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.

Youth Event: Margaret Peterson Haddix

Monday, September 20, 7:00 p.m.

Sabotaged  BUY NOW

After helping Chip and Alex survive 15th century London, Jonah and Katherine are summoned to help another missing child, Andrea, face her fate. Andrea is really Virginia Dare, from the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jonah and Katherine are confident in their ability to help Andrea fix history, but when their journey goes dangerously awry, they realize that they may be in over their head. They've landed in the wrong time period. Andrea doesn't seem that interested in leaving the past. And even worse, it appears that someone has deliberately sabotaged their mission...

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

Lisa Birnbach

Wednesday, September 22, 7:00 p.m.

True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World  BUY NOW

From Lisa Birnbach, the author of The Official Preppy Handbook—and designer Chip Kidd—comes a whole new take on the prep world that Birnbach turned into an international best-selling phenomenon thirty years ago.

True Prep is a contemporary look at how the old guard of natural-fiber-loving, dog-worshipping, G&T-soaked preppies adapt to the new order of things. Birnbach considers the prep attitude towards money (ambivalent), schools (good investment), wardrobe (now your clothes fit), work (some careers will never be prep), decorating (ask mummy), scandal (including rehab and prison), and food and drink (with some classic recipes for both). She also looks at weekends (and what to do to get asked back), entertaining, sports (including sailing and shopping), weddings, etiquette, the Internet and electronic gadgetry, political correctness, reality TV, and . . . polar fleece. And last but not least: a do-it-yourself eulogy.

With more than 200 original illustrations and photographs, True Prep promises to be a whole new, old sensation.

Lisa Birnbach still wears her father’s tennis sweater, her grandmother’s pearls, and flies coach. In the last thirty years she’s been busy in old media, but she managed to meet Chip Kidd through Facebook.

Photo Credit: Elena Seibert 

Elton Sherwin

Thursday, September 23, 7:00 p.m.

Addicted to Energy: A Venture Capitalist's Perspective on How to Save Our Economy and Our Climate  BUY NOW

Addicted to Energy is written as a guidebook to a fictional governor, with advice on how to manage both the climate and energy crises. The book outlines practical steps that governments, businesses, and individuals can take to lower their energy consumption.

Heavily researched, the book presents complex topics in simple, understandable, and sometimes amusing ways. Short and to the point, the author makes over fifty recommendations; most are shorter than three pages. The book contains many charts and graphs, as well as practical tips for homeowners, businesses, and local governments.

Kara's 27th Professional Caregivers' Conference

Healing After Trauma and Loss 

Friday, September 24, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. 

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

Featuring:

JOANNE CACCIATORE, PhD, LCSW, FT
Assistant Professor and researcher at Arizona State University 

Friday, September 24, 7:00 p.m.

Misty: Digging Deep in Volleyball and Life   BUY NOW

An unprecedented glimpse into the life of two-time Olympic gold medal–winning beach volleyball icon Misty May-Treanor.

More than any Olympics in history, the 2008 Beijing Summer Games captured the world’s imagination, and Misty May-Treanor became one of the biggest U.S. stars on the global stage. Now she shares the story of her life and remarkable athletic career. Destined for beach volleyball superstardom, having been raised on famed Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Misty talks about the personal and professional challenges she has faced and the life lessons she has learned in the process. 

From growing up with two driven, competitive, accomplished athlete parents and living in a volatile household rocked for years by their alcoholism to the heartbreaking death of her mother from cancer, Misty reveals intimate details never before publicly discussed. She tells behind-the-scenes stories about her eight-year climb to the top of beach volleyball with partners Holly McPeak and Kerri Walsh; her career-threatening injuries; her role on ABC’s hit television show Dancing with the Stars; and of course, her historic two Olympic gold medals and the special rewards they’ve brought.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a Booksigning Only. There will be no formal presentation.

Photo Credit: Deborah Feingold

Photo Credit: Marion Ettlinger 

Monique Truong

Monday, September 27, 7:00 p.m. 

