This week I had the privilege of interviewing Wayne Street, a teacher at Petaluma High School who has written a book about his 15-year struggle with two potentially deadly diseases. For the first time in my life, I literally could not put down the book once I began reading it. Game, Set, Life: My Match with Crohn’s and Cancer (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, 2009) is inspiring, compelling and surprisingly funny. By … Read More »

THE WORST CRITICS pronounce judgment without having any specific knowledge of what they are criticizing. They relish ignorance as the cornerstone of righteousness. Tea baggers come to mind. It’s impossible to have a conversation with someone who knows the answer before they hear the question. Religious leaders are often guilty of premature exclamation. Rev. Pat Robertson said that the Haitian people were to blame for the earthquake that killed hundreds of … Read More »

MY SON JONATHAN is racing through the five-book Percy Jackson series by Rich Riordan. When he isn’t reading the books on his own, we read together, mostly at bedtime. The books are based on Greek mythology; and I suspect the stories were originally meant to be told aloud to enraptured Greek audiences. The Percy Jackson books spring to life when Jonathan and I read them to one another. Our imaginations … Read More »

John Yoo – the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote the “torture memos” after 9/11, providing a legal rationale for George W. Bush’s policy of torture during the so-called “War on Terror” – has written a new book that makes the case for unbridled presidential power. I’m not going to review Yoo’s book, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush for the same … Read More »

JAMES BALDWIN (1924-1987), author of Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time and many other enduring works of literature, is one of the greatest intellectuals in the history of America. Baldwin was a social intellectual who was intimately connected to the political ferment of his time. He was a moral authority whose words struck at the heart of American hypocrisy that permitted the white majority to bask … Read More »

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (New York: Europa Editions, 2008) My inelegant theory on the origins of Petaluma goes something like this: we are living between two worlds at the threshold of another. One world is made up of chicken and cattle ranchers and farmers. Another world consists of urban and suburban interlopers. In the collision of these two old worlds a new one is emerging – like … Read More »

ARLENE MILLER, an English teacher at Petaluma Junior High School, has self-published a new book on grammar, The Best Little Grammar Book Ever! 101 Ways to Impress With Your Writing and Speaking. (The publication date is May 1, 2010. You can pre-order a copy for $11.95 at www.bigwords101.com.)   As a high school dropout, I missed grammar in English classes. I later received a GED and graduate degrees; but a fear of … Read More »

In Germany a scandal is brewing over a popular debut novel by a teenage girl. A careful reader discovered that she had lifted nearly an entire page from another novel along with bits and pieces from other works. The scandal, rather than hurting her budding reputation, gave it a boost – along with book sales. Helene Hegemann, the light-fingered young author, said, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just … Read More »

I reviewed Ransom Stephens’ first book, The God Patent in August 2009. Originally published as an ebook at Scribd (www.TheGodPatent.com), The God Patent is one of those rare books to make the crossover from online to traditional publishing. A paperback version was published in late 2009 by Numina Press in San Rafael. Ransom Stephens has had a remarkable career as a professor of physics, high tech consultant, public speaker and author … Read More »

Food Rules: An Eater’s Handbook by Michael Pollan (New York: Penguin, 2009) Michael Pollan might be saving more lives than the FDA but he is dancing around a big issue: the role of multinational corporations in poisoning America’s food supply. In his new book, Food Rules, Pollan argues that highly processed foods – “edible foodlike substances” – are a leading cause of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease among … Read More »