? Well, it gets better.

Suzanne Collins is coming to Kepler’s on November 3^rd! We can’t tell you how excited we are to meet her. And you can imagine how long the signing lines will be.  SO – and here’s the good part - we are giving a signing-line ticket with every book Kepler's pre-sells. And these tickets will be numbered. So you will get to be right at the front of the line - it can’t get better than that!

So don’t wait, preorder your copy of Mockingjay right now and know you’ll be right near the front of the line to meet and get your book signed by Suzanne Collins, who was named among the 2010 TIME 100 Most Influential People.

Howard Norman  

Wednesday, August 25, 7:00 p.m.

What Is Left the Daughter   BUY NOW

Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and cousin Tilda.  

Setting in motion the novel’s chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring. Actual historical incidents—including a German U-boat’s sinking of the Nova Scotia–Newfoundland ferry Caribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling—lend intense narrative power to Norman’s uncannily layered story.

Norman is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland.

Photo Credit: Nancy Crampton 

Brad Herzog 

Monday, August 30, 7:00 p.m.

Turn Left at the Trojan Horse: A Would-Be Hero's American Odyssey  BUY NOW

"Herzog's third travel memoir follows the highways cross-country examining the idea of the hero along the way. He captures stunning details of the American landscape. The hero's return, is irresistible...a near-perfect ending." --Kirkus Reviews  

Turn Left at the Trojan Horse has been described as On the Road meets Eat, Pray, Love because it goes well beyond a road trip. More than just a funny and profound narrative of Brad Herzog's cross-country trek toward a college reunion in Ithaca (New York) and more than another reimagining of Odysseus's ancient journey (he visits places like Troy, OR... Iliad, MT... Apollo, PA...), it is a memoir exploring the parameters of a heroic existence - by chronicling the lives of people in America's oft-ignored spaces, by examining the universal truths embedded in ancient myths, and by undertaking a fair bit of self-evaluation. It is the memoir of an Everyman searching for the hero within.

Brad Herzog has been described as a "modern-day Steinbeck" and a "Picasso of the Winnebago," and Lonely Planet has ranked his travel memoirs among eight classics of the genre, along with books like Travels with Charley and On the Road. As an award-winning freelance writer, he has chronicled some of the nation's most unusual and intriguing subcultures, from nudists to North Pole explorers and from Pez collectors to pro mini golfers. Please visit him at bradherzog.com

Discoveries: 'Turn Left at the Trojan Horse'
Discoveries: 'Turn Left at the Trojan Horse'. 54817224-12163112-187104. Turn Left at the Trojan Horse. Add your voice to the mix! ...
discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-ca-discoveries11.../10

Rick Moody

Thursday, September 2, 7:00 p.m.

The Four Fingers of Death  BUY NOW

Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won't sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror classic, "The Crawling Hand." Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to the desolation of Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet's first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues.

THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH is Rick Moody's ninth book. He has received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Photo Credit: Thatcher Keats

Youth Event: Lisa Brown

Friday, September 3, 7:00 p.m.

Picture the Dead  BUY NOW

A ghost will find his way home.

Jennie Lovell's life is the very picture of love and loss. First she is orphaned and forced to live at the mercy of her stingy, indifferent relatives. Then her fiancé falls on the battlefield, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Jennie struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, but is haunted by a mysterious figure that refuses to let her bury the past.

When Jennie forms an unlikely alliance with a spirit photographer, she begins to uncover secrets about the man she thought she loved. With her sanity on edge and her life in the balance, can Jennie expose the chilling truth before someone-or something-stops her?

Against the brutal, vivid backdrop of the American Civil War, Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown have created a spellbinding mystery where the living cannot always be trusted and death is not always the end.

Photo Credit: Darshan Stevens

Deborah Willis

Thursday, September 9, 7:00 p.m.

Vanishing  BUY NOW

This debut short story collection explores emotional and physical absences, the ways in which people leave and are left, and whether it’s ever possible to move on.  With a remarkable economy of words, moments of dark humor, and wisdom and dexterity far beyond her years, Willis captures an incredible array of characters that will linger in the imagination, proving that nothing is ever truly forgotten.  In these fourteen stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children.

Deborah Willis, 28, was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her work has appeared in various journals and publications, and she was a winner of PRISM International’s annual fiction prize. She graduated from the University of Victoria, and has worked as a horseback riding instructor, a waitress, a short-order cook, a tour-guide in a French castle, a house-cleaner, and a newspaper reporter. She is fluent in French, and currently works as a bookseller at Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia. Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Vanishing and Other Stories is her first book of fiction. 

