Novelist Summer Wood February 26

Summer Wood presents her new novel Wrecker, set in part in the Mattole Valley, at Northtown Books Saturday, February 26 at 7 pm.

It’s June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay – a young innocent from a family farm down south – is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single mother in a city she could barely manage to navigate as just one.

Three years later, she’s alone again. Kids aren’t allowed in prison. And Wrecker, scared silent, furious, and hell-bent on breaking every last thing that crosses his path, is shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County.

“Wrecker is a wonderful portrait of a California long lost, but still alive here. Wrecker will wreck your heart and then put it back together again, with the big heart of a chosen family.” —Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon and Take One Candle Light a Room

“This novel is a love song to well intentioned, wholly dedicated, and deeply flawed motherhood. Summer Wood creates more than just a great story, deftly, elegantly, and intricately told. She broadens both our notion of family, and our appreciation for whatever we call our own. Wrecker is a big-hearted, big-loving compassionate book.” — Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness

Cannabiz author John Geluardi November 5

November 5th at 7 pm, journalist John Geluardi comes to Northtown Books.

His new book Cannabiz tells one the most important political and business stories of our generation: the transformation of a counterculture movement into a growth industry with staggering potential. Charting the rise of medical marijuana in California and 14 other states, award-winning journalist John Geluardi vividly recounts the movement’s early activism, its legal challenges and victories, and its emergence as a commercial and political force.

Tracing the history of marijuana in the United States, Cannabiz also reports on the industry’s key players, political allies and opponents, internal strife, and audacious aspirations—including a 2010 ballot initiative to legalize the adult use of marijuana in California. Along the way, Geluardi describes local efforts to regulate dispensaries, ranging from workable ordinances in some cities to bureaucratic paralysis in Los Angeles, where dispensaries came to outnumber McDonalds franchises. He also reports on efforts in our own Humboldt County to keep pot illegal—and prices high.

Adroitly profiling this unique industry, Cannabiz tells a distinctively American story—one whose colorful characters and fascinating details evoke Prohibition and the Gold Rush.

John Geluardi is a veteran Bay Area reporter. A staff writer for SF Weekly, he wrote features on crime, local and national politics, and culture. In 2008, he received three first-place awards from the San Francisco Penninsula Press Club for his stories on vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez, the legendary Caffe Trieste, and a series of San Francisco homicides the police falsely classified as suicides.

Praise for Cannabiz

“Cannabiz fully captures the vibrant and ever-evolving political and economic landscape of the budding medical marijuana industry. Geluardi accurately paints the City of Oakland as a leader in legitimizing the industry and as the Silicon Valley of cannabis.”
—Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Councilmember

“Cannabiz is politically informative and culturally astute. Geluardi paints a complex picture of a transitional moment—one in which the nation’s kneejerk anti-marijuana politics and criminal justice sanctions are falling out of favor. He shows how medical marijuana, a once outlandish idea, has become mainstream, and how quickly America’s economic and political culture has adapted to this new reality.”
—Sasha Abramsky, Inside Obama’s Brain and Breadline USA

Joesph Mattson reads from Empty the Sun, Thursday September 9th

"Here I was, doing ninety on the Santa Monica Freeway with a quart of whiskey shoved into my crotch and my dead neighbor in the trunk. It had come time to leave Los Angeles"

Thus begins Joseph Mattson's new post apocalyptic whiskey drenched novel, which culminates in a shotgun battle with God.

Thursday September 9th at 7 pm, Northtown Books welcomes Joseph Mattson to read from his new novel, Empty the Sun. The novel includes a CD soundtrack by former Humboldtian Ben Chasny (aka Six Organs of Admittance).

"Joseph Mattson writes like a guitar player with nineteen fingers - everywhere at once, stinging, dark, and beautiful."

--Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

"Several passages induced the shiver of aesthetic bliss in my spine that Nabokov famously described as the indicator of good and true writing."

