Hands on Bay Area Book Club

March 2010 Selection: Bill Bryson lives to tell the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures. That's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the under-discovered Down Under in search of all things interesting

January 2010 Selection: From the New York Times-bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot comes an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, deep-rooted idealism, political and cultural relevance, and their myriad oddities.

June 2009 Selection: In the business of making and selling clothes, "Made in" labels do precious little to convey the constellation of treaties, countries, and people at work in the assembly of a simple pair of jeans. In Fugitive Denim journalist Rachel Louise Snyder reports from the far reaches of this multi-billion-dollar industry in search of the real people who make your clothes. From a cotton picker in Azerbaijan to a Cambodian seamstress, a denim maker in Italy to a fashion designer in New York, Snyder captures the human, environmental, and political forces at work in a dizzyingly complex and often absurd world. In a disarming and humorous voice, she ponders questions of equity, sweatshops, and corporate social responsibility through narratives of individual people, making an often academic subject accessible and compelling. Neither polemic nor prescription, Fugitive Denim captures what it means to be at work in the world in the twenty-first century.

February 2009 Selection: The bestselling author reveals how the U.S. financial sector has hijacked our economy and put Americaas global future at risk In "American Theocracy," Kevin Phillips warned us of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the increasing cost of scarce oil. The current housing and mortgage debacle is proof once more of Phillipsas prescience, and only the first harbinger of a national crisis. In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. Americaas current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powersaespecially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower. aBad moneya refers to a new phenomenon in wayward megafinanceathe emergence of a U.S. economy that is globally dependent and dominated by hubris-driven financial services. Also abada are the risk miscalculations and strategic abuses of new multitrillion-dollar products such as asset-backed securities and the lure of buccaneering vehicles like hedge funds. Finally, the U.S. dollar has been turned into bad money as it has weakened and become vulnerable to the worldas other currencies. In all these ways, abada finance has failed the American people and pointed U.S. capitalism toward a global crisis. "Bad Money" is the perfect follow- up to Phillipsas last book, whose dire warnings are now proving frighteningly accurate.