Photo Credit: Michael O'Shea

William Gibson

Friday, September 10, 7:00 p.m.

Zero History  BUY NOW

The iconic visionary returns with his first new novel since the New York Times bestseller Spook Country.

Hollis Henry worked for the global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend once before. She never meant to repeat the experience. But she's broke, and Bigend never feels it's beneath him to use whatever power comes his way -- in this case, the power of money to bring Hollis onto his team again. Not that she knows what the "team" is up to, not at first.

Milgrim is even more thoroughly owned by Bigend. He's worth owning for his useful gift of seeming to disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic - so much so that he spoke Russian with his therapist, in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of the addiction that would have killed him.

Garreth has a passion for extreme sports. Most recently he jumped off the highest building in the world, opening his chute at the last moment, and he has a new thighbone made of rattan baked into bone, entirely experimental, to show for it. Garreth isn't owned by Bigend at all. Garreth has friends from whom he can call in the kinds of favors that a man like Bigend will find he needs, when things go unexpectedly sideways, in a world a man like Bigend is accustomed to controlling.

As when a Department of Defense contract for combat-wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy that even Bigend, whose subtlety and power in the private sector would be hard to overstate, finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift in a seriously dangerous world. 

David Kessler, M.D.

Tuesday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite  BUY NOW

Most of us know what it feels like to fall under the spell of food—when one slice of pizza turns into half a pie, or a handful of chips leads to an empty bag. But it’s harder to understand why we can't seem to stop eating—even when we know better. Dr. David Kessler, the dynamic former FDA commissioner who reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry, now reveals how the food industry has hijacked the brains of millions of Americans. The result? America’s number-one public health issue.

Dr. Kessler cracks the code of overeating by explaining how our bodies and minds are changed when we consume foods that contain sugar, fat, and salt. Food manufacturers create products by manipulating these ingredients to stimulate our appetites, setting in motion a cycle of desire and consumption that ends with a nation of overeaters. The End of Overeating explains for the first time why it is exceptionally difficult to resist certain foods and why it’s so easy to overindulge. Dr. Kessler met with top scientists, physicians, and food industry insiders. The End of Overeating uncovers the shocking facts about how we lost control over our eating habits—and how we can get it back. Dr. Kessler presents groundbreaking research, along with what is sure to be a controversial view inside the industry that continues to feed a nation of overeaters.

David A. Kessler, MD, served as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He is a pediatrician and has been the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco. A graduate of Amherst College, the University of Chicago Law School, and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Kessler is the father of two and lives with his wife in California.

Melanie Thernstrom

Wednesday, September 15, 7:00 p.m.

The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering  BUY NOW

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect.

Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear.

Melanie Thernstrom is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and the author of The Dead Girl and Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder.

 

Photo Credit: Kim McElroy

Liz Wiseman & Greg McKeown

Thursday, September 16, 7:00 p.m.

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter  BUY NOW

We've all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, lightbulbs go off over people's heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now, when leaders are expected to do more with less.

In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman and management consultant Greg McKeown explore these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation. 

Youth Event: Smart Chicks Kick It! Tour

Saturday, September 18, 6:00 p.m.

Menlo Park Library, 800 Alma St., Menlo Park

Calling all YA Paranormal readers. This is the event you have been waiting for.

The Smart Chicks Kick It Tour is coming to Kepler’s and the Menlo Park Library.

Featuring:

What an extraordinary line-up! These are some of our favorite authors and some of our favorite series. It doesn’t get better than this! We simply cannot wait.

Green Dream Team Panel: Renewing Urban Areas with Green Building

Speaker: Eric Corey Freed, San Francisco architect and author of Green Building and Remodeling for Dummies

For more information, contact Rich Wingerter at 650-207-8014 or visit http://www.meetup.com/Green-Making-for-the-Silicon-Valley-Area/calendar/14125892/

Joan Blades & Nanette Fondas

Tuesday, September 21, 7:00 p.m.

The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How To Work and Boost Your Bottom Line  BUY NOW

Ideas for transforming the workplace to fit today's workforce

In this book, Blades and Fondas offer business professionals an indispensable handbook for transforming the way we work and breaking free from the old, inflexible, 40-hour workweek. The authors show creative ways for individuals to fit work requirements with life obligations, and persuade managers to adopt these custom-fit work strategies to improve their bottom line.