--James Greer, author of Guided by Voices: A Brief History

"Joseph Mattson is a monster of a writer"

--Beth Lisick, author of Everybody Into the Pool.

For more on the book go here.

See Joseph Mattson battle Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin for watermelon supremacy with music from the soundtrack for Empty the Sun by Six Organs of Admittance:

Sanae, Senryu Poet: Her Life in 5-7-5

Friday August 27th at 7 pm, Northtown Books welcome Amy and Aiko Uyeki to Northtown Books to read and sign their new book 'Sanae, Senryu Poet: Her Life in 5-7-5'.

Shizue Harada came to the United States in the 1920s following her husband in arranged marriage. She didn’t become Sanae, a writer of a Japanese poetry form called senryu, un...til she had lived a full life, working factory jobs and raising two children.

Sanae’s daughter, Aiko Uyeki, has compiled her poetry in a collection that captures Sanae’s strong Buddhist faith, her wry humor and simple wisdom, her musings about growing old and her approaching death.

Complementing these poems is the artwork of Amy Uyeki, Sanae’s granddaughter. With word and image, a picture is painted of the life of Shizue Harada, a Meiji era wife whose story mirrors many first generation Japanese Americans who left familiar shores to seek the American dream.

Please join us for this special event.

William Ayers returns Wednesday, August 18th

William Ayers returns to Northtown Books with his new graphic novel To Teach Wednesday, August 18th at 7 pm. He'll be joined by his partner Bernardine Dohrn.

This new graphic novel brings to life William Ayers’s bestselling memoir To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. From Ayers’s early days teaching kindergarten, readers follow this renowned educational theorist on his “voyage of discovery and surprise.” We meet fellow travelers f...rom schools across the country and watch students grow across a year and a lifetime.

To Teach is a vivid, honest portrayal of the everyday magic of teaching, and what it means to be a “good” teacher—debunking myths perpetuated on film and other starry-eyed hero/teacher fictions. Illuminated by the evocative and wry drawings of Ryan Alexander-Tanner, this graphic version of To Teach will engage while it instructs. It is a much-needed reminder of how curiosity, a sense of adventure, and a healthy dose of reflection can guide us all to learn the most from this world as we educate the next generation. Teacher educators and professional developers will want to use this dynamic graphic novel alongside the traditional text for a unique teaching and learning experience.

“To Teach is hilarious serious and fabulous! A broad manifesto that will change many people’s lives.”
—Laurie Anderson, artist and musician

“Bill Ayers’s theories about teaching reform rest on at least two foundations. One is that the hierarchical relationship between the student and teacher should be moved out of the way, followed by simultaneous learning by teacher and student. The second is to demonstrate how some subjects blend with others (math with science) and all should be taught with their relationship in mind. Sounds good to me. A serious book, but laced with humor. It will strike most readers as a novel approach. Required reading for all educators.”
—Harvey Pekar, author, American Splendor series

Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak and Friends

Join us at this Friday at 7 pm as Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak reads from her new book of poetry, The Thunderbird Extinction: Acapella Remedies for the Heart. She'll be raising funds to represent Humboldt at the Individual World Slam Poetry competition.

There will also be performances from Travis Lockwood, Therese FitzMaurice, David Holper, Melanie Quillen, Megan Davis, the Johnson Brothers, Hula Hoop performers, and live music.

Poet Jacqueline Suskin reads Friday, July 9th for Arts Arcata

Jacqueline Suskin, proprietor of Poem Store, brings her first book of poetry, The Collected, to Northtown Books. The event on Friday July 9th, during Arts Arcata, will include a reading by Jacqueline at 7pm.

The book is a collection of snapshots found in Florida flea markets, roadside ditches, junk shops, and trash bins. 23 poems are printed opposite the original photographs that inspired their creation. Please come and join in the celebration.

For more info on Jacqueline, go here.

