Brian Fagan - The Attacking Ocean
Since 1860, the world has warmed significantly and the ocean's climb has speeded. The sea level changes are cumulative and gradual; no one knows when they will end. The Attacking Ocean ($30.00), from celebrated author Brian Fagan, tells a tale of the rising complexity of the relationship between humans and the sea at their doorsteps, a complexity created not by the oceans, which have changed but little. What has changed is us, and the number of us on earth.
Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Beyond the Blue Horizon, Elixir, the Los Angeles Times bestseller Cro-Magnon, and the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming, and many other books, including Fish on Friday, The Long Summer, and The Little Ice Age. He has decades of experience at sea and is the author of several titles for sailors, including the widely praised Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA.
- Street:
- 51 Tamal Vista Blvd
- City:
- Corte Madera ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94925
- Country:
- United States
James Conaway - Nose
In a gorgeous wine valley in northern California, the economic downturn has put a number of dreams on hold. But not so for wine critic Clyde Craven-Jones, a man whose ego nearly surpasses his substantial girth. During a routine tasting in advance of his eponymous publication’s new issue, he blindly samples a selection of Cabernets. To his confounded delight, he discovers one bottle worthy of his highest score (a 20, on the Craven-Jones-on- Wine scale), an accolade he’s never before awarded. But the bottle has no origin, no one seems to know how it appeared on his doorstep—and that's a problem for a critic who’s supposed to know everything. An investigation into the mystery Cabernet commences, led by the Clyde’s wife, Claire, and a couple of underdogs—one a determined throw-back to ancient viticulture, the other a wine-stained, Pygmalion-esque scribbler—who by wit and luck rise on incoming tides of money, notoriety, and, yes, love. James Conaway's Nose ($24.99) is a witty, delectable, and fast-paced novel that, like a good Cabernet, only grows truly enjoyable once opened.
James Conaway is the author of several books, including Napa: The Story of an American Eden, the nonfiction bestseller about the wine country and those responsible for California’s winemaking triumphs, and its sequel, The Far Side of Eden. He is the author of two novels, The Big Easy and World’s End. His most recent book is Vanishing America. Conaway has written for multiple magazines, among them Harper’s, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Saveur, Gourmet, and National Geographic Traveler.
- Street:
- 1 Ferry Building
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Postal Code:
- 94111
Stephen Rodrick - Magical Stranger
On November 28, 1979, accomplished Navy pilot Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, leaving behind a devastated wife, two daughters, and a thirteen-year-old son. In The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery: brilliant but unknowable, sacred but absent-an apparition gone 200 days of the year for much of his young son's life-a born leader who gave his son little direction. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Rodrick struggled to fully grasp the reality of his father's death and its permanence. Peter's picture and memory haunted the family home, but his name was rarely mentioned.
Stephen Rodrick is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and also a contributing editor at Men's Journal. His writing has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and The Best American Political Writing. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
- Street:
- 51 Tamal Vista Blvd
- City:
- Corte Madera ,
- Postal Code:
- 94925
- Country:
- United States
Daniel James Brown - The Boys in the Boat
In conversation with Phil Cousineau
Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936. Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat ($27.95) is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant.
Daniel James Brown is the author of two previous nonfiction books, Under a Flaming Sky and The Indifferent Stars Above. He has taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford. He lives near Seattle.
Watch a video of the Washington Varsity Men's 8 winning the Olympic gold medal in Berlin, Germany:
- Street:
- 1 Ferry Building
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Postal Code:
- 94111
Colum McCann - Transatlantic
Corte Madera store
Tickets: $30 (includes signed copy of Transatlantic)
Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators—Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown—set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War.
Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave.
New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.
These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history in acclaimed novelist Colum McCann's latest work. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, Transatlantic follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory.
Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in thirty-five languages. He has received many honors, including the National Book Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, and the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire’s “Best & Brightest,” and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.
- Street:
- 51 Tamal Vista Blvd
- City:
- Corte Madera ,
- Postal Code:
- 94925
Elizabeth Fishel - When Will My Grown Up Kid Grow Up?
When Will My Grown-Up Kid Grow Up? ($23.95) covers every aspect of life for an 18- to 29-year-old, from that first taste of independence at college to that time at the end of the 20s, when the majority of kids are settling down. It explains what grown children are going through: intense self-focus, instability, a feeling of being in-between mixed with a breathtaking sense of possibilities and how parents should deal with these changes, from six ways to listen more than you talk, to money 101 (and why never to use money to control your child s life), to troubleshooting their failure to launch, to, finally, the dos and don'ts of promoting a successful transition to adulthood.
Elizabeth Fishel is the author of Sisters, Reunion, I Swore I’d Never Do That, and The Men in Our Lives, and a journalist who’s written for Vogue, O, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Family Circle, More, and other magazines and newspapers. She has two sons in their 20s and lives in Oakland, California.
- Street:
- 1 Ferry Building
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Postal Code:
- 94111
- Country:
- United States