Readers will finish the book convinced of the place of custom-fit work arrangements in today's workplace--and of how honoring employees' lives outside of work is an effective and innovative strategy for both managers and organizations. Featuring compelling stories of companies like Jet Blue, Ernst & Young, and Best Buy, the book profiles strategies that are gaining traction in workplaces across the country: - New twists on traditional flexible hours and part-time work strategies- Virtual workplaces- Results-Only Work Environments (ROWEs)- "Babies at Work" programs- "On ramp and off ramp" opportunitiesPractical and engaging, " The Custom-Fit Workplace "provides individuals and employers the tools they need to be successful and happy both at work and in life. 

Jonathan Safran Foer

Tuesday, September 21, 6:30 p.m.

Eating Animals  BUY NOW

Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto

Foer looks at our dining habits, insatiable appetites and the cultural meaning of food. He explores the ethical, environmental and health risks behind commercial fishing and factory farming and discusses his journey from carnivore to vegetarian. Hear from the man that actress Natalie Portman claims changed her from a "20-year vegetarian to a vegan activist."  

 

Presented by The Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley, in association with Oshman Family JCC and INFORUM. 

To purchase tickets, please visit http://tickets.commonwealthclub.org/auto_choose_ga.asp?area=189&shcode=1932

Photo Credit: Gianluca Gentilini

John Vaillant

Tuesday, September 28, 7:00 p.m.

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival  BUY NOW

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.

Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

John Vaillant is also the author of The Golden Spruce. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Outside, National Geographic, and Men’s Journal, among others. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
 

Photo Credit: Michael Lionstar 

Teen Event: Lauren Kate

Wednesday, September 29, 7:00 p.m.

Torment: A FALLEN Novel  BUY NOW

Hell on earth. That’s what it’s like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel.

It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts—immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn’t told her everything. He’s hiding something—something dangerous.
What if Daniel’s version of the past isn’t actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else?
 
The second novel in the addictive FALLEN series . . . where love never dies.

Photo Credit: Mischa Kuczynski

Jennifer Rosner

Thursday, September 30, 7:00 p.m.

If a Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard  BUY NOW

Jennifer Rosner’s revelatory memoir explores family, silence, and what it means to be heard. When her daughters are born deaf, Rosner is stunned. Then she discovers a hidden history of deafness in her family, going back generations to the Jewish enclaves of Eastern Europe. Traveling back in time, she imagines her silent relatives, who showed surprising creativity in dealing with a world that preferred to ignore them.

Rosner shares her journey into the modern world of deafness, and the controversial decisions she and her husband have made about hearing aids, cochlear implants and sign language. An imaginative odyssey, punctuated by memories of being unheard, Rosner’s story of her daughters’ deafness is at heart a story of whether she—a mother with perfect hearing—will hear her children.

Jennifer Rosner’s writings have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Faster Times, Wondertime Magazine, and the Hastings Center Report. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University and is the editor of The Messy Self. 

Steven Kotler

Tuesday, October 5, 7:00 p.m.

A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life  BUY NOW

Steven Kotler was forty years old and facing an existential crisis—which made him not too different from just about every other middle-aged guy in Los Angeles. Then he met Joy— a woman devoted to the cause of canine rescue. "Love me, love my dogs," was her rule, and not having any better ideas, Steven took it to heart. Together with their pack of eight dogs—then fifteen dogs, then twenty-five dogs, then, well, they lost count—Steven and Joy bought a tiny farm in a tiny town in rural New Mexico and started the Rancho de Chihuahua, a sanctuary for dogs with special needs. 

While dog rescue is one of the largest underground movements in America, it is also one of the least understood. This insider look at the cult and culture of dog rescue begins with Kotler’s personal experience working with an ever-peculiar pack of dogs and becomes a much deeper investigation into exactly what it means to devote one’s life to the furry and the four-legged.

Steven Kotler is the author of the novel The Angle Quickest for Flight, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and the non-fiction West of Jesus, a 2006 PEN West finalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Wired, Discover, Popular Science, Details, Outside, National Geographic, and elsewhere, and he writes "The Playing Field," a blog about the science of sport for PsychologyToday.com.

Photo Credit: Miranda Meyer

Lan Samantha Chang

Thursday, October 7, 7:00 p.m. 