Jerry Martien and Shao Way Wu June 11 at 7 pm

Poet Jerry Martien will perform selections from his new CD release 'The Road To Heaven' Friday, June 11 at 7 pm at Northtown Books. He will be accompanied by Shao Way Wu on stand up bass.

Get a taste of what they'll do here at the archives of the Mad River Anthology. The photo below is from that session.



Jerry Martien has published several books of poetry, the most recent being Pieces in Place. He is also the author of Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America.

"Lyrics, philosophy, regional politics, ecstatic understated invocations! Finding where we stand. All with a sardonic but compassionate eye. I am deeply pleased that the poetry of Jerry Martien - I have admired it for years - is now available." Gary Snyder

Katy Tahja here Friday, May 14

At Northtown Books on Friday, May 14 at 7 pm, Katy M. Tahja will sign and talk about her new book Humboldt State University, a photographic essay on the history of HSU from Arcadia Publishing.

Covering almost 100 years, the book shares the growth of the college through the years. Tahja hand-picked more than 200 vintage images, many from the HSU library's Humboldt Room archive, to depict a century of changes. The book is arranged with chapters featuring the six presidents who guided Humboldt over the decades, areas of study, professors, social life on campus, sports, and the physical beauty of the area.

Katy M. Tahja is also the author of Rails Across the Noyo: A Rider's Guide to the Skunk Train and All Roads Lead to Comptche, and she has been a librarian and local historian on the Mendocino Coast for 35 years. Katy, husband David, and daughter Fern all graduated from Humboldt State University of a 37-year span.

Wherever There's A Fight - Saturday May 1st 7pm

Saturday May 1st at 7 pm, Northtown Books will host an event celebrating the release of Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California by Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi.

Wherever There's a Fight captures the sweeping story of how freedom and equality have grown in California, from the gold rush right up to the precarious post-9/11 era. The book tells the stories of the brave individuals who have stood up for their rights in the face of social hostility, physical violence, economic hardship, and political stonewalling.

The book connects the experiences of early Chinese immigrants subjected to discriminatory laws to those of professionals who challenged McCarthyism and those of people who have fought to gain equal rights in California schools: people of color, people with disabilities, and people standing up for their religious freedom. The authors bring a special focus to the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, focusing on the infamous Korematsu case, which was foreshadowed by a century of civil liberties violations and reverberates in more recent times—regrettably, even today in the Patriot Act. And they follow the ongoing struggles for workers' rights and same-sex marriage.

State and federal constitutions spell out many liberties and rights, but it is the people who challenge prejudice and discrimination that transform those lofty ideals into practical realities. Wherever There's a Fight paints vivid portraits of these people and brings to light their often hidden stories.

For more info, go here:
http://www.wherevertheresafight.com/

About the Authors

Elaine Elinson was the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News for more than two decades. She is a coauthor of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, which was banned by the Marcos regime. Her articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, Poets and Writers, and numerous other periodicals. She is married to journalist Rene CiriaCruz and they have one son.

Stan Yogi has managed development programs for the ACLU of Northern California since 1997. He is the coeditor of two books, Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley and Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, MELUS, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and several anthologies. He is married to nonprofit administrator David Carroll and lives in Oakland.

DOUGLAS BEVINGTON

In association with EPIC, Northtown Books will host Douglas Bevington, author of The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism from the Spotted Owl to the Polar Bear, for a discussion and signing Friday February 19th at 7 pm.

Bevington offers engaging case studies of three of the most influential biodiversity protection campaigns—the Headwaters Forest campaign, the “zero cut” campaign on national forests, and the endangered species litigation campaign exemplified by the Center for Biological Diversity—providing the reader with an in-depth understanding of the experience of being involved in grassroots activism.

Based on first-person interviews with key activists in these campaigns, the author explores the role of tactics, strategy, funding, organization, movement culture, and political conditions in shaping the influence of the groups. He also examines the challenging relationship between radicals and moderate groups within the environmental movement, and addresses how grassroots organizations were able to overcome constraints that had limited the advocacy of other environmental organizations.

