Started in 2006 by Clay Stafford as a charitable project of his media company American Blackguard, Killer Nashville is a terrific meeting place for authors, agents, and fans. Its website calls it an “International Thriller, Mystery, Crime Literature Writers Conference held annually in downtown Nashville, TN.” The actual location is …
The Only Witness by Pamela Beason An ingenious & charming mystery, starring improbably sympathetic characters: Brittany, a feckless teenage mother who leaves her baby in the car to dash into a store. Finn, a grumpy detective who’s saddled with his ex-wife’s menagerie & out of the loop in this grapevine-infested …
“Hoist with their own petard”: in Shakespeare’s day that didn’t mean hanged, but blown up with their own explosives. Here on the fringes of Silicon Valley, we’re unwittingly paying the price for our addiction to staying connected 24/7. Above, my view now; below, my view as ExteNet/Verizon/City of San Francisco …
Any time a group of citizens snatches the political reins out of their government’s hands, they’re bound to offer a reason. As the United States of America’s founders put it in their Declaration of Independence, “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes …
From the Daily Alta California of May 23, 1856: Our streets have assumed a more quiet aspect this morning than we have witnessed for several days past. The proceedings of yesterday have very naturally produced such a result. The Alta didn’t need to spell out the details. Everyone in the …
by CJ Verburg Last week, two friends & I met at the intersection of Switzerland and San Francisco for a mind-boggling look into the future. Swissnex is Switzerland’s HQ for high-tech liaisons with the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, and it’s just up Montgomery Street from the Transamerica Pyramid. On …
“Plenty of people got Iraq wrong, but plenty of people – experts and ordinary citizens – got it right. The problem was that it made no difference.” So states St. Louis-based writer Sarah Kendzior in “Iraq and the Reinvention of Reality” in today’s Al Jazeera. I’ve been teaching a course …
from Boom-Books.com: If Edward Gorey could see the diverse and unpredictable directions his legacy has taken, he’d be most amazed by the Edwardian Ball. Every January, a month before Gorey’s birthday, fans and steampunk fashionistas in San Francisco and Los Angeles gather to celebrate this New England artist’s tongue-in-cheek depiction …
In a new mini-review in Public Books, author and scholar Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles alerts us to a scientific genius, overlooked in 21st-century America, who 200 years ago was exploring the world and 150 years ago was honored all around it. Alexander von Humboldt influenced Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo …
How does globalization look from the other side of the globe? Find out from some of the most exciting literary voices you may never have heard before. Starting in January, I’ll be leading a monthly armchair tour at San Francisco’s venerable Mechanics’ Institute Library. Join us to explore four nonWestern …
