| Authors@Google: Porochista Khakpour - 2656 sec
The Authors@Google program was pleased to welcome writer and novelist Porochista Khakpour to Google's New York office to discuss her debut book, "Sons and Other Flammable Objects".
Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran in 1978 and raised in Los Angeles. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, Paper, Flaunt, Nylon, and Bidoun, among many others.
Her debut novel "Sons and Other Flammable Objects" received much acclaim from The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. It won the 77th Annual California Book Award in "First Fiction," and was a Chicago Tribune "Fall's Best" selection and a New York Times "Editor's Choice."
Khakpour builds her luminously intelligent debut around the travails of an Iranian-American family caught in the feverish and paranoid currents immediately after 9/11. Darius Adam and his wife, Laleh, flee revolutionary Iran for the alien territory of Southern California, settling in an apartment complex with the allegorically enticing name of Eden Gardens. Son Xerxes grows up with psychological dual citizenship: regular American outside of Eden Gardens, but the son of bitter Darius and clueless Lala inside. Xerxes finds true paradise in watching Barbara Eden, the star of I Dream of Jeannie.
Against this background of a parody paradise, Khakpour plays out the events following 9/11, which will, grotesquely, unite the Adam family. By then Xerxes, 26, is an unemployed college grad in a New York airshaft-view apartment, as far from Eden Gardens as possible.
Khakpour is an elegant writer, and she imparts a perfect sense of the ironies of being Persian in America, where the blurry collective image of the Middle East alternates between blonde genies in bottles and furrow-browed terrorists in cockpits.
Thid event took place on June 24, 2008.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Porochista Khakpour Sons and Other Flammable Objects atgoogletalks Iranian immigrant expereince
 | | Authors@Google: Meg Waite Clayton - 3788 sec
For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These "Wednesday Sisters" seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year. As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books.
Meg Waite Clayton is the author of The Language of Light, a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in Runner's World, Writer's Digest, and literary magazines. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and their two sons.
This event took place on June,27 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Meg Waite Clayton Wednesday Sisters Palo Alto novel
| | Authors@Google: Brian Copeland - 3726 sec
Comedian Brian Copeland visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his books "Not a Genuine Black Man: Or, How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs." This event took place on June 23, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
Based on the longest-running one-man show in San Francisco history, Not a Genuine Black Man is a hilarious, poignant, and disarming memoir of growing up black in an all-white suburb. In 1972, when Brian Copeland was eight, his family moved from Oakland to San Leandro, California, hoping for a better life. At the time, San Leandro was 99.4 percent white, known nationwide as a racist enclave. This reputation was confirmed almost immediately: Brian got his first look at the inside of a cop car, for being a black kid walking to the park with a baseball bat. Brian grew up to be a successful comedian and radio talk show host, but racism reemerged as an issue -- only in reverse -- when he received an anonymous letter: "As an African American, I am disgusted every time I hear your voice because YOU are not a genuine Black man!" That letter inspired Copeland to revisit his difficult childhood, resulting in a hit one-man show that has now inspired a book.
Brian Copeland (http://www.briancopeland.com/) is a comedian whose KGO radio program is the most popular in its time slot. Not a Genuine Black Man is currently in development as an HBO series. Copeland lives in San Leandro, California.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Brian Copeland Not Genuine Black Man Authors@Google atgoogle Google comedy HBO
| | Authors@Google: Darin Strauss - 2557 sec
The Authors@Google program welcomed Darin Strauss to Google's New York office to discuss his new book, "More Than It Hurts You".
Darin Strauss, the acclaimed author of "Chang and Eng", visits Google with "More Than It Hurts You", a beautifully realized novel set in a world turned upside down, where doctors try to save babies from their parents, police use the law to tear families apart, and the people you know the best end up surprising you the most. At its heart is the story of a woman who will risk everything to feel something and a man who suddenly realizes that being a good husband and father can no longer comfortably coexist. (Read carefully for a cameo by a Googler.)
This event took place on June 19, 2008.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Darin Strauss More Than it Hurts You atgoogletalks
| | Authors@Google: Rich Stevens and Meredith Gran - 3419 sec
Unable to choose between comics & computers, Richard Stevens was lucky enough to be born at the right time to make webcomics. His strip Diesel Sweeties (http://dieselsweeties.com) has been on the web since 2000 and was syndicated into newspapers in 2007. He makes lots and lots of t-shirts and drinks far too much coffee.
