Douglas Gayeton – Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town

978-1-59962-072-5 – Hardcover – Welcome Books – $50.00

If you love beautiful books, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town by Douglas Gayeton will be irresistible.  Gayeton is a film maker who ended up living in a small town in Tuscany that his wife (at that time) was from.  When she left him, he stayed.  He learned to speak Italian, and fell in love with the people, the place, and the pace of a community that was completely foreign to him and his American way of being.  As he told me in this interview, as a film maker, he is used to telling stories.  When he began to take photographs, thousands of them, the only way he could make sense of them was to create a narrative from them.

Which he did, by writing notes on the actual photographs, and also by layering multiple shots of the same scene over time.  The effect of the images and words here is mesmerizing.  And of course the representation of these people, their way of living, and the places they inhabit embody the stories Gayeton tells here.

This is both a personal narrative and one that – as great art must do – transcends and transforms the specific experiences portrayed.  Gayeton takes us on his journey to help us understand ourselves through an experience of others, just as he did.  I view these photographs and read the writing on them (notes, anecdotes, recipes, and many facts about Tuscany and Tuscan life), and find myself transported – beyond the “real” places he pictures to an almost spiritual state of being that is based in the imagination and soul of place.  “Slow” living is something all of us who are seeking meaning need to experience, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town is a doorway that will help us enter that experience.  Welcome Books deserves a lot of credit for making this spectacular book.

DOUGLAS GAYETON is a filmmaker, photographer, and writer. His images are held in a number of influential museum and private collections around the world, and have been featured in numerous print and online media, such as Time Magazine. Since the early 90s he has created award-winning work at the boundaries of traditional and converging media for AOL, MSN, MTV, Yahoo, Fox, Vivendi, Sony, Viacom, Sega, Intel, National Geographic, PBS, Warner Bros., Columbia, and Virgin Records. Recent projects include LOST IN ITALY, a 26 episode interstitial TV series Gayeton created, directed, and shot for Fine Living, and A SECOND LIFE ODYSSEY for HBO, the first documentary shot inside a virtual world.

Doug Gayeton is also a terrific interviewee, who tells his story particularly well.

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Tony Horwitz: A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America

978-0312428327 – Paperback – Picador – $18.00

What a great book!  This is one of those modern nonfiction books by a really smart and talented writer that communicates a great deal of information almost effortlessly.  Tony Horwitz takes us on a wonderful journey, his own individualistic, funny, sometimes painful, and always fascinating tour of North American history. It all started with a chance visit to Plymouth Rock that made him realize how little he knew about the early colonization and settlement of North America before the Pilgrims arrival in 1620.  It wasn’t long before he set out on a very long journey, as he puts it “in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.”

He traces many stories and visits many places on his own epic trek — from Florida’s Fountain of Youth to Plymouth’s sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges. Tony has a healthy regard for history and an equally healthy disregard for accepting the accepted wisdom and stories about the Europeans of all kinds who managed to get to America, muck about the place, sometimes with disastrous or horrific results, and he does not forget to talk about the people who were already here when the Europeans arrived.  Overall, he is funny, tells great stories, brilliantly illuminates the people, places and myths that dot our past, and while it is trite to say, he definitely brings a long run of history vividly to life.  For those of us who do know our American history, this book is fun and rewarding, and for those who missed it, I can think of no better way to learn about this early period of North American history up close and personal than to read A Voyage Long and Strange.

I heard Tony talk about this book and read from it at the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival this summer and knew instantly that I wanted to read it myself.  He definitely has one of the most engaging approaches to history and story telling you will ever run across.  Probably reflecting his own engaging personality, as my interview with Tony will show you.  He has a great website with alot of information about this, his newest book, and his other four books at www.tonyhorwitz.com.

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Galen Rowell and Peter Beren: California the Beautiful

978-1599620749 – Hardcover – Welcome Books – $19.95

Galen Rowell was an incredible photographer, documenting and interpreting nature all over the world.  He was an accomplished mountain climber, so he was able to reach places that most other photographers could never go.  He died tragically and far too early in an airplane crash in 2002.  I’ve been familiar with his work through many books, calendars and exhibitions, but really did not know a great deal about him.  Peter Beren, who I have known through the book business, has authored and edited numerous books, including The Writer’s Companion, Vintage San Francisco, and Hidden Napa Valley. He was the publisher of Sierra Club Books and founding publisher of VIA Books, and now lives and works independently in San Francisco.

California the Beautiful is both a photography book and a literary meditation on California as a place of transcendent beauty.  The geography of California has engendered some of the great nature writing of our time, and much of that work is featured here.  Peter talked at length about the genesis of this project, his work with Galen Rowell, the way Rowell worked and Peter also read some of the wonderful selections of writings that are included in this book.

