Events

Local writer and microblogger extraordinaire Matt Stewart will be paying us a visit at Green Apple to read from and sign copies of his new book, The French Revolution.

The French Revolution is the hilarious, tragic, and deeply imaginative story of a San Francisco family forging its place in history. In this debut novel, first published in 140 character bursts on Twitter, Stewart blends vibrant prose, unforgettable characters, and a multi-layered plot based on the extremes of the historical French Revolution for a relentlessly entertaining debut novel. And, as Andrew Leland wrote in a recent review of the book for SFGate, "the real tour de force comes when he lets his sentences run off-leash through the streets of San Francisco. The city Stewart describes will be instantly recognizable to anyone who lives here."

We hope you'll join us on August 12th to celebrate the City, the combined power of social networking and good old fashioned publishing, and of course, la revolution.

Joing us as Robert Elias slides into Green Apple Books to celebrate his newly released investigation into the history of baseball, The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad.

From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, Elias has tracked baseball's role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself. Driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals, the seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that's about more than just sports.

Come meet Robert Elias, talk a little baseball, and pick up a signed copy of The Empire Strikes Out, a must have for lovers of the great--and complex-- American game.

Portland author Loretta Stinson will be journeying south to Green Apple in celebration of her debut novel, Little Green.

Little Green is a spellbinding and often harrowing story of a sixteen year old girl named Janie who, at the start of the novel,  is on the run from her troubled past into an even more troubled young adulthood in mid 1970s America. Stinson captures the particular daemons of the era's drug culture, sex work, and abusive relationships with unnerving precision. But despite all its darkness, this novel manages to be, at its core, a story of redemption, recovery and hope.

Join us to hear Stinson read from her dramatic debut and sign copies of Little Green on August 25th.

Come check out local favorite Rebecca Schall's newest collection, Historic Photos of San Francisco in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. She'll be discussing these photos, along with her previous books, Historic Photos of San Francisco, and Hisotoric Photos of the Presidio. This is your chance to see (or remember) what San Francisco looked like in the good old days, and get your signed copies of her beautiful tributes to The City. 

Joseph Mattson will be cruising into the store on the evening of September 8th to read from and sign his debut novel Empty the Sun, out in September. How can you go wrong with a pre-apocalyptic cross-country race to bury the murdered past, culminating in a gunfight with God? To top it off, the book comes with a CD that sets this beautifully reckless novel of transgressive loss to an open-road, open-whiskey soundtrack composed by Drag City recording artist Six Organs of Admittance.

Come experience Joseph Mattson's fast-paced and gritty debut live and in person, and pick up your signed copy of Empty the Sun while you're at it (everything included but the whiskey). 

Come check out the latest in a series of creative collaborations by New York City artists and friends Zachary Lipez, Nick Zinner (guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Stacy Wakefield, titled Please Take Me Off the Guest List. The trio will be hanging out with us at the Hemlock Tavern for a fantastic mixed-media performance of prose, photography, and music, bringing to life their lovely and multi-faceted project. 

In Please Take Me off the Guest List, Zachary Lipez's essays recount his adventures as a bartender, drug abuser, bookstore clerk, metal fan, miserable adolescent and relentless skirt chaser. His inimitable voice walks the line between self-loathing and hedonistic delight and is biting, moving and extremely funny. Nick Zinner's photographs evoke the world he travels with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. His always present camera documents decadent late nights as well as blissfully fresh sun-dappled landscapes. His images are rich in narrative and unwaveringly optimistic. The book is edited and designed by their longtime collaborator, book artist Stacy Wakefield. The unique structure she has devised for this book presents Zachary's essays as separate books-within-the-book while the stories built by the photographs course through and around them. Zachary, Nick, and Stacy have produced three previous books together: No Seats on the Party Car, Slept in Beds, and I Hope You Are All Happy Now.

We're anticipating that space for this event is sure to fill up quickly, so be sure to get to the Hemlock Tavern early for this one. See you there. 

We'll be hosting Rick Bass as he discusses his new novel, Nashville Chrome. The novel takes place in the late 1950s and recounts the tale of the Brown siblings, a family band enjoying unprecedented international success, rivaled only by their longtime friend Elvis Presley. By turns mesmerizing and heartbreaking, the novel jumps between the Browns’ promising past and harsh present.  Nashville Chrome hits all the right grace notes with its vivid evocation of an era in American music, while at its heart it is a wrenching meditation on the complexities of fame and of one family—forgotten yet utterly unforgettable when reclaimed by Bass.

Rick Bass' fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Most recently, his memoir Why I Came West was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Check out Nashville Chrome and don't miss Rick Bass in the store on September 13th.

The busiest writer in San Francisco, Dave Eggers, will be stopping by Green Apple at non on Tuesday, September 14th to sign copies of his award-winning Zeitoun, newly available in paperback.

Zeitoun is a compelling and urgent work of narrative non-fiction that, through the lens of one family's harrowing experience, examines the state of post-hurricane New Orleans and its national and international context in all its complexity. It's tough to put it better or offer more aptly high praise than the New York Times Book Review did, saying, "Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina... Eggers' tone is pitch-perfect-suspense blended with just enough information to stoke reader outrage and what is likely to be a typical response: How could this happen in America?"

Eggers is also the editor of McSweeney's, co-founder of the local non-profit writing center 826 Valencia, and author of the Pulitzer-finalist memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Don't miss this opportunity to meet and talk to him here in the store, and, if you haven't already, pick up a signed copy of Zeitoun.

Saul Austerlitz will be in the Granny Smith Room on September 16th to talk about his newest book, Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy. Running the gamut of film history from City Lights to Knocked Up, Another Fine Mess retells the story of American film from the perspective of its unwanted stepbrother--the comedy. Each chapter is devoted primarily to a single performer or director as Another Fine Mess retraces the steps of the American comedy film, filling in the gaps and following the connections that link Mae West to Doris Day, or W. C. Fields to Will Ferrell.

Saul Austerlitz is a New York City based writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, the Boston Globe, and other publications. He is the author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes.