Tag archives: book

We love good books, and we cannot lie! Choosing which books to give beloved friends and family, however, is not an easy task. With the holidays coming up, here are some staff picks for books that might be worthy of your consideration. For older kids and teens, it’s much more difficult to throw out titles […]

One of our local luminaries, Mary Tonetti Dorra, has just published another book. I first met Mary on a Santa Barbara Museum of Art trip to New Zealand where she had entrée to the American Ambassador’s home and particularly the gardens. The Santa Barbara gang got to come along. Since then, she’s been a busy […]

Father Larry Gosselin O.F.M. is not only a priest at the Santa Barbara Mission, but also a troubadour with his guitar and now an author. His latest tome is titled Landscapes, Ballad of a Franciscan Troubadour. This book chronicles his life through the world travels he has taken. As his longtime friend Brother Bill Short […]

Lawrence Spann writes every day in a Mead notebook — with a fountain pen. For him, this practice is more than journaling, it’s therapeutic introspection that allows the unconscious to become conscious. To accomplish this, he writes without an agenda, letting the pen rather than the mind lead the way. What results is a kind […]

Geoffrey Moore, a bestselling author, speaker, and adviser, whose work focuses on the market dynamics caused by disruptive innovation, speaks at a Mosher Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership luncheon on Friday, November 5, from 12-1:30 pm in the Simmons Center of Westmont’s Global Leadership Center. A limited amount of in-person tickets, which cost $100 […]

Social gridlock reigned at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum when it launched its latest publication, the 320-page book Edward Borein: Etched by the West written by Byron Price, a West Point graduate and former director of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, to which Borein was posthumously inducted in 1971. The book, handsomely illustrated with 400 […]

Former corporate attorney and Harvard Law School graduate David Gersh has published his seventh book, The Whisper of a Distant God, an historical fiction of the Civil War. “It explores a little-known battle in that war and the struggle with duty, honor, and compassion by the Union commander’s wife, Louisa Canby, which made her the […]

Beloved local educator Michelle Hughes has co-edited a new book that offers ways to reframe obstacles to teaching as opportunities for personal and professional growth. Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice: Turning Challenges into Opportunities, a collaborative effort with Hughes’ colleague and friend, Ken Badley, is available for pre-order through Routledge at routledge.com/9780367644192. A 20% discount […]

Everybody was in the right aria when Opera Santa Barbara’s Marylove Thralls hosted a sunset soirée to launch an entertaining new book, La Mia Pazza Famiglia by Kay Lemke. The dynamic duo met when Lemke, who hails from a small community, San Fior di Sopra, north of Venice, volunteered to help the opera and the […]

Veteran journalist and author Robert Whiting is one of only a few Western writers to have written a regular newspaper column in the Japanese language. The author of several highly successful books on Japan and the city where he has lived on and off for more than half a century include the best-selling You Gotta […]

“Mistakes were made (but not by me)” is a quote attributed to President Reagan and later to President George W Bush. It is also the title of the book I would most recommend everyone should read. Before we can get smarter, perhaps we should find out “Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful […]

From the very first paragraph in Bonnie Marcus’ Not Done Yet!, the Santa Barbara author leaves no doubts about the attitude readers can expect from her new self-help book subtitled “How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence & Claim Workplace Power.”  “Okay. Right from the get-go, I’m gonna be straight with you. I’m pissed,” Marcus […]

A celebrated Harvard historian and bestselling author, Nancy Koehn will discuss courageous and principled leadership at the 16th annual Westmont President’s Breakfast on Friday, March 5, at 8 am. Tickets to the virtual event, which cost $35, go on sale February 12 at westmont.edu/breakfast. Koehn, the James E. Robison professor of business administration at the Harvard […]

Three years ago, a few of us attended Brad Nack’s 21st annual 100 percent Reindeer Art Show – a perpetually packed reception at Roy where folks jostle each other to get first dibs at the new paintings – decked out in N95 respirator masks to shield against inhaling smoke and particles from the then still-growing […]

Famed Santa Barbara photographer Macduff Everton and veteran journalist-writer Matt Kettmann, who are both graduates of UCSB, first collaborated on Around the Table: Recipes & Stories From The Lark in Santa Barbara, which was managed by Everton, who also took the photographs, while Kettmann contributed a chapter on wine history in town. Nearly four years […]

Retired Montecito attorney David Gersh has just completed his new novel Pot Luck, the sequel to his laugh-out-loud award-winning book Desperate Shop Girls, which is being published by Open Books in the New Year. It is the Harvard Law School graduate’s sixth tome, to be closely followed by his seventh, The Whisper of a Distant […]

Movie lovers might only know Cheryl Strayed from the film version of her bestselling memoir Wild, which starred Reese Witherspoon in the adaptation of the book that offered alternating harrowing and hilarious stories from Strayed’s solo 1,100-mile trek on the Pacific Crest Trail as well as the personal journey that led her there. But the […]

This year marks my fiftieth anniversary as a body therapist and healer. What I eventually came to know as “body wisdom” was the result of working with the wonderful, intelligent people of Santa Barbara and Montecito. For their trust and continued support, I am eternally grateful.  From the beginning, it was apparent that in order […]

An old friend, Sean Smith, former gossip columnist of London’s Sunday People newspaper and now a successful celebrity author, has sent me his latest book, Meghan Misunderstood, on the Duchess of Sussex. Sean, who has also penned bestselling tomes on singer Adele, George Michael, Tom Jones, Ed Sheeran, Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake, Britney […]

High Five, Santa Monica suspense writer Joe Ide’s latest action-packed thriller in his IQ series of books that Time Magazine calls “an electrifying combination of Holmseian mystery and SoCal grit,” will be dissected in a virtual conversation with the author at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, November 18. Ide will talk about the series, which rapper […]