Bitter in the Mouth  BUY NOW

From Monique Truong, the bestselling and award-winning author of The Book of Salt, comes a brilliant, mesmerizing, beautifully written novel about a young woman’s search for identity and family, as she uncovers the secrets of her past and of history.
 
Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. Now in her thirties, Linda looks back at her past when she navigated her way through life with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily letters.

For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past. Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family.

This astonishing novel questions many assumptions—about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected and to be disconnected—from others and from the past, our bodies, our histories, and ourselves.   

The Saturday Read: 'Bitter in the Mouth' by Monique Truong

The author of 'The Book of Salt' follows a North Carolina girl with an unusual auditory disorder through adolescence into adulthood.

By Diane Leach Special to the Los Angeles Times

August 28, 2010 

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 

Common Ground Speaker Series presents Tony Wagner, Ph.D.
 
A Flat New World
Preparing Your Student for the 21st Century
 
Tuesday, September 28, 7:00 p.m.

Woodside High School Performing Arts Center   
199 Churchill Avenue, Woodside

Our children will come of age in a world far more globally connected and competitive than at any time in history. Will they be ready?
 
Please join us for a special evening with Dr. Tony Wagner, one of the nation’s foremost education experts.  He'll outline new skills that students must have to succeed in a “flat” world and share innovative strategies to help them navigate the academic, career and citizenship challenges that await them.  

Dr. Wagner is co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is author of The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need – And What We Can Do About It.   

All Common Ground Speaker Series events are free of charge to the parents, faculty and staff of member schools. Guests from non-member schools are welcome to attend for a $20 fee at the door. Light refreshments are offered 30 minutes prior to the event and books are available for purchase.
 

Teen Event: Lauren Kate

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

Torment: A FALLEN Novel  BUY NOW

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. 

Youth Event: Ying Chang Compestine

Friday, October 1, 7:00 p.m.

Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party  BUY NOW

Menlo Park Library, 800 Alma St., Menlo Park

Nine-year-old Ling has a very happy life. Her parents are both dedicated surgeons at the best hospital in Wuhan, and her father teaches her English as they listen to Voice of America every evening on the radio. But when one of Mao’s political officers moves into a room in their apartment, Ling begins to witness the gradual disintegration of her world.

In an atmosphere of increasing mistrust and hatred, Ling fears for the safety of her neighbors, and soon, for herself and her family. For the next four years, Ling will suffer more horrors than many people face in a lifetime. Will she be able to grow and blossom under the oppressive rule of Chairman Mao? Or will fighting to survive destroy her spirit—and end her life?

Teen Event: Lisa Desrochers

Monday, October 4, 7:00 p.m.

Personal Demons   BUY NOW

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.

Stina Katchadourian

Wednesday, October 6, 7:00 p.m.

The Lapp King's Daughter: A Family's Journey Through Finland's Wars  BUY NOW

From 1939 to 1945, Finland fought three wars: the Winter War of 1939, when the Soviet Union attacked the country; the Continuation War, when Finland fought the Soviet Union alongside Germany; and the Lapland War of 1944-45 against Germany.

Stina Katchadourian's memoir tells the story of how these three wars uprooted the lives of one Finnish family. The book draws on the author's childhood memories and also on the correspondence between her parents, who were separated during most of World War II, with the father on the front, fighting the Soviets.

Very little has previously been written about Finland's dramatic political history during World War II. How this small country retained its independence despite facing occupation by the Soviet Union or domination by Nazi Germany is told in riveting detail in this eyewitness account, which also includes family photos, maps, historical photos and other unique material from Swedish and Finnish archives.

Katchadourian grew up in Finland as part of its Swedish-speaking minority and moved to the United States in 1966. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Efronia, An Armenian Love Story and Great Need Over the Water, and has published book-length translations of poetry by Märta Tikkanen, Edith Södergran, and Tua Forsström.   

Stina Katchadourian also works as a journalist for Scandinavian media. She regularly contributes to a Helsinki newspaper and has made numerous programs for Finnish radio and television. 

