Academic study of the Black pimp subculture in the Bay Area. Truly a fascinating book!

I'm James Dalessandro, the author of Bohemian Heart. I'm a veteran screenwriter who returned to his first love, fiction, out of frustration with Hollywood. I'm amazed at the reception of Bohemian Heart, many reviewers compared it to the work of Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, Scott Turow, etc. It covers 100 years of San Francisco history in a contemporary mystery, and it's full of the politics, corruption and colorful characters who populate one of the world's great cities. It's prequel "1906", about the San Francisco earthquake and similar issues, is scheduled for a winter, 2000 release. A film adaptation of Bohemian Heart is on the way. I think it's funny, literate, and constantly surprising. I hope it finds its way to more and more readers....James Dalessandro

This one of the most entretaining stories about the old myth of vampires. The main character, who also is the writer of the story, is a family dog who witnesses how a charming being becomes a fiendish creature at night. One of the achievments of the book is how closely it takes on the characters and the story of Dracula, without the eerie parts no apt for kids. Instead it creates a world so familiar and common to children that they are really into the book as they read it. I and my daughters enjoy this naive tale, and they keep asking me to read it again and again night after night just for the fun of it.

Francisco Herrera-Luque's first bestseller narrates the life and death of Jose Tomas Boves, a notorious Spaniard gone mad during the years of the Venezuelan independence war. Boves formed an army loyal to the king of Spain and defeats every attempt of nationals to free themselves from Spain. Descriptive scenery, lots of violence, sex and local customs.

Simon Spero has done a fine job amassing a catalogue of the Henry & Constance Bowles collection. This book has astonished me with its vivid images and beautiful pieces. I've loved it from the moment I got it. It has served as a wonderful reference as well as an inspiration. I've started my own collection because of this INCREDIBLE beautiful book. I hope every porcelain lover or lover of beautiful things buys at least one copy.

You don't have to be from San Fran to love this little story, although I am sure that it helps. The plot follows Charlie the cable car as he and a favorite passenger (the narrator, who is Caen himself, of course) leave the cable car routes and decide to explore their hometown of San Francisco, coming into contact with Chu, a Chinese New Year's dragon. Caen's legendary wit is surprisingly well-suited to this kind of writing; I loved his personification of the young cable car (he compares Charlie's voice to "a piece of wood being rubbed across steel"). Byfield's watercolors help tell the story (making the book a good mixture of visuals and text) but are also pleasures in and of themselves.

The story does not have a very specific and blunt point for children to take away (which is fine with me). That said, it does imply that thinking out of the box (or off the trolley routes) is good and that making friends with people from other cultures is beneficial. Kind of appropriate for San Francisco when you think about it.

I lived in North Beach on and off during the late 1950s thru 70s.
Ira's book of remarkable photos shows the tale end of the "Beat movement" before things changed for the worse. There are some excellent photos of Ginsberg & Ferlinghetti, along with several other poets and writers. I was known as the "Krazy (auto) Painter from Oakland." I missed out ("Sfiga") on most of the photo shoots. . .but remember most of the people in the book, who were very real. The quality of Ira's work and the text is for one to follow.

An excellent value. Beautiful photographs, with concise text on natural history, including geologic formation, human history, ecology, climate, and flora and fauna. A well balanced, informative introduction to the region. I plan on buying more from Wuerthner.

if you have a historical interest in san francisco this books is for you.

Just before the funeral for Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, Francisco Coloane walked up to the open coffin and buttoned his deceased compatriot's shirt. Such an attention to the details of human existence flow through Dave Petreman's translation of Coloane's short stories, "Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the World."

Coloane, a respected and award-winning writer in Chile whose works have been published around the world in Spanish and other languages, is introduced to a greater American readership in this collection of sixteen intense and thoughtful short stories. Petreman's translation pays homage to the language of the original stories and manages to cross the barriers that face any translator of prose and poetry.

Coloane's stories describe a world of the essentially human. He introduces us in "Cape Horn," for example, to people "whose hearts were nothing more than another clenched fist" and shows how the natural world inhabited by such people has its own way of imposing an unmerciful justice on them. The recurring theme in Latin American literature that poses commonality of civilization and barbarity forms the basis for "Gulf of Sorrows," where a small boat filled with struggling sailors prefers to head on against the storm rather than face being declared shipwrecked. In the story "Bottle of Caña" Coloane introduces the reader to the inner lives of two characters who meet and share for a while a path through the cold patagonian tundra. One of the characters is headed home to get married. The other remembers how, on the same trail a year earlier, he had killed another man just like this momentary companion. The innocent future of one man is juxtaposed with the violent past of the other, with the reader discovering in the story how closely each of us lives blissfully unaware of the violence hiding in the deepest recesses of the human heart.

It is just these collocations of opposites that make Coloane's stories so gripping and unstoppable. The fire of life and the iceberg cold of hidden death, control and violence, obstinacy and honor, plunder and compassion are part of every one of these stories. Coloane's perception of the essential relationship between the world of man and the world of nature makes each of these confrontations more than just one in another in a collection of stories. The stories present human nature as natural, the anima of compulsion and unexpected submission behind our sense of human importance.

David Petreman, associate professor of Spanish language & Latin American literature at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, translated these stories from other collections of Coloane's work previously published in Chile. Petreman, who specializes in Chilean literature, is a long-time friend of Coloane, a relationship that is evident in the careful rewriting of these stories for another hemisphere.

The stories in this book reveal a world seldom seen by English-speaking readers. This is a world of grand vistas, foot-worn trails and the encroachment of a so-called civilization. If you are searching for a world left unexplored by American literature or those who read and write it, "Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the World" is an excellent starting point.