Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse

Happy Pub Day to David Grabber’s Pirate Enlightenment, or The Real Libertalia 🏴‍☠️

“In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber urged historically minded scholars to consider the ways that human beings have continually pursued three basic freedoms, including the freedom to create new forms of social relations. In this book, he provides a fascinating example of the transformative potential of this proposition. Showing how rumored 18th century ‘pirate kingdoms’ established in Madagascar can be understood from the perspective of the local Malagasy population, Graeber gives us a glimpse of people, men and women, taking control of the society in which they lived, making new forms of sociality. He links this historical exploration to a second theme of the previous work, the fact that European political philosophers in the 17th and 18th century were responding to ideas coming from outside Europe, providing them inspiration to image freedoms they had not previously experienced. Pirate Enlightenment is, as the author writes, a provocation―but also an inspiration; and a great piece of story-telling.” ―Rosemary A. Joyce, Interim Director of Global, International, and Area Studies, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Come join us on Zoom for our author event with Arlene Goldbard & Nina Simons at 6 PM ! The link is on our website!

Arlene Goldbard will be in conversation with Nina Simons, co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers and author of Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership.

This conversation between two exceptional women is sure to be a powerful one touching on the various themes Arlene Goldbard brings forth in In the Camp of Angels and the connection the two have to each other's life's journeys.

In In the Camp of Angels of Freedom, an autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced her. She sees each of her 'angels' as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.”

Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.

Come get cozy and warm with us this Thursday @ 6 PM for an event with David Scheinbaum and his gorgeous book of photography, Varanasi: City Immersed in Prayer. An unforgettable portrayal of India's holiest city. David Scheinbaum will be in conversation with Stuart Ashman, Cultural Ambassador and co-owner with his wife Peggy Gaustad of Artes de Cuba Gallery. ✨Come join us in store or on Zoom, link is on our website✨

A small but wonderful puzzle piece reunion today at Collected Works

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(If you didn’t know we have a communal puzzle in the cafe, here’s a piece from August ‘22)

New year’s reading calls for new nonfiction 🕊

Ringing in the New Year with a TON of new sale books!! 🎉📚🎊 Come get your favorite book for $3.00 before someone else does!

We're closed tomorrow through Tuesday, open again on Wednesday January 4th at 9 AM!

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Hey ⛄️⛄️⛄️ Come participate in our Winter Book Drive!! 🛷We are requesting books that are purchased in store to donate to the Esperanza Shelter. We want the children and teens to feel special and receive new books!! & We seriously thank everyone who has already donated for their generosity. The drive will be happening until January 2nd. Happy Holidays ❄️💙

Blizzard days call for lounging by the fire and sitting in big windows, you know what I mean ❄️🌨

Love actually IS all around us. We found a love note and a clue in our last copy of Siddhartha. Calling all Zlatas! Let us know if this is for you. ❤️📝📖
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Madeleine Miller, author of The Song of Achilles and Circe, also has a short story adaptation of Galatea, and we have a ton of these beautiful little hardcover copies just in time for the holiday season 💙

Speaking of great series, check out the Passenger series published by Europa !!!They are absolutely gorgeous collections of fully illustrated travel guides filled with important events and places pertaining to each destination. Instead of a plain travel guide, this series equips you with the cultural happenings. A perfect gift for the traveler in your life or even yourself, honestly.

🌹Upcoming event! This Monday at 6PM come join us with author Ariel Gore in conversation with poet Fatima van Hattum!

Ariel will be talking about her recent publication, The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar, an impossible to ignore rallying cry for writing dangerously to create a liberatory literary utopia.

You can pick up your copy of Ariel’s new book at collected works! See you on Monday! 🌹

🌻🌻HUGE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!🌻🌻

This Thursday at 6 PM at Collected Works Bookstore we will be in conversation with both SANDRA CISNEROS & MARGARET RANDALL!

