San Francisco Events

The Nazis stole their voices. But they would not be silenced.

Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country's most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene's world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers.

The Nazis track down Aubrion's team and give them an impossible choice: turn the resistance newspapers into a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis' bidding, they will instead publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin--daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors.

The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.

Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters and stunning historical detail, E.R. Ramzipoor's dazzling debut novel The Ventriloquists illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.

In his book The Strategic Stop, Dr. Greg Nelson is calling into question our culture’s tilt toward “doing” in contrast to “being”. The highest value in our workplaces has been productivity, and while that seems normal to us, we have paid a price as individual workers, teams, and organizations. We are jeopardizing the soul of our greatest resource: the human being side of our doers; knowing and honoring each other's strengths, preferences, and unique experiences as human beings; the challenge to bring all this essential humanity into a deeper innovative collaboration. This constant clamor of our 24/7 nonstop culture has been labeled by the World Health Organization a “modern plague.”

Why? Because we are literally killing ourselves with one To Do list after another.

How? We are neglecting some of the most significant human experiences vital to producing a life of well-being and fulfillment.

The truth is, the human system is designed to optimize life by means of regular pauses. But not just stopping. A strategic stop. Drawing from the fields of neuroscience, business, sports, and the world’s wisdom traditions to make the case, The Strategic Stop lays out nine vital pauses designed to increase human well-being and effective living in and out of the workplace; nine practices to include in the regular rhythm of your life: Start with rest, Shape your recovery, State your Why, Strengthen self-awareness, Shift limiting beliefs, Sharpen strengths, Surround yourself with support, Solidify the ballast of your leadership and organization, and Sabbath your time.These nine strategic stops will transform the way you work, manage, and live because you are you choosing to be more intentional about the kind of life you want to live. You are refusing to allow the urgent to dictate your priorities. You are taking back your life in order to really live your life. You are allowing yourself to come face to face with your fullest human potential by embracing your identity as a human “being” not merely a human “doing.” Whether you’re a leader who manages a team or heads up a company, or an independent contributor, or a parent faced with unending responsibilities to your family and work, if you’ve ever felt like you’re in bondage to your busyness and nonstop schedule and have lost a bit of yourself in the process, this book is for you. It will guide you to pay attention to these vital habits that will help you thrive not just survive.

Here’s what you will get in this book:

• You will get a vision for what it means to shape Strategic Stops in your work and life and why it’s so vital to your well being
• You will identify what your most significant Strategic Stop needs to be in order to bring more fullness to your life
• You will outline specific personal and professional steps for how to maximize your stops
• You will learn how to optimize rest and resilience in ways that leverage your own energy style
• You will deepen your self-awareness to increase confidence, purpose, and well-being
• You will deconstruct limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs that liberate you
• You will learn how to build more healthy relationships on your team at work and beyond that provide you far greater support and collaboration
• You will bring clarity to your purpose that increases your impact and influence in your organization
• By building more strategic “stopping points” into the regular rhythm of your life, you will take back your human “being” side and live more fully alive.

Our workplace culture desperately needs to restore balance to our humanity by valuing human well-being. And when we pay attention to this priority, our engagement and productivity become more human-centered and, in the end, more effective.

Dr. Greg Nelson, author, professional speaker, and leadership and team strengths coach, has spoken to and worked with leaders and teams in organizations like Fitbit, Amazon, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Applied Materials, Walmart, Lyft, Golden Gate University, Best Buddies International, and a World Ministerial Council gathering of 15,000 church leaders.

In Conversation with Laura Fraser

In the fall of 2016, acclaimed author Meghan Daum began working on a book about the excesses of contemporary feminism. With Hillary Clinton soon to be elected, she figured even the most fiercely liberal of her friends and readers could take the criticisms in stride. But after the election, she knew she needed to do more, and her nearly completed manuscript went in the trash. What came out in its place is the most sharply-observed, all-encompassing, and unputdownable book of her career.

In The Problem with Everything, Meghan examines our country’s most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and most importantly nuance, she tries to make sense of the current landscape—from Donald Trump’s presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about the gender wage gap, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials.

This signature work may well be the first book to capture the essence of this era in all its nuances and contradictions. No matter where you stand on its issues, this book will strike a chord.

Meghan Daum is the author of five books and writes a bi-weekly column about culture and politics for Medium. Her collection of original essays, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, won the 2015 PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. She is also the editor of the New York Times bestseller Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids. Her other books include the essay collection My Misspent Youth, the novel The Quality of Life Report, and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House, a memoir. She was the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is on the adjunct faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Laura Fraser is the author of the bestselling memoir An Italian Affair and Losing It, an investigative look at the weight-loss industry. She is a contributing editor to More magazine, and has written for Gourmet; O, The Oprah Magazine; the New York Times; AFAR; Self; Glamour; Vogue, Elle; Redbook; Tricycle; and more.