Memoirs about a mentally disabled man whose last year is spent with his loving sister and artistic Berkeley community and hippie narratives that recount Berkeley’s glory days in the 1960s and ’70s are some of the recent books with links to Berkeley.
Books
A fire in the Berkeley Hills forces reckoning over wealth inequality in pointed new novel
In Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s ‘A Fire So Wild,’ the homes of rich, hypocritical Berkeley Hills liberals burn down — as does the Rose Garden — in a wildfire that forces residents “to reckon with the cracks in the lives they’ve built.”
Patty Hearst was kidnapped in Berkeley 50 years ago Sunday
Roger Rapoport, a journalist who’s been following the story for decades, has turned the paranoia-laced saga into a novel. He’s talking about his book — and the kidnapping — on Sunday and Tuesday in Berkeley.
Charmian London, literary adventurer, galloped through the Berkeley Hills in 1890s
Not just Jack London’s wife, she advocated for socialism and a free-love lifestyle she observed growing up on Parker Street. The first biography placing her in the spotlight is now an audiobook.
The books Berkeleyside’s team read and loved in 2023
Our favorite books of the year include reporting on how rising sea level will challenge California, a staid memoir about a messy divorce and a novel set in a Parisian apartment building.
Berkeley-born author of ‘Boys in the Boat’ got to see George Clooney film his book
Clooney directed a film adaptation, opening Christmas Day, of Cal alum Daniel James Brown’s mega-bestselling book about the American crew team that triumphed in the so-called Nazi Olympics of 1936.
15 new books with Berkeley ties to read during the holidays
Four works of fiction, three kids’ books, two poetry collections — and a noir set in the Claremont Hotel — are some of the recent books with links to Berkeley.
Berkeley librarian pens fictional memoir of life on and off the reference desk
Alan Bern, a librarian for over two decades, has published an experimental book about a small university town that’s “way too big for its britches.”
This Berkeley resident became a first-time novelist at age 96
At age 60, Dorothy Witt put her historical novel in a drawer and didn’t pick it up for another 31 years. Last year, she self-published the book, partly based on her grandmother’s life in 1860s Victorian England.
Remembering Bob Baldock, who fought alongside Fidel Castro in Cuban Revolution and co-founded Berkeley bookstore
Baldock was the only armed combatant in Castro’s personal unit from the U.S. mainland. A painter and novelist, he befriended Anaïs Nin in New York, co-founded Black Oak Books in North Berkeley and spent decades producing events for KPFA.
9 new books with Berkeley links to read this fall
A novella steeped in nostalgia for the heyday of Berkeley cinema, a novel written during a BART commute, a report on the young men killed by football and a garden poem anthology are among the recent books with Berkeley ties.
Sautéed roadkill dinner parties are just the start of Berkeley author’s adventures in ‘rewilding’
Jessica Carew Kraft’s new book chronicles her paleolithic Berkeley lifestyle of tracking coyote scat near Grizzly Peak, foraging for loquats and redwood sorrel and feeding her daughters raccoon meat.