Green Dream Team Panel Discussion

Toward Net-Zero Utility Bills and Comfortable, Healthy and Sustainable Homes

Tuesday, March 16, 5:00 p.m.

Speaker: Nick Harris of Energy Beyond Design

Learn about the simple steps you can take now to reduce your utility bills, improve your comfort and health, and green your home. Nick Harris, an energy analyst and retrofitter from Energy Beyond Design, will discuss how homeowners can develop road-maps for successful and cost-effective home energy projects. Members of the audience will be eligible for steeply discounted home energy audits to get them started on their own path towards a better home.

The Green Dream Team is a group of experts dedicated to providing you with the most comprehensive selection of services to improve, remodel, build, furnish, and landscape your home - always in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.

For information, contact Rich Wingerter at 650-207-8014. www.essentialquality.com

Roy Morris, Jr.

Tuesday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.

Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemons Became Mark Twain  BUY NOW

Mark Twain is arguably the most famous and influential writer in American history. His legacy is defined by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  But little to nothing is known about the crucial years during which Samuel Clemens transformed himself into the beloved American writer we celebrate today as Mark Twain.

Roy Morris is the editor of Military Heritage magazine and the author of five previous books on the Civil War era, including The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America (Smithsonian Books, 2008); Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (Simon and Schuster, 2003); and The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2000).  A former newspaper reporter and political correspondent for The Chattanooga News-Free Press and The Chattanooga Times, Morris was the founding editor of America's Civil War magazine and has served as a consultant for A&E Network and the History Channel.  

Photo Credit: Paula Grant Shuford 

Sara Houghteling 

Tuesday, March 16, 7:00 p.m.

Pictures at an Exhibition  BUY NOW

Oshman Family JCC - Schultz Cultural Arts Center, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto

Drawn from copious research on wartime France, the early 20th century Parisian art scene and looting by the Nazi Party, Ms. Houghteling’s novel is luminous with historical detail. The New York Times Book Review gave it a glowing assessment.

Ms. Houghteling is a Harvard graduate and was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Paris, a John  Steinbeck Fellowship and first prize in the Hopwood Award for novels.

Anil Ananthaswamy

Wednesday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.

The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe  BUY NOW

Physics is in crisis. For more than two centuries, our understanding of the laws of nature expanded rapidly. But in the last few decades, we’ve made astonishingly little progress. What will finally break the impasse and get physics back on track? In this timely and original book, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy sets out in search of the world’s most audacious physics experiments: the telescopes and detectors that promise to shed new light on things like dark matter, dark energy, and the phenomenon of quantum gravity (which string theory tries to explain). He soon finds himself at the ends of the earth. 

Reporting back from some of the most inhospitable and dramatic research sites on our planet, Ananthaswamy weaves together stories about the people and places at the heart of this research, while beautifully explaining the problems that scientists are trying to solve. In so doing, he provides a unique portrait of the universe and our quest to understand it. An atmospheric, engaging and illuminating read, The Edge of Physics depicts science as a human process and, in a very real sense, brings cosmology—with all its rarefied concepts—back down to earth. 

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consulting editor for New Scientist in London, where he has also worked as deputy news editor. He is also a contributor to National Geographic News. He has a Master of Science degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training as a journalist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Thursday, March 18, 7:00 p.m.

The Secret Daughter  BUY NOW

Stanford University - Bldg. 200, Room 303 (History Corner at Serra Street and Lomita Mall)

Moving between two worlds and two families in California and India, Gowda poignantly explores issues of culture, belonging, and the role of women in her powerful debut novel.

Gowda has masterfully portayed two families . . . linked by a powerful, painful tie that complicates their lives. . . . A thought-provoking examination of the challenges of being a woman in America and in India–and in the psychological spaces in between." –Chitra Divakaruni, author of Palace of Illusions

Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto to parents who migrated there from Mumbai. She holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This event is presented by SACHI, The Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India and The Center for South Asia at Stanford University

For reservations contact info@sachi.org or call 650-918-6335.

SECRET DAUGHTER just debuted at #4 on the Canadian Bestseller List, only 3 days after its launch.  Read the story in the Globe & Mail, the NY Times of the North: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/bestsellers/