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.

DIGITAL BURN: the Remaking of the Independent Bookseller

by A. Bitterman, Feb. 2010

“But before I let your steam drill beat me down, I’d die with a hammer in my hand, lord, lord. I’d die with a hammer in my hand…”

Nearly 20 years ago, publishing companies made a decision to tilt the scales of supply and demand knowing full well that in the process they would devastate the independent bookselling industry for years to come. Maybe even destroy it. The promise of unprecedented profits was too much to ignore.

In order to endorse and sustain the superstore model put forth by companies like Borders and Barnes & Noble, publishers employed a strategy of over-production in order to supply enough books to cover the miles and miles of new book shelves that far exceeded actual customer demand.

To make it work, publishers needed to establish an asymmetric retail environment that would function as a safety net to capture the inevitably large returns that would result from over-supplying the big box stores.
This meant creating a new kind of bargain book market that would not only offer breathtaking discounts on out-of-print remainders but on new books as well, books that were over-printed and were still being sold at the cover price in most of the traditional independent retail outlets.

The coincident emergence of online retailing helped fuel publisher confidence in the new model. Independents were caught in a death grip, wedged between the superstore and the bargain book, an unsustainable position that immediately rendered them old-fashioned, inconvenient, and over-priced in the public’s mind.

Obediently, independent booksellers pitted themselves against the superstore, in many cases because they really thought that was the enemy, but ultimately because they had no choice. How could they assail the real enemy, the publishers - their masters - who supplied them, extended credit to them, sent authors to them?

What was once a legitimate playing field for independent booksellers became a plantation almost overnight. Publishers no longer needed them and if they were to survive it would be by their own sheer grit and determination, nothing more or less. The master looked away while thousands perished.

Between 1993 and 2003, the number of independent book retailers diminished by more than half, and their consumer market share dwindled from 30+% to less than 10%. The downward trend continues, albeit more slowly, accompanied by the sound of fingernails dragging across loose rock.

But there is hope on the horizon for the independent bookseller, and it comes in a strange and perhaps unexpected form - the e-book.

Reflexively, independent booksellers by and large view the digital book as a threat not just to their livelihood but to the legacy of which they perceive themselves a vital part. It is an affront to what they have been fighting for and dying for all along.

Unlike chain stores and online retailers, independent booksellers have a sensual relationship with their product. They like real books - the way they feel, the way they smell, the way they fit in your hand. They like the history that an actual book possesses, even a bad one. A digital book has no inherent sensual value. It is like the difference between going to a baseball game and watching the game day version on your computer. There is no comparison, and the hot dogs will never taste the same.

Nonetheless, independent booksellers should be rooting for electronic media. Their survival may depend on it.

The digital book has rapidly become a source of both profit and high anxiety in recent years for all sectors of the publishing industry. With Google attempting to digitize the universe and e-book platforms multiplying seemingly day-by-day, digital piracy plagues the publishers to the tune of a billion dollars a year.

With that kind of hemorrhaging, publishers can no longer afford to accommodate the price wars they instigated back in the 90’s with printed matter. There is no safety net with digital media. It’s a high wire act with high stakes. And with no net there is no room for error when it comes to the bottom line.

With this in mind, Macmillan Publishers, with the support of their counterparts in “the big six”, recently fired a shot across the bow by fixing prices on their electronic media so that vendors like Amazon.com would no longer be able to slash prices and undercut their competitors. This way, publishers can ensure maximum returns regardless of their distribution outlet.

In response, Amazon issued one of the most brilliantly absurd statements in the history of public relations: “Macmillan has a monopoly over its own titles.” Which is like saying Coke has a monopoly over Coke products, or that Jesus has a monopoly over his disciples. It would be funny if it wasn’t so telling of the sort of delusional thinking that has come into fashion, particularly among online retailers and their consumers, that everything is for the taking and that nothing, including provenance, is above the market.

In any case, while industry insiders spin the Macmillan incident as a shift in power from distributors to content providers, what this really means to traditional booksellers is that publishers are finally feeling the edges of their superstore model and it’s about to bite them in the ass. They’re afraid of the what’s coming. It may have taken 20+ years, but the independent bookseller may yet be rewarded for its tenacity.

As digital media proliferates, the market share for printed material will naturally decrease over time, rendering the superstore model ineffective. It’s already happening, with Borders on life support (and no hope of recovering) and Barnes and Noble trending flat on in-store sales. One can reasonably expect to see Barnes and Noble reining in and streamlining its bricks and mortar operations in the coming years, (boasting efficiency and a new kind of “knowledge & service” that makes their new smaller stores superior to their behemoth ancestors,) and turning its attention more fully to its online retail efforts.

This will open more markets for independents already on the ground. Specialty stores will become more viable. As the weight shifts to the e-book, publishers may well choose to fix prices on printed books as well in order to protect profits in both sectors. This too will help independents gain advantage in what remains of the printed book market.

It’s worth noting here that several countries in Europe have always required fixed pricing on printed books and that the result has been the coexistence of a thriving independent bookselling industry alongside a healthy online and chain store market.

Historically, America has resisted market controls like fixed pricing because, well, it’s unAmerican. Our entire notion of freedom and progress derives from a slavish belief in free markets. We would rather see John Henry die with a hammer in his hand, and hold him up as a hero, than make room for both him and the steam drill. It’s a pathology that constantly pits old against new, and allows us to believe that the future is inevitable in whatever form it takes. We know deep down that this is not really the case because radio didn’t die with the advent of television, nor did home video replace the movie house, and bicycles are still being manufactured.

The notion that digital and printed media are mutually exclusive is a mythology better left alone. What’s really happening now is that e-books are giving new life to the printed word. Fewer and better books will be brought to press. New markets will open as the superstores retract. Small retailers will rise up and in turn provide new opportunities for publishers to really diversify their product in ways not seen for over a decade.

The temptation to engage digital media as the enemy is self-defeating. History need not be repeated. John Henry need not die. For independent booksellers, now is the time for a quiet smile and a pat on the back as publishers are forced to come to terms with the monster in the (big) box.




A. Bitterman
Reading Reptile
328 W. 63rd St.
Kansas City, MO 64113
816-753-0441
pete@readingreptile.com

MARCH READING GROUP

Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter is our March reading group selection. Our next meeting will be on March 14th at 5:30 here at the bookstore. Books are in and behind the counter at a 10% discount.

Here's a reading guide for the book.

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.

January Reading Group

We have selected Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann for our next book. Copies are available now, behind the counter, at a 10% discount.

We also decided to reschedule our next meeting to the second MONDAY of the month, so we will be meeting at 6:00 on the 11th of January, 2010 here at Northtown Books.

Don't forget to check out our (fairly) new Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Northtown-Books/172333521554?ref=ts

And here are a couple of relevant links:

http://colummccann.com/
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2009_f_mccann.html

And here's Mr. McCann himself talking about the book:

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.

DECEMBER READING GROUP: MY STROKE OF INSIGHT

The second Sunday of each month, Northtown Books hosts its own book group. Next month's selection is My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. Taylor writes about her experience of a stroke from the perspective of an expert.

Our next meeting will be December 13th at 5:30 here at the bookstore. Books are available behind the counter for a 10% discount.

Here's a TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor:

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