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A Weekend of 20 Authors! What a fitting way to celebrate 20 years of service to Atlanta's book-lovers.  Aside from offering an eclectic collection of new and used books, A Cappella is a terrific community resource for readings and book-signings.  Be sure to check out this weekends schedule of events including local authors: Jessica Handler, Alan Deutschman, and Hollis Gillespie, among others. Thank you for two decades!  Looking forward to what's ahead!

Please note time change.  Now 3PM - 5PM.

That's right, Former Governor, Former Presidential Candidate, and Former DNC Chair, Howard Dean will be in town to sign copies of his new book: Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform  today. We're thrilled to be helping A Cappella Books spread the word about Howie's visit to Atlanta.

Georgia WAND (Women's Action for New Directions) invites you to a rare opportunity to see and hear Representative (D-CA9) Barbara Lee this Sunday, June 28.

I love Paris.  I haven't been in a couple of years and lately I've been missing it.  It's all Cara Black's fault that I am missing Paris.  Ms Black is the author of a series of murder mysteries that all take place in Paris.  Murder in the Marais is the first in the ongoing series featuring  half-American/ half-French detective Aimee Leduc and her sidekick Rene:

Set in 1993, on the eve of a European Union trade agreement that would impose the harshest immigration quotas since the Vichy Government, the thoughtful story uses the murder of a Jewish war survivor as a window on the still-unsettled past. 
New York Times, 7/25/99

A new book reveals yet another affair JFK carried on while in the White House, this one with an intern named Mimi.

All the way with JFK:

Some gossip out of an earlier summit in Nassau was that Kennedy told Macmillan he had to have sex once a day or he would get a headache. This story has been largely discounted, but now it has new currency. The friends and admirers of Kennedy are disappointed once again. The steady procession of scandal is nibbling away at his credibility as a leader. The excess, the recklessness of his actions stuns almost everyone.

It's been 46 years since his assassination and tomorrow would have been his 92nd birthday. And these stories are still coming out. Amazing.

Fact, Fiction, Politics
With
State Representative Stacey Abrams and her alter ego, novelist Selena Montgomery, as Selena discusses her books and Stacey, her politics.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
6:00 - 6:30 pm - Networking
6:30 - 7:45 pm - Program
 
The Offices of Kilpatrick & Stockton
1100 Peachtree St., 28th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30309
 
Click here to be a HOST or to pay online
Host levels include:
Publisher $1000
Editor $500
Publicist $250

Event ticket - $25
 
If you want to attend but would rather pay at the door, please e-mail info@georgiawinlist.com or call Leslie at 770-489-6689.

Geraldine Brooks wows me with her new book.

I'm still not sure how it showed up on our bookshelf.  Someone probably picked it up, intrigued by the title. People of The Book is the newest novel from Pulitzer Prize winning author, Geraldine Brooks.   This fascinating novel follows the trail of a Haggadah, begun around 1490.  The reader follows the book back in time from current day Sarajevo to 15th century Spain while learning about the intersection of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian history.  Hanna, our narrator teaches us  about book conservation  (not to be confused with book restoration).

In her  January 2008  New York Times review Lisa Fugard wrote:

To understand the work of the craftsmen who created the medieval texts she restores, Hanna has made her own gold leaf and created white pigment by covering lead bars with the dregs of old wine and animal dung. She's familiar with "the intense red known as worm scarlet ... extracted from tree-dwelling insects" and the blue, "intense as a midsummer sky, obtained from grinding precious lapis lazuli." Looking closely at the parchment of the Haggadah, she can tell it comes from "the skin of a now-extinct breed of thick-haired Spanish mountain sheep." These lush details, at once celebratory and elegiac, will appeal to the sort of reader who picks up a book just for the feel of it.

It's a great read which prompted me to pick up an earlier work, Year of Wonders.  I'll let you know how that goes.

It's hard to believe that's it's been nearly a year since David Sirota joined us in Atlanta to promote the initial publishing of his second book, The Uprising:  How Big Money and Corruption Conquered our Government -- And We Take It Back.  An easy and informative must-read for every progressive activist.  David's got a great style that combines a terrific grasp of the issues delivered in a compelling style.  Why not drop by A Cappella Books and pick up a copy?