Tuesday,  August 2nd  7:30 pm 

Fred Siegel's new book, The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, places Giuliani, who emerged as a hero of 9/11, in the broader context of how New York and other American cities evolved after World War II. It portrays New York's colorful and controversial former mayor as an immoderate centrist who used his egotism to the city's benefit. He cut taxes, lowered crime, reduced the welfare rolls, and restored financial vibrancy to the city, at the same time drawing criticism that he was an intolerant, draconian mayor who stifled opposing voices in New York.

Wednesday,  August 3rd  7:30 pm 

First-time novelist David Francis reads from The Great Inland Sea, a story of tragic origins and a passionate but failed love affair. A young man named Day is haunted by memories of his mother's madness and her untimely death in New South Wales, Australia. When he comes to America he meets Callie, a beautiful and intelligent, but deeply disturbing girl, who shares his passion about horses and is determined to become the first woman jockey. Their disasterous relationship ultimately sends him back to Australia to discover truths about his mother and adult life that he did not understand as a boy.

Thursday,  August 4th  7:30 pm 

Poet Philip Levine, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, will be reading from his work, including his most recent book, Breath. One of the finest American poets to emerge since World War II, Levine is our great voice of factory work and blue-collar life, as Frost was of farm labor and rural life. Writing with great emotional honesty and not averse to taking risks, he has an ear as finely tuned to bus stations and steel plants as to the cadences of Shakespeare and Milton.

Saturday,  August 6th
@ Freight and Salvage 

Black Oak is co-sponsoring the annual Great Night of Rumi concert at Freight and Salvage. The thirteenth-century Persian poet Jelaluddin Rumi was a spiritual master and founder of a sect of Sufi mystics. He is also one of the world's greatest and most beloved poets, having composed thousands of verses on themes of divine love and ecstatic illumination. Dan Zola and Dale Zola will lead a collective concert evening of Rumi's poetry recited and sung to accompaniment by musicians. Collections of his poetry will be available for purchase.

Tuesday,  August 9th  7:30 pm 

Journalist Norman Solomon has written extensively about his belief that government and media conspire to keep us at war. His new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, looks at history from Johnson's claims about the Gulf of Tonkin to Bush Jr.'s about WMDs, and argues that presidential deception, echoed by faulty and corrupt news reporting, has led us into military engagements in places such as Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq.

Wednesday,  August 10th  7:30 pm 

Kim Addonizio has emerged as one of the most gritty and moving poets in the Bay Area and in the country. She has a rare ability to make the body a touchstone of intimacy, love, and intimations of death. She reads from her debut novel, Little Beauties, which is narrated by three fascinating characters: an obsessive-compulsive, a pregnant teenager, and a newborn. As in her poetry and short fiction, Kim Addonizio is a master here of using fresh, provocative language to show us both the splendor and messiness of life.

Thursday,  August 11th  7:30 pm 

Peace activist Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement, comes to Black Oak to talk about Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism, the new CODEPINK collection of essays she edited with Jodie Evans. The nearly seventy essays in this book present a comprehensive, many-angled approach to curtailing militarism and encouraging peaceful cooperation in the world. The contributors include some of the most dynamic, eloquent, and well-known women writers of our time. We will be joined by one of them, Berkeley author and feminist thinker Susan Griffin, who is widely celebrated for her writings, which explore relations between violence, nature, and the female body.

Tuesday,  August 16th  7:30 pm 

A recent bestseller at Black Oak Books has been Sonnets from Aesop, a collection of Aesop's timeless animal fables shaped into sonnets by local poet Judith Goldhaber and colorfully illustrated by her husband, physicist Gerson Goldhaber. Judith's fourteen-line poems demonstrate brilliant handling of poetic meter and wit that will appeal to adults even more than to the children who love this book. Gerson's beautiful, Chagall-like illustrations simply brim with joy. Poster-size versions of the book's illustrations and poems will be on view and for sale.