Filled with inspiring stories of activists, groups, and campaigns that most readers will not have encountered before, The Rebirth of Environmentalism explores how grassroots biodiversity groups have had such a big impact despite their scant resources, and presents valuable lessons that can help the environmental movement as a whole—as well as other social movements—become more effective.

Here's a recent piece Bevington wrote for Counterpunch.

LOCALLY DELICIOUS

Friday December 4th at 7 pm, Northtown Books hosts an event celebrating a new book: Locally Delicious: Recipes and Resources for Eating on the North Coast.

The book describes where to find local food and gives ideas for eating locally on a budget and offers a regional agricultural history along with a discussion of issues that are restricting local agriculture.

For more info, go here.

JOHN ROSS

John Ross will read, sign and discuss his new book El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City Friday, November 13 at 7 pm, kicking off his book tour in his old stomping grounds here in Humboldt County.

Ross—poet, journalist, and globetrotting troublemaker—has lived in what the Aztec-Mexicas described as "the umbilicus of the universe" since the great Mexico City earthquake of 1985 crushed out as many as 30,000 lives. Over the years, he has watched the city—El Monstruo—pick itself up, bury its dead, and come battling back. But he is filled with a gnawing unease that Mexico City's days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the Western world is doomed, that the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter of a century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and festering blight will be globalized into one more McCity.

Covering 4,000,000,000 years of history from the primal broth that first spewed out the monster to the Aztec-Mexica oblivion through centuries of rapine and revolution all the way to the Great Swine Flu Panic of 2009, El Monstruois a phantasmagoric retelling of the story of Mexico City, with which Ross's own history has become hopelessly entwined.

In the tradition of Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Joseph Mitchell's Up At The Old Hotel, Ross's El Monstruo is a unique exploration of the mother of all mega-cities. Never before has anyone told from ground level the gritty, vibrant histories of this left city of 23 million faceless, fearless souls, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed by the Monster, deconstructed the Monstruo's very monstrousness and lived to tell its secrets.

John Ross is the author of the acclaimed memoir Murdered by Capitalism, which was praised by Thomas Pynchon and chosen as a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Based in Mexico City for the last two decades, Ross's reporting has appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Nation, Texas Observer, and Counterpunch, to name a few. He is the winner of an Upton Sinclair Award and an American Book Award. His books include Rebellion from the Roots, The Annexation of Mexico and the novel Tonatiuh's People.

To read an excerpt from the book, go here.

For John's most recent dispatch from Mexico in Counterpunch, go here.

John will also be presenting a book he co-edited and wrote the introduction for, IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, the story of a teenager who was fifteen years old when she began blogging from her home city of Mosul, Iraq, in July 2004.

THE CRYING TREE

Saturday, November 7th at 6 pm Naseem Rakha will sign her novel The Crying Tree at Northtown Books.

Naseem is an award-winning journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor, and Living on Earth.

Here's what the author herself says about the book:

The murder of a child dredges up the most painful emotions. There is no justicein it, no justification, and no way to find solace. Remorse and vengeance become inseparable from the souls of the people left behind. Yet, somehow there are inspirational stories of those who have come to forgiveness.

I found this baffling situation as a reporter covering an execution for public radio and then later in interviews with the parents of murder victims. I wanted to understand how an individual can move from one place to another – hate to forgiveness, despondency to hope – what that road looks like, and what toll it must exact.

The Crying Tree is that story, told through the lives of two main characters: Irene Stanley, the mother of slain 15-year-old Steven Joseph Stanley, and Tab Mason, the stoic and determined superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary who is preparing to execute the boy’s murderer.

Here's an interview with Naseem:

MEDICINE TRAILS

Karuk medicine woman Mavis McCovey and cultural anthropologist John F. Salter will make an appearance at Northtown Books in conjunction with their new book Medicine Trails, Monday, November 2nd at 6:30 pm.

