Each week, we offer a roundup of the best literary events in the city. All events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Want to submit an upcoming event for consideration? Go here.
Paul Goldberger (Building Up and Tearing Down)
Tuesday, May 22, 8 pm, at the JCCSF (3200 California St.)
Goldberger (left), the Pulitzer-winning architecture critic for The New Yorker, will discuss a topic that's dear to San Franciscans' hearts: the Golden Gate Bridge, celebrating its 75th anniversary this month. Alongside Allison Arieff of the San Francisco Urban Planning & Research Association (SPUR), Goldberger will discuss the global architecture scene, and whether or not iconic civic structures like the Golden Gate Bridge are still possible in the modern era. Tickets are $10 for students, $17 ($22 premium) for members, and $20 ($25 premium) for the general public.
Arlie Russell Hochschild (The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times)
Wednesday, May 23, 7 pm, at Book Passage Corte Madera (51 Tamal Vista Blvd.)
The family has long been one of the few parts of Americans' lives that's insulated from economic calculations, but as Hochschild (The Second Shift) argues in her new study, the free market has begun to penetrate our experiences of love, marriage, and child-rearing to an unprecedented degree. From wedding planners to commercial surrogacy farms in India to services that help busy executives achieve "maximum leverage" from quality time with their kids, huge chunks of our emotional lives have become outsourceable to other Americans and the rest of the world. Hochschild examines how we got to this point, and what we can do to take back our personal lives.
Chris Guillebeau (The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future)
Tuesday, May 29, 7:30 pm, at The Booksmith (1644 Haight St.)
Though he's only in his mid-thirties, Guillebeau has almost completed his goal of visiting every country on the planet -- even though he's never held a "real job" or earned a regular paycheck. For those aspiring to achieve the same level of freedom, his new book examines 50 case studies of individuals who've been able to build businesses earning $50,000 or more from an initial investment of $100 or less, monetizing their passions and creating more flexible and fulfilling lives along the way.
John T. Edge (The Truck Food Cookbook: 150 Recipes and Ramblings from America's Best Restaurants on Wheels)
Wednesday, May 23, 6-7 pm, at Omnivore Books on Food (3885a Cesar Chavez St.)
Long considered one of America's top authorities on Southern food, Edge (Southern Belly) turns his lens on the burgeoning American food-truck revolution, from SF's own Liba Falafel to New York's Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and the Sonoran hot-dog purveyors of Tucson. Along the way, he examines universal topics like the popularity of sriracha, the organizational and legal challenges to starting a truck, and how fusion cuisine (like Korean tacos and coconut crepes) has gotten a boost from truck culture.