She holds an M.A. from Stanford University and has been an Affiliated Scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She has held residencies at the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California, and the MacDowell Foundation in New Hampshire. She has served on the Board of the Global Fund for Women and currently serves on the Board of the Bay Area Chapter of the Finlandia Foundation, and is an honorary member of the Finland-Swedish Literature Society. Her prizes include the Leif and Inger Sjögren Translation Prize of the American-Scandinavia Society and the Södergran Prize.  

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.  

Credit: Stephanie Rausser

San Mateo County Reads: Michael Chabon

ONE BOOK, ONE COUNTY - KICKOFF EVENT

Friday, October 7, 7:00 p.m.

San Mateo Performing Arts Center, 600 N. Delaware St., San Mateo

FREE and Open to All!

Peninsula Library System is pleased to announce its 2010 fall reading program with the selection of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Michael Chabon appears LIVE to discuss his novel, answer audience questions and sign books.

Presented by the Peninsula Library System

Youth Event: Penny Noyce

Friday, October 8, 7:00 p.m.

Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers  BUY NOW

When Aunt Adelaide sends thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne on a treasure hunt in the rain, they never expect to stumble into an enchanting land where words and numbers run wild. They are surprised again when the first people they meet beg them to find Lexicon's missing children, who have wandered off, bewitched by lights in the sky.

Trekking between villages in search of clues, the cousins encounter a plague of punctuation, a curious creature, a fog of forgetting, the Mistress of Metaphor, a panel of poets, and the illogical mathematicians of Irrationality. But when a careless Mathemystical reflects them across the border into the ominous Land of Night, their peril deepens. Will Daphne and Ivan find a way to solve the mystery of lights in the sky and restore the lost children of Lexicon to their homes? 

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.

Youth Event: Tony DiTerlizzi 

Tuesday, October 12, 7:00 p.m.

The Search for WondLa  BUY NOW

Menlo Park Library, 800 Alma St., Menlo Park

When a marauder destroys the underground sanctuary that Eva Nine was raised in by the robot Muthr, the twelve-year-year-old girl is forced to flee aboveground. Eva Nine is searching for anyone else like her, for she knows that other humans exist, because of an item she treasures—a scrap of cardboard on which is depicted a young girl, an adult, and a robot, with the strange word, “WondLa.”

Tony DiTerlizzi honors traditional children’s literature in this totally original space age adventure: one that is as complex as an alien planet, but as simple as a child’s wish for a place to belong.

“I was knocked out by Tony DiTerlizzi's novel... everything is described so thoroughly and fully that I felt like I was there. I think Tony's extraordinary visual sense comes though here with words. Spiderwick was amazing; this goes so much further.”-- Joan Kindig, Associate Professor at James Madison University

Michael Krasny

Wednesday, October 13, 7:00 p.m. 

Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest  BUY NOW

Rebecca D. Costa in conversation with E.O. Wilson

Moderated by Michael Krasny, host of KQED's Forum

Thursday, October 14, 7:00 p.m.

The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction  BUY NOW

Why does it feel as if our most challenging problems today—worldwide recession, global warming, fast-spreading viruses, water and food shortages, poverty—aren’t being solved? What if our brain has limits that prevent it from solving such complex problems? If ancient civilizations collapsed because they, too, hit a cognitive limitation, are we headed for a similar collapse? Can it be prevented? These are the questions Rebecca Costa confronts—and offers a solution to—in her intriguing and game-changing book, The Watchman’s Rattle.

In a fascinating and engrossing argument, Costa presents ideas for how we can reverse our own downward spiral. Citing cutting-edge research, she reveals how the human brain can spontaneously call upon a powerful cognitive tool: insight. She also describes four modern-day supermemes that appear all around us: the oppositional culture, the personalization of blame, casual science, and the business society. Costa meticulously proves how these supermemes have produced global gridlock.

