Trust america's best chance5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() The views of Club speakers are their own and their participation does not constitute or imply endorsement or recommendation by The Commonwealth Club. victory at Yorktown in 1781, which effectively ended Americas War for Independence. A 2020 survey from the Pew Research Center shows just 20 of U.S. Each year, we bring nearly 500 events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy to our members and the public, both in-person and via extensive online and on-air listenership and viewership. While the British held off the Americans, their losses were great. He builds upon this idea, with his own life experiences, in his new book, Trust: Americas Best Chance. ![]() The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. The leading national forum open to all for the impartial discussion of public issues important to the membership, community and nation. ![]()
0 Comments
Life expectancy by dean koontz5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy-a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between. With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. ![]() ![]() Wiseguy book nicholas pileggi5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() The book Wiseguy is far more illuminating into the details of criminal life, and Pileggi details a good many of the scams Henry Hill ran, such as sabotaging college football games to secure a safe bet, or systematically cheating restaurants.Ī good deal of the book’s content is the result of access to the FBI surveillance tapes of ‘wiseguys,’ the result of bugs in cars, restaurants and hideouts. Interestingly, many of the parts in the book did not make the film, for example Paulie’s son, what happened to people who showed Paulie disrespect and the details of various scams beyond theft and drug dealing. Few parts of the book are interested in specific incidents, but more a general description of what the people were like and what went on. His research into the life of Henry Hill spans further and wider than the film, but it lacks the drama and sense of reality which the film captures so perfectly. Pileggi, a seasoned crime journalist, includes a great many aspects which clearly were essential to the cinematic feel. ![]() ![]() Many of the details which make Goodfellas a compelling and involving experience are reflections of detail included in Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy. Goodfellas is a film which lives and breathes life, a criminal life set in a world unfolded by convincing narration and a visual style which is perhaps the finest mix yet seen of visceral life and the artist’s eye. CJ Wood on the transformation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy into Martin Scorcese’s film epic Goodfellas ![]() We Can Do Better Than This by Beth Ditto5/28/2023 ![]() It's a great food city! What are some of your favorite local spots? I caught up Ditto this week to chat about her favorite Portland haunts and country eating in Arkansas. Beyond being a musical force, Ditto is also an outspoken champion of the LGBT community and has spoken out on controversial topics like body image pressure for women and the defunding of Planned Parenthood. ![]() Ditto recently completed a solo EP to be released on March 29 featuring glam club tracks and her signature powerhouse vocals. It could also be said Gossip front woman, Beth Ditto, has one of the most distinctive and powerful set of pipes in music. ![]() ![]() The dance-rock band, The Gossip, has always been defined by infectious rhythm and thunderous vocals. Welcome to Sound Cheque, where we sit down with one of our favorite bands to get the scoop on their city-by-city dining picks. ![]() I Am David by Anne Holm5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This imagery is similar in kind to the wilderness imagery of Jewish folklore, making the concentration camp a kind of Egyptian slavery. His experience of European wilderness is properly chaotic for him. The escape came as a surprise to him, so suddenly, he has to adapt to the future, and he tries to get a frame of reference, but he doesn't know anything about this world. No one tells him where to go or what to do. Before, he was told where to go and what to do under threat of torture and death. When David escapes, he sees the world of freedom for the first time. ![]() As he ages, he understands more and more about the horror of the camps. He knows cages and locked doors, and he knows armed guards, horror, abuse, and he grows up with a real sense of dread and horror, because he knows that people are dying. He doesn't know anything about life outside the camps, and he doesn't fully understand religion or Judaism, nor does he have a frame of reference for antisemitism-all he knows is the tangible reality of his life in the camps. The novel is about a young Jewish boy who was raised in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Written by people who wish to remain anonymous We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. ![]() The defining decade 20215/28/2023 ![]() ![]() About a quarter of twentysomethings are out of work and another quarter work only part-time. An unpaid internship is the new starter job. With a contracting economy and a growing population, unemployment is at its highest in decades. Many entry-level jobs have gone overseas making it more difficult for twentysomethings to gain a foothold at home. Twentysomethings are more educated than ever before, but a smaller percentage find work after college. “The Great Recession and its continuing aftermath have left many twentysomethings feeling naïve, even devastated. ![]() She highlights how the job market has shifted for people coming out of college: This book is meant to provide people in their 20s with some direction around creating that vision (not in a corny way) so that they’re setting themselves up better for their 30s and beyond, instead of playing catch up after derping around for 8 years. The book centers around Jay’s experience as a clinical psychologist seeing people in their 30s and 40s who are hamstrung by having a “lack of vision” in their 20s. ![]() Heart by Sandeep Jauhar5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() Though the conflicts are personal, they are also universal-conversations and conflicts that every family facing the mental erosion of an elder has. ![]() The book relates the complications that arise when family members must become caregivers. In the book, Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward understanding his father’s disease. ![]() His latest book, "My Father’s Brain," published in April 2023, is a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. At the same time, the book explores everything from ancient conceptions of the mind to the most cutting-edge neurological―and bioethical―resea Sandeep Jauhar has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ![]() Sandeep Jauhar has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ![]() Poverty by america desmond5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. ![]() Join the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Robin Hood Foundation for a book talk on Poverty, by America, with the author Matthew Desmond in conversation with Robin Hood’s CEO, Richard Buery, moderated by Eric Klinenberg. The recording of this event will be available on IPK’s YouTube channel following the event. We are currently seeking a larger event space to accommodate more guests and will reach out if this occurs. ![]() Gypsies by Bart McDowell5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() "An action-packed start.Gray effortlessly moves between the SF, historical, and contemporary aspects of her story." - Publishers Weekly ![]() And soon she discovers the truth behind her father's death is far more sinister than she expected.Ī Thousand Pieces of You explores an amazingly intricate multi-universe where fate is unavoidable, the truth elusive, and love the greatest mystery of all. Before long she begins to question Paul's guilt-as well as her own heart. But she also meets alternate versions of the people she knows-including Paul, whose life entangles with hers in increasingly familiar ways. So she races after Paul through different universes, always leaping into another version of herself. Marguerite refuses to let the man who destroyed her family go free. But then Marguerite's father is murdered, and the killer-her parent's handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul-escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him. Their most astonishing invention, called the Firebird, allows users to jump into multiple universes-and promises to revolutionize science forever. Marguerite Caine's physicist parents are known for their groundbreaking achievements. Cloud Atlas meets Orphan Black in this epic dimension-bending trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray about a girl who must chase her father's killer through multiple dimensions. ![]() ![]() As you can well imagine, it must have been pretty fucking rough growing up with that ability. She can see the dead and take them through the other side. “Special wouldn’t even begin to cover it, my dear.”Charley is a Grim Reaper. He snorted as he pressed gingerly here and there, testing for broken bones and the like. But considering the source…”Ī weak grin spread across my face. “If it were anyone else, I’d say eyelids can’t be broken. “Is anything broken?” Uncle Bob’s voice had softened. They were mostly dead, but still.”Charley is special without being a special snowflake. “I whine more than a Goth with a blogging fetish. “God, all this sounds so awful when I say it out loud,” I complained. ![]() “Well, I was kind of kidnapped, though not really kidnapped so much as led away.”Ī hand shot to her mouth to squelch a gasp. A lot of inappropriate thoughts at the worst possible times. She's got such a great narrative voice - she is, dare I say it, a lot like me. I love white chocolate, I love Charley Davidson, and I am not ashamed. ![]() You either love it, or you think it's an abomination of nature. Charley Davidson is like white chocolate. ![]() |