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Reading: Liz Prato: Volcanoes, Palm Trees, & Privilege

Gastro Mania - Multnomah Village 7850 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Liz Prato to read from her new book, Volcanoes, Palm Trees & Privilege: Essays on Hawai'i. Prato will be joined in-conversation with musician Jim Jones, who was raised on Oahu. The event will take place next door to Annie Bloom's at Gastromania, with food and drink available. Liz Prato combines lyricism, research and humor to explore her role as a white tourist in a seemingly paradisiacal land that has been largely formed and destroyed by white outsiders. Hawaiian history, pop culture, and contemporary affairs are masterfully woven with her personal narrative of loss and survival in linked essays, offering unique insight into how the touristic ideal of Hawai'i came to be, and what Hawai'i is at its core. “Liz…

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Free

Thom Hartmann

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann examines the brutal role guns have played in American history – from the genocide of the Native Americans to the enforcement of slavery (slave patrols are in fact the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militias”) and the racist post-Civil War social order. He shows how the NRA and conservative Supreme Court justices used specious logic to invent a virtually unlimited individual right to own guns, which has enabled the ever-growing number of mass shootings in the United States. Hartmann also identifies a handful of powerful, commonsense solutions that would break the power of the gun lobby and restore the understanding of the Second Amendment that the Framers of the Constitution intended. Hartmann’s The Hidden…

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Free

Chris Guillebeau

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

In 100 Side Hustles (Ten Speed), Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup, presents a colorful “idea book” filled with inspiration for your next big idea. Distilled from his popular Side Hustle School podcast, these case studies feature teachers, artists, coders, and even entire families who’ve found ways to create new sources of income. With insights and takeaways that reveal the human element behind the hustles, this playbook covers every step of launching a side hustle, from identifying underserved markets to crafting unique products and services that spring from your passions.

Free

Robert Macfarlane in Conversation With Barry Lopez

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In his new work, Underland: A Deep Time Journey (W. W. Norton), Macfarlane delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Macfarlane takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Global in its geography and written with great lyricism and power, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. Taking a deep time view of our planet, Macfarlane here asks a vital and unsettling question: “Are we being…

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Free

Inkwater Authors Night – Marilynne Eichinger, Sharon Ann Rose, and Mark Chussil

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for our monthly series from Inkwater Press. This month, we hear from Marilynne Eichinger, Sharon Ann Rose, and Mark Chussil. Lives of Museum Junkies: The Story of America’s Hands-On Education Movement: Peer into the political and educational climate of the 1960s to discover factors that propelled the hands-on education movement into prominence. Follow the missteps and breakthroughs of Marilynne Eichinger and 11 other naive but dedicated museum directors, board volunteers, and National Science Foundation managers as they strove to change the way science was taught. Their oft humorous stories are revealed with candor and clarity. Responding to the latest research in learning and child development, they created engaging, self-teaching displays that impacted the landscape of 2,900 centers worldwide while serving 98 million people…

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Free

The Democracy Fix

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

Caroline Fredrickson, former special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, president of the American Constitution Society, and author of Under the Bus, shows how the left can undo the right’s damage and take the country back. Despite representing the beliefs of a minority of the American public on many issues, conservatives are in power not just in Washington, DC, but also in state capitals and courtrooms across the country. In The Democracy Fix (New Press), Fredrickson shows us how we can learn from the right by having the determination to focus on judicial elections, state power, and voter laws without stooping to their dishonest, rule-breaking tactics. This event is sponsored by the American Constitution Society – Oregon Lawyer Chapter.

Free

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a senior Daily Beast reporter happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts. In Real Queer America (Little, Brown), Allen takes us on a cross-country road trip stretching from Provo, Utah, to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of…

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Free

Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the moment that humans are living longer than ever, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, disparaged, neglected, and denied. Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy. In Elderhood (Bloomsbury), Aronson challenges not only the way we look at aging, but also the…

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Free

Nineteenth Century Chinese Women Workers in the Northwest: Chuimei Ho

Portland Chinatown Museum 127 NW Third Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Dr. Chuimei Ho is an Art Historian and Archeologist who has written extensively on the Chinese in SE and East Asia and North America. She is co-editor, with Dr. Bennet Bronson, of CINARC, the website of the Chinese Northwest American Research Committee, and co-author of Coming Home in Gold Brocade: Chinese in Early Northwest America (2015) and Three Chinese Temples in California: Marysville, Oroville, Weaverville (2016). *Dr. Ho’s lecture is part of our ongoing series of lectures and workshops about nineteenth century Chinese workers in Oregon and the Northwest.

$10 – $12

Carol Clupny

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We welcome Carol Clupny, reading from her memoir The Ribbon of Road Ahead. Ten years ago, at age 50, Carol was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. For a woman who grew up riding horses, climbing trees, and tubing down the creek in Walla Walla, Washington, this was a devastating diagnosis. Retired from her career as a speech-language pathologist, she quickly became fed up with sitting in a recliner and feeling sorry for herself. She knew she had to keep moving -- first short walks, then longer and longer ones, eventually trekking the pilgrimage trails of the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain. A dusty bike discovered in the garage resulted in thousands of miles ridden locally and three rides on the Des Moines Register’s Annual…

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