Costa is a former CEO and founder of Silicon Valley start-up, Dazai Advertising, Inc. (sold to J. Walter Thompson in 1997), whose clients have included Apple Computer, Applied Materials, Oracle Corporation, 3M, Amdahl, United TeleCom, and General Electric Corporation. She attributes her natural ability to spot global patterns to a cross-cultural education and upbringing. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara, with a BA in Social Sciences, and earned an MBA from Santa Clara University. 

Forward by E.O. Wilson. Regarded as one of the world’s preeminent biologists and naturalists, Edward O. Wilson spent his boyhood exploring the region’s forests and swamps, collecting snakes, butterflies, and ants—the latter to become his lifelong specialty. He is a professor at Harvard and the author of more than twenty books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ants and The Naturalist as well as his first novel Anthill.

Meet-and-Greet Signing: Alex Ross

Friday, October 15, 2:30 p.m.

Listen to This  BUY NOW

The Rest Is Noise  BUY NOW

Ross’s award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise, has become a contemporary classic, establishing him as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history—from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin—through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and to indie-rock hipsters in Beijing.

Ross has been the music critic for The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award. 

NOTE: This is a meet-and-greet booksigning.  The author will not give a formal presentation.

Youth Event: Rick Yancey

Friday, October 15, 7:00 p.m.

The Curse of the Wendigo  BUY NOW

While attempting to disprove that Homo vampiris, the vampire, could exist, Dr. Warthrop is asked by his former fiancé to rescue her husband from the Wendigo, a creature that starves even as it gorges itself on human flesh, which has snatched him in the Canadian wilderness.

Although Warthrop also considers the Wendigo to be fictitious, he relents and rescues her husband from death and starvation, and then sees the man transform into a Wendigo. Can the doctor and Will Henry hunt down the ultimate predator, who, like the legendary vampire, is neither living nor dead, whose hunger for human flesh is never satisfied? This second book in The Monstrumologist series explores the line between myth and reality, love and hate, genius and madness. 

Youth Event: Rosemary Wells

Sunday, October 17, 2:00 p.m.

On the Blue Comet  BUY NOW

Trains and time travel spur one boy’s thrilling adventure as he seeks to rejoin his father in a new classic from Rosemary Wells and Bagram Ibatoulline.

One day in a house at the end of Lucifer Street, on the Mississippi River side of Cairo, Illinois, eleven-year-old Oscar Ogilvie’s life is changed forever. The Crash of 1929 has rippled across the country, and Oscar’s dad must sell their home—with all their cherished model trains—and head west in search of work. Forced to move in with his humorless aunt, Carmen and his teasing cousin, Willa Sue, Oscar is lonely and miserable—until he meets a mysterious drifter and witnesses a crime so stunning it catapults Oscar on an incredible train journey from coast to coast, from one decade to another.

Yiyun Li

Monday, October 18, 7:00 p.m.

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl  BUY NOW

In these spellbinding stories, Yiyun Li, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner and acclaimed author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants, gives us exquisite fiction filled with suspense, depth, and beauty, in which history, politics, and folklore magnificently illuminate the human condition. 
 

A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Li is the recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. In 2007, Granta named her one of the best American novelists under thirty-five. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland.

Photo Credit: Ye Rin Mok 

Photo Credit: Linda A. Cicero - Stanford News Service

Ian Morris

Wednesday, October 20, 7:00 p.m.

Why the West Rules -- for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal about the Future  BUY NOW

Morris is Willard Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University. He has published ten scholarly books, including, most recently, The Dynamics of Ancient Empires, and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy.   

Gloria Feldt

Thursday, October 21, 7:00 p.m.

No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power  BUY NOW

Feminist icon Gloria Feldt pulls no punches in this new book, which argues that the most confounding problem facing women today isn’t that doors of opportunity aren’t open, but that not enough women are walking through them. From the boardroom to the bedroom, public office to personal relationships, she asserts that nobody is keeping women from parity—except themselves.