Meredith Gran was born in 1984, and has been to a lot of diners. She has a degree in animation from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and her webcomic Octopus Pie (http://octopuspie.com) has been online since 2007.
This event took place on June 20, 2008 in Mountain View, CA as part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: google atgoogle Authors@Google Rich Stevens Meredith Gran webcomics Diesel Sweeties Octopus Pie
| | Authors@Google: Eric Etheridge - 3426 sec
Eric Etheridge visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders." This event took place on June 24, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
Breach of Peace celebrates the Freedom Riders, featuring rare-seen mug shots alongside stunning contemporary portraits. In the spring and summer of 1961, several hundred Americans—blacks and whites, men and women—converged on Jackson, Mississippi, to challenge state segregation laws. The Freedom Riders, as they came to be known, were determined to open up the South to civil rights: it was illegal for bus and train stations to discriminate, but most did and were not interested in change. Over 300 people were arrested and convicted of the charge "breach of the peace." Collected here in a richly illustrated, large-format book featuring over seventy contemporary photographs, alongside the original mug shots, and exclusive interviews with former Freedom Riders, is that testament: a moving archive of a chapter in U.S. history that hasn't yet closed.
A journalist and photographer, Eric Etheridge grew up in Carthage, Mississippi. He is a former editor at Rolling Stone, The New York Observer and Harper's. In 1995, he co-founded the magazine George with John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Eric Etheridge Breach of Peace Portraits the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders Authors@Google atgoogle Google civil
| | Authors@Google: Gustavo Arellano - 3194 sec
Author Gustavo Arellano visits Google's Santa Monica, CA office to discuss his book "Ask a Mexican." This event took place on June 17, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Gustavo Arellano atgoogle @google google ask mexican
| | Authors@Google: Catherine Brady - 2409 sec
Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn--one of Time magazine's 100 "Most Influential People in the World" in 2007--made headlines in 2004 when she was dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics after objecting to the council's call for a moratorium on stem cell research and protesting the suppression of relevant scientific evidence in its final report. But it is Blackburn's groundbreaking work on telomeric DNA, which launched the field of telomere research, that will have the more profound and long-lasting effect on science and society. In this compelling biography ("Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA"), Catherine Brady tells the story of Elizabeth Blackburn's life and work and the emergence of a new field of scientific research on the specialized ends of chromosomes and the telomerase enzyme that extends them.
Catherine Brady is Assistant Professor in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of two collections of short stories, The End of the Class War and Curled in the Bed of Love (a winner of the 2002 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction).
This event took place on June 19, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Catherine Brady Elizabeth Blackburn telomerase enzyme Telomeres DNA
| | Authors@Google: Ashraf Ghani & Clare Lockhart - 3614 sec
The Authors at Google program was pleased to welcome former U.N. advisers to Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart to discuss their latest book, "Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding our Fractured World."
Ashraf Ghani played a central role in the design and implementation of the post-Taliban settlement in Afghanistan, serving as UN adviser to the Bonn process and as Finance Minister during Afghanistan's Transitional Administration. He has worked at the World Bank and taught at Johns Hopkins and Berkeley universities. He has been nominated for the job of Secretary General of the United Nations and considered for the job of President of the World Bank. He chairs the Institute for State Effectiveness.
Clare Lockhart is Director for the Institute for State Effectiveness. She has worked for the World Bank, the United Nations and advised the Government of Afghanistan government in Kabul on its strategy and programs from 2002 to 2005. She advises countries and international organizations on state-building and has written widely on the topic. www.effectivestates.org
In Fixing Failed States, the authors describe the effort to save failed states--vividly and convincingly--offering an on-the-ground picture of why past efforts have not worked and advancing a groundbreaking new solution to this most pressing of global crises. Military force, while certainly necessary on occasion, cannot solve the fundamental problems, and humanitarian interventions cost billions yet do not leave capable states in their wake. Ghani and Lockhart argue that only an integrated state-building approach can heal these failing countries. As they explain, many of these countries already have the resources they need, if only we knew how to connect them to global knowledge and put them to work in the right way. Their state-building strategy, which assigns responsibility equally among the international community, national leaders, and citizens, maps out a clear path to political and economic stability.