Sometime in 1933 here in Humboldt County, a Karuk medicine woman named Daisy Jones had a vision identifying the tribe's next medicine woman. Later that year, Mavis Smither (McCovey) was born, and in the first twelve years of her life she was groomed by a designated group of medicine women to become a spiritual healer.

Medicine Trails is Mavis McCovey's honest and lively account of the many worlds in which she moves: the Indian and white cultural worlds, and the day-to-day and visionary reality of the medicine woman's world, as well as trips to what she calls "the other side": one of the responsibilities of a medicine woman is to bring back a medicine man's soul if he gets lost on the trails of the world beyond—a task McCovey has been called upon to do.

One of very few first-person accounts of Native American healers, Medicine Trails is invaluable for its insights into the experiences of a modern-day medicine woman. And McCovey is a warm and engaging guide not only to her life, but also her family's history and the history of the Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa peoples of the region.

Mavis McCovey has lived along the Klamath River in northwestern California all her life. Trained as a child to be a medicine woman, she assists with the traditional ceremonies of her tribe, the Karuk. The mother of five children, she has also worked as a community health representative and a nurse, and she has been an advocate on issues affecting the health and well-being of the native people of her region.

Dr. John Salter is a cultural anthropologist, teacher, and writer who has worked intermittently with the Karuk Tribe of California and Karuk people since 1968. Trained by Gregory Bateson, Salter received his Ph.D. for a study of the social ecology of the Salmon and Klamath River area. He currently lives in Sacramento, California.

Mavis McCovey makes no exotic claims about her powers, but describes those functions as seamlessly integrated in Karuk culture. More importantly, she describes a living contemporary culture, enriching the melancholy beauty of our shared world
—Freeman House, from the foreword

NATASHA WING

Natasha Wing presents her new children's book An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers Friday, September 11 at 7 pm at Northtown Books.

Her book is about a neighbor of hers when she was growing up in Connecticut, the artist of the "Homage to the Square" series who studied color for 25 years and changed how teachers taught color. The book features art by Julia Breckenreid.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about the book:

This creative biography explores how Albers, perhaps best known for his paintings of squares in different color combinations, “saw art in the simplest things.” Albers is pictured rummaging for scrap materials in a dump, which he turns into “collages that shined like jewels.” As a teacher, Albers told his students, “Watch what’s going on... and capture the accident.” After visiting Mexico—Albers is shown climbing an abstract temple-like structure of colorful rectangles—he reflects on the effects of combining different colors: “Colors came to life like actors on a stage!” An accessible and lively introduction to this artist and to color theory.

Natasha Wing is best known for her paperback series based on the popular story, The Night Before Christmas. The stories are about families celebrating holidays and other big events in kids’ lives such as the first day of school and losing a tooth. Her titles include The Night Before Easter, the original book in the series which was published in 1999, and The Night Before Kindergarten, the highest-selling title which has regularly been on bestseller lists since its publication in 2001.

Wing’s multicultural book, Jalapeño Bagels, is a favorite among second grade teachers and students since it is included in several textbook series. The story is based on Los Bagels in Arcata.

Wing is a graduate of Arizona State University and has been writing children’s books and articles since 1991.

For more info on Natasha and her books, visit her website.

BILL AYERS AND BERNARDINE DOHRN

Friday, August 14 at 7 pm educator/activists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn present their new book Race Course Against White Supremacy at Northtown Books.

White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two American veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days and that it is still very much with us. The discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Reactionaries stuck in the 60s conjure Scooby-doo ghosts to chase. But the real William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are fully in the present, fighting on behalf of the disempowered and dispossessed.

-Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

"Having made an extraordinary journey together from Sixties militants to accomplished scholars, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers bring to the subject of race a special sensibility. Their work is a troubling challenge to white people to
examine, not only the world round them, but their own psyche, their own behavior, and to act accordingly."