Feldt puts women's power into an historical context, showing the ways in which women have made huge leaps forward in the past, only to pull back right when they were at the threshold. Feldt argues that there's no excuse—whether it's the way women are socialized, or pressure to conform, or work/life balance issues—for women today not to own their power. Women are still facing unequal pay, being passed over for promotions, entering public office at a much lesser rate than men, and oftentimes still struggling with traditional power dynamics in their interpersonal relationships. Feldt's solution to all these places where women face inequality is the same: we need to shift the way we think to achieve true parity with our male counterparts.

Gloria Feldt is a best-selling author, commentator, and public speaker on women, feminism, politics, leadership, media, and health. Former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, she teaches "Women, Power, and Leadership" at Arizona State
University.
 

Saturday, October 23, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

The 3 Little Dassies  BUY NOW

Bold African patterns and prints fill the stunning borders, but it is the dassies in their bright, colorful dresses and hats that steal the show in this irresistible tale, perfect for reading aloud.

Jan will arrive on a 45-foot bus wrapped in terrific artwork from The Easter Egg and we couldn't be more excited. 

TICKETED EVENT. Please check back often for details and updates. 

Monday, October 25, 7:00 p.m.

The Scorch Trials BUY NOW

The Scorch Trials picks up a mere four hours after The Maze Runner ends. Thomas wakes up in a strange room with the rest of the Gladers feeling safe, but his relief doesn't last long. Soon the Gladers realize that things aren't as they appear and that they're about to be tested again, this time with an even harder mission. They must make their way across the Scorch, a forbidding, barren land inhabited by Cranks-people driven mad by a disease called the Flare. Will they survive lightning storms, crazed Cranks, and even worse, betrayal? Dashner's fans and new converts will be utterly riveted by this dystopian page-turner.

Who built the Maze? What is WICKED? And why do Thomas and Theresa have such strange memories? The Scorch Trials will shed light on some questions, but that same, searing, blinding light will unearth plenty of new ones.

Photo Credit: Mitchell Reichler

Photo Credit: Sara Saunders

Jimmy Carter

Tuesday, October 26, 7:00 p.m.

White House Diary  BUY NOW

TICKETS ON SALE NOW: CLICK HERE

PRESS: Please arrive early.

Photo Credit: Elena Seibert 

Bo Caldwell

Wednesday, October 27, 7:00 p.m.

City of Tranquil Light  BUY NOW

Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng— City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love—and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?

Told through Will and Katherine's alternating viewpoints—and inspired by the lives of the author's maternal grandparents—City of Tranquil Light is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation. A deeply spiritual book, it shows how those who work to teach others often have the most to learn.

Caldwell is the author of the national bestseller The Distant Land of My Father. Her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Story, Epoch, and other literary journals. A former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University, she lives in Northern California with her husband, novelist Ron Hansen. 

Kevin Kelly

Thursday, October 28, 7:00 p.m.

What Technology Wants   BUY NOW

This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kevin Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." He uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed.

This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts. Written in intelligent and accessible language, this is a fascinating, innovative, and optimistic look at how humanity and technology join to produce increasing opportunities in the world and how technology can give our lives greater meaning.

Kevin Kelly helped launch Wired magazine and was its executive editor for nearly seven years. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. His previous books include Out of Control and the bestselling New Rules for a New Economy. He lives in Pacifica.

Harold McGee

Friday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best Foods and Recipes  BUY NOW

From our foremost expert on the science of cooking, Harold McGee, Keys to Good Cooking is a concise and authoritative guide designed to help home cooks navigate the ever-expanding universe of ingredients, recipes, food safety, and appliances, and arrive at the promised land of a satisfying dish.

A work of astounding scholarship and originality, Keys to Good Cooking directly addresses the cook at work in the kitchen and in need of quick and reliable guidance. Cookbooks past and present frequently contradict one another about the best ways to prepare foods, and many contain erroneous information and advice. Keys to Good Cooking distills the modern scientific understanding of cooking and translates it into immediately useful information. 

Harold McGee writes about the science of food and cooking. He's the author of the award-winning classic On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, and writes a monthly column, "The Curious Cook," for The New York Times. He has been named food writer of the year by Bon Appétit magazine and to the Time 100, an annual list of the world's most influential people.