Thursday,  August 18th  7:30 pm 

James Dalessandro's novel 1906, published last year, is an historical epic about the San Francisco earthquake. It uses newly discovered historical evidence to paint a panoramic canvas of tony Nob Hill mansions and salty Barbary Coast saloons, corrupt politicians, honest cops, and vendettas fought while the city burned and Caruso sang at the opera. Dalessandro, who is also an accomplished screenwriter, comes to Black Oak to screen and discuss his new documentary on the same subject, The Damndest Finest Ruins, the title for which comes from a poem written by Lawrence Harris, who composed it while wandering through the aftermath of the earthquake and fire.

Monday,  August 22nd  7:30 pm 

Kit Sloane reads from her newest mystery, Extreme Cuisine. Film editor Margot O'Banion and director Max Skull are once again uncovering murder and deceit in L.A. In this case, crime is intertwined with the politics of high-end restaurants and fine dining. Max is filming his new movie when his friend, chef Loretta Rose, finds a body in her restaurant's cooler, a body posed in the exact manner of a scene from Max's movie. Margot and Max try to prevent any further murders while salvaging their filming schedule.

Tuesday,  August 23rd  7:30 pm 

Sara Halprin discusses Seema's Show: A Life on the Left, her biography of political activist and photographer Seema Aissen Weatherwax, whose friends over time included Woody Guthrie, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston. In 1922, at the age of seventeen, Seema Aissen got her first job drying prints in a photo-finishing lab in Boston and joined the newly founded Young Communist League; at thirty-three she was hired by Ansel Adams to run his darkroom in Yosemite; at thirty-seven she married the writer Jack Weatherwax and devoted herself to supporting his work. Widowed at seventy-nine, she began a new life and at ninety-five had her first photographic exhibit.

Wednesday,  August 24th  7:30 pm 

No ordinary travel writer, Edith Mirante describes herself as a "human rights pirate" who sneaks into places where recognized human rights groups rarely go. Down the Rat Hole: Adventures Underground on Burma's Frontier describes such experiences as being trapped in a cyclone in Bangladesh and smuggled into Kachin State disguised as a Muslim woman. Throughout Asia, Edith Mirante finds guerrilla wars, AIDS epidemics, drug abuse and trafficking, destruction of rain forests, riots, strikes, and one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.

Monday,  August 29th  7:30 pm 

Edward Espe Brown, Susan Moon, Wes Nisker, and Nina Wise—all Buddhist practitioners and writers of outstanding wit and heart—come to Black Oak for a discussion on Buddhism and humor. There is a rich tradition in Buddhism of using humor as a vehicle for conveying the dharma. Teachers skillfully employ stories, sayings, and surprising answers to student questions to poke holes in habitual responses. Humor can open the mind, suggesting, with a deft stroke, fresh ways of seeing. Join us tonight for an illuminating look.

Tuesday,  August 30th  7:30 pm 

A. P. Smith, a savy, sometimes sardonic writer, brings a breath of Brooklyn hipness to Berkeley as he reads from Welcome to the Land of Cannibalistic Horses, a collection of nonfiction pieces that Smith wrote between the onset of the war in Iraq in 2002 and the presidential election of 2004. He includes travel writing and political essays as well as interviews with people such as Bob Chandler, creator of the Big Foot monster truck, photographer David LaChappelle, Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, Bernardine Dohrn of the Weather Underground, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Wednesday,  August 31st  7:30 pm 

Norman Glendenning, a theoretical physicist at Berkeley's Lawrence Laboratory, discusses After the Beginning: A Cosmic Journey Through Space and Time, a history of not only the universe since the Big Bang, but also a history of physics and cosmology, from Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton to Einstein, Gell-Mann, and others. This book of exemplary learning and eloquence was recently chosen by Scientific American as one of their book club's featured selections. It is that rare science book that speaks to readers at every grade of scientific knowledge, from the professional physicist, to the student and general reader.