-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

UPDATE: Heidi Walters of The North Coast Journal recently interviewed Bill and Bernardine.

URSULA OSBOURNE

On Friday, July 10 at 7 pm, Northtown Books welcomes Ursula Osbourne, who will talk about her translation of Heinrich F. Liebrecht's memoir, Not To Hate But To Love, That Is What I Am Here For: My Path Through The Hell Of The Third Reich.

She recently talked to the Times-Standard about the book:

Liebrecht became a friend of Osborne's parents in Hamburg, after she and her two younger siblings had been sent to safety in England. Her parents were fortunate: In 1941 they obtained a U.S. visa and left Germany, among the very last Jews to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. For Liebrecht and his family, the border was sealed.

A long search for legal and illegal escape proved futile for Liebrecht, his wife, Lies, and their infant daughter, Eva-Maria. Liebrecht was arrested. Lies placed Eva-Maria with a trusted friend, then committed suicide.

During interrogations, Liebrecht endured brutal beatings and near starvation until he was sent to the concentration camp Theresienstadt. There, as was to prove true throughout his entire ordeal, he found inspiration. Even though many -- Germans and prisoners alike -- sank to subhuman levels, others displayed courage and humanity amid the deprivation and disorder.

”Despite these miserable circumstances,” Liebrecht wrote, “the accomplishments
by camp inmates are as worthy of remembrance as any other honorable acts of this war.”

Physicians stemmed the tide of epidemics, youth leaders schooled children, and workers of all descriptions strove to improve physical conditions. Musicians, writers and other artists, along with philosophers and clergy, nurtured spiritual and artistic enlightenment.

Among them was the kind-hearted chief rabbi of Germany, Dr. Leo Baeck, to whom Liebrecht, a Jew who converted to Catholicism, was most grateful. It was Baeck's philosophical lectures that were known for their depth and clarity that helped him stay connected to faith and reason -- reason to stay alive.

”That is where the wellsprings of our strength lay, that is where the conviction grew that we still had some kind of calling,” he wrote. “From here came the impulse to really endure, and the belief that we were able to do so.”

Liebrecht's mother arrived in the camp, unwell but content to spend her last days near her son. Later, his toddler daughter and her caretaker also arrived at Theresienstadt, affording a brief family reunion before Liebrecht's mother died in the infirmary.

Eva-Maria -- whom most at the camp endearingly called “little fawn” -- became sickly when the caretaker was sent to Auschwitz. Again, the determined effort of a fellow camp inmate, a nurse named Böszi, helped the child recover and thrive.

The family's next destination was Auschwitz, where father and daughter were separated. Liebrecht was among the men who avoided the gas ovens and was sent to hard labor at yet another camp -- but only after a dehumanizing physical inspection by the infamous SS physician Josef Mengele.

Life for the survivors was one of unending burden.

”We were no longer human individuals,” Liebrecht wrote. “We were merely numbers ... sad humans, sights of misery.”

In time, rumors of the war's end mounted as refugees flooded past the camp and gunfire grew ever closer. Meager food and medical supplies dwindled even further, weakening the disheartened prisoners. Liebrecht found himself in a sick room with a severely infected foot.

”I saw black in front of my eyes. I lost consciousness,” he wrote. “Then I caught myself: This is not how the end is supposed to be! See it through! Don't give up! Not now -- perhaps it's only a few more weeks before our liberation!”

He was right. The Holocaust ended with the Russians liberating the camp. The grief, however, was not over for Liebrecht: He learned of the death of his “little fawn.” She had been gassed at Auschwitz, along with her beloved Böszi, who despite the opportunity, refused to leave the child's side.

It was a chance reunion with Dr. Leo Baeck, and an in-depth, thought-provoking discussion on vengeance and forgiveness, that lead Liebrecht to find renewed faith to continue on. Yes, Hitler's influence was like an infectious disease that made “the real Germany into an unworthy nation,” Baeck told Liebrecht. But, he added, “injustice cannot be healed by injustice.”