Photo Credit: Karl Petzke 

Photo Credit: Stephen Collector

Thomas McGuane

Tuesday, November 2, 7:00 p.m.

Driving on the Rim  BUY NOW

From one of America’s most acclaimed literary figures (“an important as well as brilliant novelist”—The New York Times Book Review) a major new novel that hilariously takes the pulse of our times.

The unforgettable voyager of this dark comic journey is I. B. “Berl” Pickett, M.D., the die of whose uncharmed life was probably cast as soon as his mother got the bright idea to name him after Irving Berlin. The boyhood insults to any chance of normalcy piled on apace thereafter. What would have become of this soul had he not gone to medical school, thanks to the surrogate parenting of a local physician and solitary bird hunter?

But there is meaning to life beyond professional accreditation, even in the noblest of callings. Berl’s been on a mission to find it these past few years, though with scant equipment or basis for hope. Hard to say (for the moment anyway) whether his mission has been aided or set back by his having fallen under suspicion of negligent homicide in the death of his former lover.

Fortunately, he will find his deliverance in continuing to practice medicine one way or another, as well as in the few human connections he has made, wittingly or not, over the years. The landscape, too, will furnish a hint in what might yet prove, if not a certifiable epiphany, a semi-spiritual awakening in I. B. Pickett, M.D., the inglorious but sole hero of Thomas McGuane’s uproarious and profound exploration of the threads by which we all are hanging.  

Geoffrey Wolff

Thursday, November 4, 7:00 p.m.

The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum  BUY NOW

Introduction by Geoffrey's brother, Tobias Wolff

Joshua Slocum escaped a Dickensian childhood in Nova Scotia in 1860, at the age of sixteen, as an ordinary seaman. Despite his third-grade education, Slocum’s rise through the ranks was mercurial: just a decade later he was commander of his own ship, the first of many. His journey had already taken him nearly everywhere—but his crowning glory was yet to come.

In 1895 he set sail—by himself—in the small sloop Spray. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn’t be replicated for another quarter century. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made him famous. A decade later, he set off alone once more—and was lost at sea.

An acclaimed novelist, essayist, biographer, and critic, Geoffrey Wolff is a prominent voice in contemporary American literature. Educated at Cambridge and at Princeton, from which he graduated summa cum laude, he is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at UC Irvine, where he was the Director of the Graduate Fiction Program from 1995 to 2006. Previously, he served on the faculties of Istanbul University and Princeton University and has been a book editor at the Washington Post and Newsweek. He received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994 and his honors also include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. During 2007, he was a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin.

Betty Auchard

Sunday, November 7, 2:00 p.m.

The Home for the Friendless: Finding Hope, Love, and Family  BUY NOW

Agatha Hoff

Monday, November 8, 7:00 p.m.

Burning Horses:  A Hungarian Life Turned Upside Down   BUY NOW

This fictionalized account of real-life occurrences chronicles one woman’s amazing survival of the Hungarian Holocaust. Through the author’s creative first-person telling of her mother’s life—based on her mother’s written and oral observations as well as the author’s own childhood memories—a portrait of the remarkable Eva Leopold emerges.

After spending her childhood in a small town in rural Hungary, Eva settled in Budapest where, despite having been raised Catholic by parents who'd converted from Judaism and being married to a gentile, Eva was considered Jewish by the Nazi regime. Beginning in 1944—when exemptions for Jewish women married to gentiles were lifted—her daily life was dominated by desperate attempts to stay alive, avoid deportation to a death camp, and protect her family.

Initially saved by taking shelter in the Papal Legation, Eva also hid in the air raid shelter in the basement of the family’s apartment building, which disappeared when the building went up in flames, consuming the horses stabled on the first floor. After making a death-defying escape, Eva and her daughters, the author and her sister Livia, came to the U.S.