This event took place on June 20, 2008 at Google's New York office.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Ashraf Ghani Claire Lockhart Afghanistan Fixing Failed States atgoogletalks
| | Authors@Google: Robert Anthony Siegel - 2854 sec
All Will Be Revealed, A Novel:
A photographer is drawn to a beautiful psychic in a turn-of-the-century novel about love, possession, adventure, and greed. At the close of the nineteenth century, wheelchair-bound Augustus Auerbach s only interest is his extraordinarily lucrative business: the manufacture and marketing of exotic photographs. His outlook is forever altered, however, when one of his models pressures him to attend a seance. It is there that Augustus meets the medium Verena Swann, a beautiful widow who gives voice to the long-dead spirit of his mother. At the time of her first encounter with Augustus, Verena is close to nervous collapse; her spiritual powers have begun to fail her, and now, forced to fake her public trances, she wonders if her ability to converse with the spirits was ever more than self-delusion. Though initially reluctant, Augustus embarks on a series of private sittings with Verena, finding himself increasingly drawn to her as much for personal reasons as for the proof of immortality she offers him.
Robert Anthony Siegel was born in New York City and educated at Harvard, the University of Tokyo, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, where he lives with his wife, the writer Karen E. Bender, and their two children. He has received fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown.
This event took place on June 20, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Robert Anthony Siegel
| | Authors@Google: Karen Bender - 2136 sec
Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion attempts to raise the discourse on reproductive choice, which often devolves to cliches and name-calling, by posing the question--what is it like to make any sort of reproductive choice? What is it truly like to use birth control, the morning after pill, use a sperm bank, have an abortion, adopt a child, give a child up for adoption, bring a pregnancy to term? In these 22 stunningly honest essays, writers describe their experiences making some of these decisions, as well as many others. Established writers such as Francine Prose, Jaquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, Carolyn Ferrell, Ann Hood, Deborah Macdowell, and Sarah Messer contribute essays, along with emerging writers such as Kimi Faxon Hemingway, Stephanie Anderson, and Ashley Talley.
Karen E. Bender is the author of the novel Like Normal People. Her fiction has appeared magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Story, The Harvard Review, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories and twice in the Pushcart Prize series. Her stories have been read on the Selected Shorts program on NPR and she has received grants from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and at the Antioch LA MFA program.
This event took place on June 20, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: karen bender reproductive rights birth control infertility
| | Leading@Google: Emmanuel Gobillot - 2793 sec
Emmanuel Gobillot visits Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to discuss his book "The Connected Leader". This event took place June 20, 2008, as a part of the Leading@google series. For more information about Emmanuel, please visit http://www.emmanuelgobillot.com/
"The Connected Leader" is described by one reviewer as the first leadership book for the MySpace generation. Prior to setting up his own consultancy, Emmanuel was Director of Leadership Services at Global consultancy Hay Group where he also led the consumer sector practice. For the last 10 years he has worked globally with clients ranging from Fortune 500 executives to United Nation's leaders helping them develop their impact.
In the first decade of this new millennium, business is no longer hierarchical (as it still remains in many organizations today) nor personal (as we were keen to suggest in the 90s). In this googled world of networks, business is now social. In this world of mass collaboration, business is now communal. Leadership is no longer attached to a role; therefore it becomes everyone's responsibility. In an economy in which no one has to follow you, what makes anyone want to do so? In this fast paced, engaging and participative talk Emmanuel will help you answer the two critical questions of 21st century leadership: 'Am I worth following?' and 'Am I easy to follow?'. When the answer to both of these questions becomes yes, anything becomes possible.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Emmanuel Gobillot Leadership Leading@google authors@google google The Connected Leader
| | Authors@Google: Gary Marcus - 3692 sec
The Authors@Google program welcomed Dr. Gary Marcus to Google's New York office to discuss his new book "KLUGE: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind".
Are we noble in reason? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.
Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even though it's only four words long.
Marcus also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge, for the betterment of ourselves and society. Throughout, he shows how only evolution -- haphazard and undirected -- could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.
This event took place on June 18, 2008
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Gary Marcus NYU Psychology atgoogltaks Authors@Google KLUGE
| | Authors@Google: Ed Park - 2612 sec
Ed Park visits Google's San Francisco, CA office to discuss his book "Personal Days." This event took place on June 18, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. There's Pru, the former grad student turned spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety stalks him in his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jack II, who distributes unwanted backrubs--aka "jackrubs"--to his co-workers.
On a Sunday, one of them is called at home. And the Firings begin. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance, this astonishing literary debut is at once a comic delight and a narrative tour de force. It's a novel for anyone who has ever worked in an office and wondered: "Where does the time go? Where does the life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?"