Liebrecht took these words to heart. There was something extraordinary about the man, remembers Osborne, who met him in person in 1969 in Freiburg, Germany, while she and her family lived in Germany for a year.

”He was such a pleasant man,” she said. “Not only my husband and I, but our two sons, aged 14 and 16 at the time, became friends with him. Each of them went back to visit him again.”

Twenty-five years later, a few years after Liebrecht's death, Osborne received a copy of his memoir, which had been published posthumously. Widowed by then, Osborne was temporarily away from her Arcata home, serving in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. There, the book gained popularity with her German-speaking colleagues.

In 2003, Osborne formed a California public benefit nonprofit corporation in order to save documentation concerning her family's dispersal all over the globe after Hitler came to power. One of the volunteers helping with this archive expressed interest in writing a book about the family's history. Osborne thought the volunteer would benefit from reading Liebrecht's book.

”So, in January 2008, I started translating it for her, and while working on the translation, I began to realize the book's wider importance and decided I'd like to publish it,” she said.

Osborne believes this memoir will be especially helpful as supplementary reading for college students in a variety of courses. She believes its lessons are as timeless as the advice Baeck gave Liebrecht more than 60 years ago:

”Your task, the purpose of your life,” he said, “is to participate, to the best of your ability, so that brute force, force of any type, is not ever the victor.”

RAY RAPHAEL AND JAIMAL YOGIS

This weekend brings two author events to Northtown Books.

Ray Raphael will present his new book, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, at Northtown Books on Friday, June 12 at 7 pm.

Founders is Raphael’s largest and most ambitious book, a daring attempt to recreate an “honest history” of our nation’s founding by skipping over nineteenth century distortions and returning to primary sources from Revolutionary times. It’s a sweeping narrative, starting with the beginnings of unrest in 1761 and ending with the ratification of the Bill of Rights thirty years later. To keep his rendition intimate, Raphael focuses of seven lead characters — not the usual cast, but a far more diverse lot. For the first time, Raphael interweaves the new bottom-up approach, the favorite of social historians in recent years, with traditional top-down history, moving back and forth between leading figures inside chambers and the people “out-of-doors.”

Ray Raphael has written many books, several of which are about local Humboldt history. His first book, An Everyday History of Somewhere, won the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California. He recently collaborated with Freeman House on the first part of a projected multi-volume history of Humboldt County, Two Peoples, One Place.

For more info on Ray Raphael, go here.

On the very next night, author Jaimal Yogis presents his new book, Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea, Saturday, June 13th at 7:30 at Northtown Books.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

A journalist, photographer, surfer and Zen Master, Yogis began the life of a roving seeker his junior year of high school, when he ran away from his Sacramento, Calif. home to learn how to surf in Hawaii. His subsequent travels include a handful of prime surfing spots, but Yogis’s more arresting journey is spiritual, taking him to monasteries in France and Berkley, Calif., and deep into the living tradition of Zen Buddhism. Captured here in short chapters and wonderful, visual prose, Yogis’s coming-of-age odyssey also takes readers into the culture of indigenous Hawaiians, who believe the gods were surfers. Yogis’s long-time surfing mentor Rom provides insight into the science of surfing, ocean swells, the bathymetry of the continental shelf, deep water canyons and sea mounts. Even land lovers will find Yogis’s lessons resonant and entertaining, but surfers will find this a quick, surprisingly deep tribute to the quest for surf and serenity.

Here's a short film on Jaimal and the book:

WICKED PLANTS

Local author Amy Stewart will discuss and sign her new book Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities at Northtown Books May 17th at 3 pm.

A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

Here's a video preview of the book:

Please help us welcome Amy back to Northtown Books.

For much more information on this and Amy's other books and articles, go to her own website.

UPDATE: The New York Times comes to visit Amy in Eureka. (link via NCJ Blogthing)