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost  BUY NOW 

At the renowned writing school in Bonneville, every student is simultaneously terrified of and attracted to the charismatic and mysterious poet and professor Miranda Sturgis, whose high standards for art are both intimidating and inspiring. As two students, Roman and Bernard, strive to win her admiration, the lines between mentorship, friendship, and love are blurred.

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost offers a starkly honest portrait of people caught up in the drive to write and of the personal bargains and self-deceptions that such an ambition can entail. Lan Samantha Chang was brave to write this book, to turn her novelist's eye onto a world she knows intimately, and her bravery pays off in the unflinching final scenes. (Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic )

What a lovely, fierce book about love, betrayal, loss, and time’s dominion over us all. Fleet, preternaturally attuned to the ebb and flow of personal history, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost is, well, unforgettable. Lan Samantha Chang sees deeply into her characters, right down to their souls, but she wields her intelligence with the compassion of a master. (Scott Spencer, author of A Ship Made of Paper )

Lucy, Roman, Bernard, and Miranda are characters you won’t soon forget. In their passionate, demanding, wrecked, and joyous literary lives, they thrive on their belief in language’s absolute authority. This deeply affecting—and elegant—novel by Lan Samantha Chang definitely offers what Leonard Cohen calls his whole career in song: All day and night, versions of the erotic. I wish I could live long enough to discover this novel in an attic trunk a hundred years in the future, and exclaim, so this is what ‘poetic education’ really meant. (Howard Norman, author of What Is Left the Daughter ) 

Lan Samantha Chang's fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Story and The Best American Short Stories 1994 and 1996. Chang is the author of the award-winning books Hunger and Inheritance. She is the recipient of the Wallace Stegner and Truman Capote fellowships at Stanford University. She also received, from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a Teaching-Writing fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus fellowship. Her many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she directs the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  

Steven Johnson

Sunday, October 10, 2:00 p.m. 

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation  BUY NOW

Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? 

Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas. 

Johnson is the founder of a variety of influential websites -- currently, outside.in -- and is a contributing editor to Wired.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Giovanni Tempesta

Monday, October 11, 7:00 p.m.

Acque, Lutulente E Chiare: Waters, Muddy and Clear  BUY NOW

The 30 poems collected in Waters, muddy and clear, will let the reader penetrate Tempesta's nostalgic Italian heart. His verses, some in rhymes, are about love, desire, passion and compassion, fear and rejection, and the irony of life in all its aspects.

Translating poetry is an arduous task but he succeeded in recreating in English, the emotional impact of his original poems in Italian. At the end, he even invites the readers to give their own interpretation of the final poem, My Lady. Giovanni is a firm believer that we are all poets in one way or another, and that poetry lives inside of us. Poetry is part of each and every one of us, without exception. It is like a remote and hidden prisoner. He feels that man, like Michelangelo and his David, must do nothing but give it freedom from its imprisonment. Once sent forth, however, poetry belongs to us no longer, thus we often do not feel worthy of it. We hold the doubt that it was really our delivery, that it was hidden inside us for so long.

Giovanni Tempesta has been a Professor of Italian Language and Culture at Stanford University since 1983. Over the years, he has also taught Latin, Greek and French in Northern California and Italy. He was born and raised in Italy and moved to California in 1972.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Ron Chernow

Tuesday, October 12, 7:00 p.m. 

Washington: A Life  BUY NOW

Celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

Despite the reverence his name inspires, Washington remains a lifeless waxwork for many Americans, worthy but dull. A laconic man of granite self-control, he often arouses more respect than affection. In this groundbreaking work, based on massive research, Chernow dashes forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man. A strapping six feet, Washington was a celebrated horseman, elegant dancer, and tireless hunter, with a fiercely guarded emotional life. Chernow brings to vivid life a dashing, passionate man of fiery opinions and many moods. Probing his private life, he explores his fraught relationship with his crusty mother, his youthful infatuation with the married Sally Fairfax, and his often conflicted feelings toward his adopted children and grandchildren. He also provides a lavishly detailed portrait of his marriage to Martha and his complex behavior as a slave master.

At the same time, Washington is an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people. Not only did Washington gather around himself the foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but he also brilliantly orchestrated their actions to shape the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and establish the office of the presidency.

Ron Chernow is the prize-winning author of five previous books. His first, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award. His two most recent books, Alexander Hamilton and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, were both nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography.

Michael Krasny

Wednesday, October 13, 7:00 p.m. 

Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest  BUY NOW