Sandra Cisneros will be talking about her new collection of poetry 🌹Woman Without Shame🌹This collection features bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. We're so excited to be hosting this event, so make sure you order your Cisneros poetry through us!🌻Join us for this bilingual reading and conversation!!

This is a free event and will be in store but will also be live on Zoom, make sure to visit our website for more information! 💛💛

‼️This Sunday (11/13) @ 4 PM come join us for our co-hosted event with Global Santa Fe for a talk with Jeremi Suri on his book Civil War By Other Means: America's Long & Unfinished Fight For Democracy 🇺🇸

This is an in-store free event that you can also watch live on zoom! Link is on our website! We’re excited to see you there!!

The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did. In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.

In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history.

"There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky" 📝 - Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five

Happy birthday to Kurt Vonnegut and Fyodor Dostoevsky! 🎊 Both born on November 11th, but 101 years apart. 📚

⚡️This Saturday 11/12 at 5:30 PM come join us in-store for a conversation with Steve Almond, Robert Wilder, and Boris McCutcheon where they will be talking about Steve’s newest publication: All The Secrets of The World!

⚡️Steve Almond is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica.

⚡️This event will also be live on zoom, visit our website for more information!

🌀Local author Priyanka Kumar will be in store this Thursday, November 10th @ 6 PM to talk about her new book, Conversations with Birds !! Come join us!🌀

This lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar, traces her movements across the American West bringing the avian world richly to life. Kumar’s perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. Rather, for Kumar, birds “become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.”

✨Tonight on Zoom! Come join our conversation with award winning authors Tiphanie Yanique and Myriam J. A. Chancy, moderated by Jamie Figueroa✨

Typhanie Yanique’s Monster in the Middle moves across decades, from the U.S. to the Virgin Islands to Ghana and back again, to show how one couple’s romance is intrinsically influenced by the family lore and love stories that preceded their own pairing. Exploring desire and identity, religion and class, passion and obligation, the novel posits that in order to answer the question “who are we meant to be with?” we must first understand who we are and how we came to be. Typhanie is the winner of the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel award (Land of Love and Drowning,) and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree.

In What Storm, What Thunder Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of characters affected by an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude that shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. This is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. The novel is an American Book Award Winner, Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist; NPR, Boston Globe, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

✨We’re so excited to host this event so come join us tonight at @ 6 PM, the zoom link is on your website! See you tonight!✨

Calling all explorers! Come learn about life off the grid at our author talk tonight with Ted Conover and Hampton Sides! It's at 6 PM in the store and we'll be live streaming it on Zoom. Don't miss it!
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Congratulations to Joy Harjo for her new book Catching the Light & happy birthday to her book Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light ✨🌞 And come join us for the event we have on November 22nd where Joy will talk about both books mentioned above!!! We’re excited!! Shop local and pick up your Harjo poetry through us 💛

But what actually IS magical realism? No need to wonder anymore, here is our stack! 🔮📚🌚 Got any books you think we should add to the pile? Tell us in the comments!
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Come join us for author event with Paul Koudounaris, Sunday the 30th at 3 PM, in store and on zoom! Learn more and celebrate the traditions of honoring those that have passed on. Memento Mori is a visually compelling survey of how the dead live on in memorials around the world. On the Path of Marigolds is one of the most enduring portrayals of Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead ceremony.

We invite you to bring your own altar offering to celebrate the life of a loved one that has passed.

In thrilling narrative style, informed by genomic science, evolutionary biology, and environmental history, Flores celebrates the astonishing bestiary that arose on our continent and introduces the complex human cultures and individuals who hastened its eradication, studied America’s animals, and moved heaven and earth to rescue them. Eons in scope and continental in scale, Wild New World is a sweeping yet intimate Big History of the animal-human story in America.

Dan Flores will be in conversation with fellow author Sara Dant on October 27th at 6PM. If you attend in person, we ask that you wear a mask, and for the zoom link please visit our website for more information!
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Author Michael P. Branch stopped in this past week to sign a copy of his book, On the Trail of the Jackalope, which also happens to be a bestseller! Thanks Michael!
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