The girls were given scholarships at Sacred Heart Schools (then called Convent of the Sacred Heart) when they arrived in this country in 1949. Said the author, "We both boarded there, my sister for three and I for five years. The nuns were wonderful to us - it was as though we had landed in paradise after the horrible experiences of the war years. To this day I consider "Menlo" my American home."

Photo Credit: Ben Janken

Parenting Event: Deborah Meier

Tuesday, November 9, 7:00 p.m.

Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground  BUY NOW

Why is play important in the lives of children? What crucial aspects of learning are being neglected in the current near-elimination of recess time in public schools? Playing for Keeps, co-authored by the well-known writer and educational leader Deborah Meier, and two colleagues with equally long experience in schools, explores these questions.

Based on close observations on a public school playground, the book shows children at play in a relatively natural, unstructured environment. The reader is virtually there, seeing, listening in, able to appreciate the children's curiosity, humor, intelligence, and inventiveness. Readers will recognize the children's voices and ways of thinking, and perhaps be reminded of their own childhood, their own children, or the children they teach. The authors comment on the observations, adding to the reader's own perceptions. This lively, engaging book makes a strong case for the importance of free exploration, wonder, imagination, and play to the learning and growth of children. It should contribute significantly to the understanding of all those concerned, professionally or personally, with the welfare of our school-age population.

Deborah Meier has spent almost five decades working in public education as a teacher, writer, and public advocate. She is currently a Senior Scholar in the faculty of the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University.

Youth Event: Laurie Halse Anderson

Wednesday, November 10, 7:00 p.m.

Forge  BUY NOW

Don't miss this opportunity to hear acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson talk about her compelling sequel to Chains, a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Scott O‚Dell Award for Historical Fiction. In Forge she shifts perspective from Isabel to Curzon and brings us the tale of what it takes for runaway slaves to forge their own paths in a world of obstacles in the midst of the American Revolution.

The Patriot Army was shaped and strengthened by the desperate circumstances of the Valley Forge winter. This is where Curzon the boy becomes Curzon the young man. In addition to the hardships of soldiering, he lives with the fear of discovery, for he is an escaped slave passing for free. And then there is Isabel, who is also at Valley Forge ˜ against her will. She and Curzon have to sort out the tangled threads of their friendship while figuring out what stands between the two of them and true freedom.

Photo Credit: JoyceTennason
 

Photo Credit: Nick Rozsa 

Parenting Event: Katherine Ellison

Thursday, November 11, 7:00 p.m.

Buzz: The Year of Paying Attention  BUY NOW

A hilarious and heartrending account of one mother's journey to understand and reconnect with her high-spirited preteen son--a true story sure to beguile parents grappling with a child's bewildering behavior.

Popular literature is filled with the stories of self-sacrificing mothers bravely tending to their challenging children. Katherine Ellison offers a different kind of tale. Shortly after Ellison, an award-winning investigative reporter, and her twelve-year-old son, Buzz, were both diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, she found herself making such a hash of parenting that the two of them faced three alternatives: he'd go to boarding school; she'd go AWOL; or they'd make it their full-time job to work out their problems together. They decided to search for a solution while Ellison investigated what genuine relief, if any, might be found in the confusing array of goods sold by the modern mental health industry.

The number of diagnoses for childhood attention and behavior issues is exploding, leaving parents and educators on a confusing chase to find the best kind of help for each child. Buzz, a page-turner of a memoir, brings much relief. It is immensely engaging, laugh-out-loud funny, and honest--and packed with helpful insights.

"Edgy, sensitive, irreverent, jaw-dropping, insightful. . . . If you want to know what it's really like to be a parent on the front lines of dealing with impulsivity, inattention, and defiance . . . make a beeline for Buzz."
--Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

"It's a lonely, confusing jungle out there for parents of behaviorally challenging kids. . . . Ellison's journey through the jungle is bumpy, difficult, humorous, insightful, riveting, and real. You gotta read this book!"
--Ross W. Greene, PhD, Harvard Medical School; author, The Explosive Child and Lost at School

Simon Winchester

Monday, November 15, 2:00 p.m.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories  BUY NOW