Red Carpet: China, Hollywood, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy
Who decides what films appear at your local theater or on your TV screen? Would you guess Xi Jinping, autocratic President of the People’s Republic of China? Wall Street Journal film industry reporter Erich Schwartzel and veteran China watcher…
Buster Keaton and the Dawn of Cinema
“All my life, I've been happiest when folks watching me said to each other, 'Look at the poor dope, will ya?’” Humility aside, Buster Keaton, aka “The Great Stone Face,” shares equal stature with Charlie Chaplin as a comic genius and…
Cultures and Complexities: California’s Hidden Stories in History, Fiction, Poetry and Memoir
Tech empires, movie sets, surfers with golden tans: that's California, right? Not so fast. The California that exists beyond the stereotypes is much more complex and interesting. National Book Award finalist Susan Straight’s Mecca (says Viet…
Fear and Loathing in San Francisco: Hunter S. Thompson’s Savage Journey to Gonzo
Why is the wild, woolly writing of Hunter S. Thompson, the legendary Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author, still so urgently relevant today? By inventing a whole new genre—"Gonzo journalism"—he, and the brilliant minds he influenced (Joan…
Revolution Then and Now: Four Authors Talk about Radical Change from the 1960s to Today
A quartet of maverick minds will take us on a wild ride of activism, defiance, and hard-won change. Bestselling journalist and historian David Talbot and New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot are known for pulling back the veil on social and political…
Black Panthers: Inherit the Revolution
When Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale first met at Oakland’s Merritt College in 1966, history was made. They formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and ended up rocking the world with a revolutionary vision whose legacy still burns…
A Brief History of Underpants
From loincloths to bloomers to superhero-themed Underoos, the story of human history can be summed up by what we choose to wear on our behinds. In her brief but hilarious overview, Christine Van Zandt reveals how our choices of unmentionables…
Love in the Library
How do you find joy even when times are tough? Maggie Tokuda-Hall explores that question in Love in the Library, inspired by the true story of how her grandparents met when both were incarcerated in Minidoka during World War II. One was a library…
Rebecca Solnit on Orwell’s Roses
Did you know that 1984 author and journalist George Orwell had a passion for cultivating roses? Learn all about it from Rebecca Solnit, one of our most revered journalists and thinkers, whose own creative and activist journey was shaped by Orwell's…