California the Beautiful is both a portrait of the state’s diverse natural beauty and, through the incredible voices of its writers, a testament to the ever-renewing spirit that it has come to embody. Aldous Huxley, British author turned Hollywood resident, described the California dream as “this great crystal of light, whose base is as large as Europe and whose height for all practical purposes, is infinite.”

Among the other authors offering praise are Maya Angelou, Mary Austin, Ray Bradbury, Joan Didion, Gretel Ehrlich, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, M.F.K Fisher, Robertson Jeffers, Jack Kerouac, Clarence King, Jack London, Henry Miller, John Muir, William Saroyan, April Smith, John Steinbeck, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Nathanael West, and Walt Whitman.

This is a beautiful book that inspires an almost altered state in the reader, as the saturated colors move from eye to brain.  But the photos and the writing made me want to get in my car and drive straight west to see some of the places there that absolutely must be experience first hand by every American.

An excerpt of California the Beautiful is available at www.chptr1.com.

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James McCommons: Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service–A Year Spent Riding across America

978-1603580649 – Paperback – Chelsea Green Publishing – $17.95

I learned a great deal from reading this excellent book.  Not just information about trains – there’s alot here – but about the people who around the United States who are working to make train travel a viable alternative to driving, about the communities and states where rail is succeeding, about the history and scope of railroads in America and around the world, and specifically a great deal about Amtrak, its ongoing struggles, as well as the modern freight railroads that are thriving today.  Jim McCommons has alot to tell, but he never lectures us.  Because the book is built on the backbone of his year spent traveling around America by rail, and because McCommons is an experienced and talented journalist, Waiting on a Train beautifully combines travelogue, personal memoir and transportation analysis and history that gives us a great introduction to an important and large subject that might otherwise seem opaque and difficult to approach.

McCommons spent much of 2008 in trains.  He talked to travelers, workers on the railroads, policy makers, professional planners, politicians, including many of the people who have been most involved in passenger rail policy for the past 35 years.  Waiting on a Train is not a sentimentalist’s approach to rail travel.  McCommons tells us plainly what the challenges are for those of us who want to see mass transit developed into a meaningful alternative to automobile and air travel.  And he does not pull punches – developing passenger railroads is not going to be easy and it will not happen quickly.  It’s important to realize that only 2% of the American public has actually ever ridden a train – a stunning fact I learned from this book.  I’d recommend this book for anyone who loves trains, an easy call, but I’d also like to see people who have never even thought about riding on a train read this book so they will understand why rail must be an essential component of the American transportation system of the future.

In my interview with James McCommons, we talked in detail about what it was like for him to spend so much time in trains, writing this book, and many of the subjects he covered.  He talks about high speed rail, the differences between Europe and America, meeting railroad policy makers, and talking to regular travelers from many different backgrounds.  It’s a fascinating story I hope will be widely read and discussed.

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Andi Silverman: Mama Knows Breast: A Beginner’s Guide to Breastfeeding

978-1594741654 – paperback – Quirk Books – $14.95

Andi Silverman, author of Mama Knows Breast, interviewed by Writerscast host David Wilk

As a middle aged man, I am clearly not the audience for this book, but when I saw a copy of the book and read the first few chapters I knew right away this would be an author I wanted to interview.  Mama Knows Breast is a great title for a book (as well as for the author’s very well put together and consistently informative website). And her publisher, Quirk Books, has put together a beautifully produced paperback with very cool and comforting illustrations.

As the author, Andi Silverman tells me in our interview, she wanted to write the book she needed when she was looking around at books about breastfeeding – something not medical, or like a textbook, but a book for moms by a mom, with humor, a caring approach, and above all, not judgmental regardless of the decisions each mom makes about breastfeeding.

And of course, as she rightly points out, breastfeeding is not just a subject for women.  Having been father to two breastfed children, I can attest this is true.  Breastfeeding is not a choice that every woman or family can make of course.  But breast milk is healthy and natural, and better for the baby and child than any formula.  My interview with Andi Silverman reflects her spirit and approach as an author – she is full of good advice gently given, and is someone almost any woman would want to consult for advice.

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James Gustav Speth: The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

978-0300151152 – paperback – Yale University Press – $18.00

While I was reading The Bridge at the Edge of the World, I often would exclaim out loud as so many of the ideas the author talks about are ones I believe in and feel are important to the dialog about the future of our planet.  This is an important book that should be widely read, discussed and used as the basis of action – and soon!

Co-founder of the NRDC, former Yale University dean, and former White House advisor James Gustave Speth has been a leader in the environmental movement for more than 30 years.

