Metropolis Books Events

Robert Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist for almost four decades. He and his firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, work with many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns. He was one of the major architects and organizers of the successful campaign to defeat the privatization of Social Security. He is a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America’s budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform. He has also worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns at the local, state and national level. Creamer is married to Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Illinois. Arianna Huffington calls his recent book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, a master’s class in electoral politics.

What does it mean to be "Californian"? California Polyphony: Ethnic Voices, Musical Crossroads suggests an answer that lies at the intersection of musicology, cultural history, and politics. Consisting of a series of musical case studies of major ethnic groups in California, this book approaches the notion of Californian identity from diverse perspectives, each nuanced by class, gender, and sexuality.

In the early twentieth century, the concept of the Pacific Rim and an orientalist fascination with Asian music and culture dominated the popular imagination of white Californians, influencing their interactions with the Asian Other. Several decades later, as tensions rose between the Los Angeles Police Department and the African American community, the once-thriving jazz and blues nightclub scene of 1940s Central Avenue became a primary target for law enforcement's anti-vice crusade. The reactionary nature of the musical scores for Hollywood's noir films of the World War II and postwar eras negotiated the perceived demise of white female sexuality in the face of black culture and urban corruption. Mina Yang also considers Mexican Americans' conflicted assimilation into the white American mainstream from the early 1900s through the 1970s, as well as contemporary Korean Americans' struggles to express their cultural and national identities through hip-hop, a genre usually associated with African Americans.

"Mina Yang offers a musical message of social hope without stepping back from fierce historical inequities. She shows how the meeting grounds and collisions marking California's racial landscape add up to far more than accidents. California Polyphony will sit on my bookshelf between Mike Davis's City of Quartz and George Lipsitz's Dangerous Crossroads."--Deborah Wong, author of Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music

"A landscape of California's musical history that draws upon sociocultural and political forces that led to the creation, innovation, and appropriation of musical styles, genres, and forms. This welcome addition to music and cultural studies combines the musical contributions of African Americans, East Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans in a unique and refreshing way."--Cheryl L. Keyes, author of Rap Music and Street Consciousness

An accomplished pianist as well as a scholar, Mina Yang is an assistant professor of music history and literature at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.

Bruce Cana Fox presents a demonstration on the construction of mobiles. He is also the author of the book entitled Making Mobiles.

Most young girls dream of becoming a princess. But unlike most girls, Jerramy Fine never grew out of it. Strangely drawn to the English royal family since she was a toddler, Jerramy finds Peter Phillips (the Queen’s oldest grandson) in a royal family tree when she is only six years old, and decides immediately that he will be her future husband. But growing up with hippie parents (who gave her a boy’s name!) in the middle of a rodeo-loving farm town makes finding her prince a much bigger challenge than Jerramy ever bargained for.

She spends her childhood writing love-letters to Peter c/o Buckingham Palace, and years later, when her sense of destiny finally brings her to London, she must navigate the murky waters of English social circles, English etiquette and English dating. Along the way, she meets Princess Anne (Peter’s mother), befriends Earl Spencer, and parties with the Duchess of York.

Yet life is not the Hugh Grant movie she hoped it would be. Her flatmates are lunatics, London is expensive, and English boys can be infuriating. But just when she thinks it might be time to give up and return to America, Peter magically appears in her life.

Someday My Prince Will Come is a hilarious and heartwarming true story about having the courage to pursue your childhood dream no matter how impossible it seems.

Jim Malusa traveled to the lowest points of the earth and tells of his adventures in his book Into Thick Air.

"Delightful debut travelogue by botanist Malusa, who cycled to the lowest point on each of six continents. This peculiar quest sent him along routes connecting areas as diverse as Cairo and the Dead Sea, the Australian outback and Lake Eyre. Though Malusa personally devised each of his six expeditions (he traversed every continent except Antarctica), the Discovery Channel Online paid him to carry a satellite telephone and transmit blogs of his travels. Rather than simply a collection of these blogs, his book tells the full story behind them. Riding a bicycle made Malusa much more vulnerable to his surroundings than the average traveler; it lowered his expectations for food and lodging, thereby connecting him with each region's least privileged residents. Locals from Darwin to Djibouti constantly approached him, offering tea or pastries or just respite from the elements. They were probably responding to the same likable quality that comes across in Malusa's text. Whether describing a visit with a Bedouin family in the Egyptian desert, a hitchhiking journey with road-kill gourmands in the remotest parts of Australia or a chat with gauchos while trying to escape the brutal Patagonian wind, he always seems well-informed and outgoing. Russia's icy autumn sent him scurrying into lofty but empty old hotels along the route from Moscow to the Caspian Sea, a remarkably untouristed region in which he marveled at the vestiges of communism and joined two lively wedding parties. Malusa wears his expertise as a botanist lightly here, mentioning flora and fauna but detailing the full panoply of his impressions. This dense yet desultory account moves quickly, never lingering on any encounter for more than a few sentences, no matter how juicy. It's not as informative as the works of Bill Bryson, but easily as funny. Steeped in sarcasm and alive to the irony of any situation, observant and wry, omnivorous in the scope of its details and utterly subjective." - Kirkus Reviews

Derrick Engoy considers himself a student of the human condition, wielding the written craft to captivate the mind much like a painter wields a brush. Except his brush is a pen. The pages are a blank canvas on which imagination finds its way into reality. Poetry is his masterpiece, passionately discovered in the early-90s, that he uses to ignite fires in the human soul. Spoken Word is the form he most embraces. Verbal Paintings is Derrick's second book.

Jennifer Banash joins us this summer to tell of The Elite:

It’s the most exclusive luxury apartment building on New York’s Upper East Side. If you don’t live there—you don’t know how to live…

When Casey McCloy steps into The Bramford, she’s overwhelmed by the sophistication and elegance of it all. Fresh from the Midwest, she’s moved to NYC to live with her grandmother and attend the prestigious Meadowlark Academy. Here all that matters is who you know. The designer to know is Zac Posen. The girl to know is Madison Macallister: popular, pretty, platinum-blond. She’s not just Casey’s new classmate and neighbor; she’s an icon. So Casey aims to get in with Madison and her gorgeous gal-pals from the start. As the reigning queen of coolness, Madison is capable of destroying reputations with one well-timed whisper. Better to be on her good side.

But after a city-haute makeover from her new frenemy Madison, Casey is wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and meeting the right people—including Drew, the boy-about-town who Madison thinks belongs to her and her alone…

Denise Hamilton, the critically acclaimed author of the Eve Diamond mystery series delivers her first standalone novel, The Last Embrace. It's a sexy, atmospheric and seductive thriller that transports readers to a fascinating, transitional time and place—1949 Los Angeles.

Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, is asked by her late fiance's mother to find out what happened to his sister Kitty, an actress who has been missing from her Hollywood boarding house. Although the aspiring starlets at the house insist that Kitty is off somewhere furthering her career, the next day her body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed with the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves further into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive actors, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice.

But the landscape in burgeoning, post-War Los Angeles can shift kaleidoscopically and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers.

"Like Raymond Chandler, Hamilton describes California in gritty, lyrical prose; like Sue Grafton, she shows a tough-skinned, tenderhearted heroine breaking a few rules, if not a few bones." —Publishers Weekly

As we present numerous author signings, poetry readings and book club events, we hope to have something for everyone. To join our mailing list, please submit your email address below. You'll receive our newsletter and reminders of our upcoming events.