New Author Series Launched
First Congregational Church of Berkeley is launching a new author series called Authors&Ideas@FCCB in collaboration with a new organization called Berkeley Arts & Letters. Melissa Mytinger, formerly of Cody’s Books, is the primary organizer for the series. Events will take place at the church and across the street at the Berkeley City Club. Melissa has been organizing author events at First Congregational for many years and we look forward to this new collaboration. We expect to have a full and varied line-up of authors presenting ideas important for the future of our community, nation and world.
Audio files of past events are available on this page.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
7:30 p.m. · Large Assembly
In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized—had somehow hijacked destiny. In the west, we share a common narrative of world history—that runs from the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, through Greece and Rome and the French Revolution, to the rise of the secular state and the triumph of democracy. It’s one that largely omits a whole civilization that until quite recently saw itself at the center of world history, and whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years.
Tamim Ansary is the author of the memoir West of Kabul, East of New York, co-author with Farah Ahmadi of the New York Times bestseller The Other Side of the Sky, and has been a major contributing editor to several secondary school history textbooks. Ansary is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop, and writes for Encarta.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, Edutopia, Parade, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
7:30 p.m. · Hillside Club (2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley)
In Not Becoming in Mother, Ruth Reichl confronts the painful transition her mother made from a hopeful young woman to an increasingly unhappy older one and comes to understand the lessons of rebellion, independence, and self-acceptance that her mother succeeded in teaching her. Reichl pieces together the story of her mother’s life from an old box of her mother’s letters, notes, and journals, spanning a lifetime from 1924 to 1988. She discovers a woman she never really knew. Miriam Brudno dreamed of becoming a doctor, like her father, but was discouraged by her parents who feared no one would marry her. Instead, she embarked on a more ladylike profession, opening a bookshop where she corresponded with authors and intellectuals all over the globe. She was almost thirty when she finally married and started a family, leaving her bookshop and her dreams behind. Smart and well-educated with too little to do to fill her days, Reichl’s mother and her friends were often bored, miserable, and quietly rebellious. “As I came to know this new person, I began to see how much I owe her. Mom may not have realized her dreams…She did not have a happy life but she wanted one for me. And she made enormous emotional sacrifices to make sure that my life would not turn out like hers.”
Ruth Reichl is the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, the author of Comfort Me with Apples, Tender at the Bone, and Garlic ∓ Sapphires, and the editor of the comprehensive Gourmet Cookbook. She has been the restaurant critic of The New York Times and the food editor and restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times.