Now, faced with overwhelming evidence of galloping degradation of the planet, Speth has concluded that the environmental project—his project—has failed. No matter how hard environmentalists work, the current of destruction against which they are swimming is simply too swift. In order to preserve a livable planet for future generations, Speth argues in The Bridge at the Edge of the World that the current itself must be altered. And the current is that untouchable edifice, American-style consumer capitalism.

I found this book to be powerful and compelling and wanted to talk to “Gus” Speth about the implications of his thinking.  How should we go forward when we know that the way we live today is putting us on a collision course with the natural world?  How do we build new ways of living that are sustainable?  And how are we going to do this in the face of so many entrenched interests that will oppose the essential changes we feel are necessary for human survival and for the preservation natural systems in a viable planet earth?

While this interview is perhaps all too brief, Speth talks in depth about some of his ideas and answers my questions with his typical incisiveness and intelligence.

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Alice Eve Cohen – What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir

978-0670020959 – Hardcover

Viking – $24.95

Alice Eve Cohen’s memoir tells an incredible story – a writer and playwright, she was diagnosed as infertile in her thirties, she adopted a daughter with her then-husband (whom she later divorced).  At 44 she began to experience strange physical symptoms – after six months of suffering she was finally recognized as being pregnant.  In many ways that was only the beginning of her story – which is an incredible, honest, sometimes funny but as often a painful journey of discovery.

I generally am not that interested in the modern memoir – most people’s stories are just not that interesting.  But I was attracted to Alice’s story right away, partly because of my own experience with DES and its damages to the children whose mothers took that fertility drug.  Alice’s persona shines through her story.  She is vivid and clear about everything that happened to her and how she felt at the time, and later, and she pulls no punches, including her own foibles, fears, and weaknesses throughout.

Overall What I Thought I Knew is a wonderful book that holds our attention throughout.  It’s transformative for the author and for the reader.  In my interview with Alice Eve Cohen, we talked in detail about the book and her experiences then and now (the events took place several years ago).  She’s not only a wonderful writer but a great interview subject as well.

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Martin Melaver – Living Above the Store

9781603580854 – Hardcover

Chelsea Green Press – $27.95

This is one of the most important and challenging books I have read in a long time.  In this book Martin Melaver tells stories about his life, his business, his family, and his community, as a  framework for understanding how business can (and must) change, in order to become truly sustainable, to become additive rather than extractive, and to rethink the way business is done.  As the publisher says: “Living Above the Store is for readers who care about issues of community and sustainability as well as for those who want to learn more about how a socially responsible business can first redefine, and then find, success.”  In this interview, Martin and I talk in depth about the key ideas in the book, and talk in detail about some of the practical issues the book raises for so many who want to make a difference.  Martin demonstrates his clarity of thought and deep commitment to truly making change in business and community.  Highly recommended!

Martin Melaver has been CEO of Melaver, Inc., since 1992. Never content with the well-trod path, he has a PhD in literature from Harvard University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is actively involved with numerous community organizations in and around Savannah, Georgia. Melaver splits his time between Savannah and Tel Aviv, Israel. …

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Lev Raphael – My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World his Parents Escaped

978-0299231507 – Hardcover

University of Wisconsin Press  $26.95

Lev Raphael grew up loathing everything German. A son of Holocaust survivors, haunted by his parents’ suffering and traumatic losses under Nazi rule, he was certain that Germany was one place in the world he would never visit. Those feelings shaped his Jewish and gay identity, his life, and his career.  In “My Germany.” Raphael explores many layers of his personal life, including his visits to Germany, his complex relationships with his parents and his inner self.  My interview with this interesting and engaging writer ranges across a variety of subjects, including the author’s writing methods, a discussion about this new book and his life as a writer, the nature of memoir, memory, and the discovery of self.

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Russ Baker – Family of Secrets – Part 2 of a Two Part Interview

978-1596915572
Bloomsbury Press, $30.00
Hardcover

Writerscast host David Wilk interviews investigative journalist Russ Baker, author of the newly released FAMILY OF SECRETS: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America. Baker started his investigation into the Bush family during the most recent Bush administration, thinking that he would be able to understand how the “unlikely” George W actually became President of the most powerful nation on earth. This simple investigation turned into something far deeper – and ultimately Baker learned details about the Bush family going back three generations that connects them to some of the major political events of the last 75 years. In Part Two of Wilk’s two part interview with Baker, they discuss more details of the startling and controversial content of the book. Baker discusses the information he uncovered about the “real” George Bush and his role in the still unfolding story of the Bush family dynasty. He talks about the image and the reality of our ex-President and suggests what we as citizens can do to learn more about how our country really operates.

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