Ed Park is a founding editor of The Believer and a former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review and many other publications. He lives in Manhattan, where he publishes The New-York Ghost. Visit http://www.ed-park.com.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Ed Park Personal Days Novel The Believer Authors@Google atgoogle Google
| | Authors@google: Sam Gosling - 3664 sec
Author Sam Gosling visits Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to discuss his book "Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You". This event took place June 17, 2008, as part of the authors@google series.
Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away? For the last ten years psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds (desks, bedrooms, even our clothes and our cars), he shows not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected-and unplanned-ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us. Gosling, one of the field's most innovative researchers, dispatches teams of scientific snoops to poke around dorm rooms and offices, to see what can be learned about people simply from looking at their stuff.
Sam Gosling is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has spent the last decade conducting research on how personality is expressed and perceived in everyday contexts. He has been profiled by the New York Times, Psychology Today, and other publications, and he is featured in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. This is his first book. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Sam Gosling Snoop what your stuff says about you atgoogle google psychology
| | Authors@Google: Dale Chihuly - 3765 sec
Glass artist Dale Chihuly visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his Gardens of Glass. This event took place on June 19, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
Dale Chihuly is most frequently lauded for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement by expanding its original premise of the solitary artist working in a studio environment to encompass the notion of collaborative teams and a division of labor within the creative process. However, Chihuly's contribution extends well beyond the boundaries both of this movement and even the field of glass: his achievements have influenced contemporary art in general. Chihuly's practice of using teams has led to the development of complex, multipart sculptures of dramatic beauty that place him in the leadership role of moving blown glass out of the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In fact, Chihuly deserves credit for establishing the blown glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Dale Chihuly Gardens of Glass Studio Authors@Google atgoogle Google
| | Authors@Google: Neal Rosenthal - 2869 sec
Neal Rosenthal visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Reflections of a Wine Merchant." This event took place on June 13, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.
In the late 1970s, Neal I. Rosenthal set out to learn everything he could about wine. Today, he is one of the most successful importers of traditionally made wines produced by small family-owned estates in France and Italy. Rosenthal has immersed himself in the culture of Old World wine production, working closely with his growers for two and sometimes three generations. He is one of the leading exponents of the concept of "terroir"—the notion that a particular vineyard site imparts distinct qualities of bouquet, flavor, and color to a wine. In Reflections of a Wine Merchant, Rosenthal brings us into the cellars, vineyards, and homes of these vignerons, and his delightful stories about his encounters, relationships, and explorations—and what he has learned along the way—give us an unequaled perspective on winemaking tradition and what threatens it today.
Neal I. Rosenthal was born in New York City in 1945 and was educated at Rutgers, Columbia, and New York University. He lives on a fifty-seven-acre farmstead in Pine Plains, New York, which produces organic eggs, buckwheat honey, fruit, and vegetables.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Neal Rosenthal Reflections of Wine Merchant Authors@Google atgoogle Google vineyard winemaking
| | Authors@Google: Salman Rushdie - 4195 sec
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers--the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power.
Salman Rushdie is the author of nine previous novels, including Midnight's Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and, in 1993, was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers," the best novel to have won that prize in its first twenty-five years) and The Satanic Verses (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel). He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and three works of nonfiction---Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and The Wizard of Oz. He is co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing.
This event took place on June 18, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: salman rushdie akbar india florence renaissance literature 16th century medicis mughals
| | Policy Talks@Google: Pop Culture Politics - 2801 sec
This political round table discussion includes commentary from Baratunde Thurston of The Onion, Ben Relles of Obama Girl, Author/Commentator Christopher Hitchens, and Liz Winstead, the creator of The Daily Show. The panel was moderated by Tammy Haddad.
This talk took place as part of the Tech Election event at Google's Washington DC office on June 11, 2008
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Baratunde Thurston Ben Relles Christopher Hitchens Liz Winstead The Onion Daily Show Obama Girl atgoogletalks
| | Policy Talks@Google: Covering the 21st Century Campaign - 4947 sec
This political round table discussion includes commentary from Mark Halperin of Time.com's The Page, Katherin Ham of the DC Examiner, James Kotecki of Politico.com's Kotecki TV, Kevin Madden, a Republican Strategist, and Phil Singer of the Hillary Clinton Campaign. The Panel was moderated by Judy Woodruff.
This talk took place as part of the Tech Election event at Google's Washington DC office on June 11, 2008.
Auteur : AtGoogleTalks
Tags: Judy Woodruff Mark Halperin Katherin Ham James Kotecki Kevin Madden Phil Singer atgoogletalks Tech Election politico
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