Boswell Events for Week of January 13-20, 2014--Arnie Bernstein, Stacey Ballis at Boelter, Plus Joseph Bates, B.J. Hollars, and Ben Tanzer Together.

This week's events...

Tuesday, January 14, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, in conversation with publisher Sharon Woodhouse

From Gary Krist, author of City of Scoundrels: Swastika Nation is the frightening, compulsively readable story of the rise of the German-American Bund of the 1930s. Arnie Bernstein chronicles the unlikely coalition of crusading politicians, moonlighting Hollywood icons, and tough-guy Jewish mobsters who found common cause in fighting the specter of homegrown Nazism at a time when it really could have happened here. His book is a vivid and enlightening look at a largely forgotten episode of American history."

Sharon Woodhouse, of Everything Goes Media, published Arnie Bernstein's first three books with Lake Claremont Press.

Arnie Bernstein is an independent scholar based in Chicago, whose previous book, Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing was honored as a Notable Book of the Year by the State Library of Michigan.

This event is co-sponsored by the UWM Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies, the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center and the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.

Thursday, January 16, 6 pm, at Boelter SuperStore:
Stacey Ballis, author of Out to Lunch, Inappropriate Men, Sleeping Over, and other foodie novels.
Boelter SuperStore is located at 4200 N. Port Washington Rd., in Milwaukee 

“Heartfelt and hilarious…a deeply satisfying look at food, friendships, and the families you create for yourself when you need them most.”—Jen Lancaster

Jenna has lost her best friend. With Aimee gone so tragically young, Jenna barely knows where to turn. Aimee was the one who always knew what to do--not to mention what to wear. The two built a catering company together and had so much in common, except their taste in men. Jenna never understood what the successful, sophisticated Aimee saw in Wayne, with his Star Wars obsession and harebrained business schemes. But Aimee has left a shocking last request: Jenna now has financial custody of the not-so-merry widower. True, What was her dear departed friend thinking?

Friday, January 17, 7 pm, at Boswell:Winter Small Press Night: Featuring B.J. Hollars, Ben Tanzer, and Joseph Bates.

B. J. Hollars' genre-bending debut short story collection, Sightings, offers ten thematically linked tales, all of which are out to subvert conventional notions of the Midwestern coming-of-age story.

On Ben Tanzer's Orphans, Publishers Weekly writes "Tanzer creates a template for human disaffection and passivity in the face of incomprehensible and omnipotent forces. Under the shopworn elements, this bleak, powerful book is a harrowing cautionary tale about a future that threatens to overwhelm human individuality.”

Regarding Joseph Bates' new short story collection Tomorrowland, George Singleton summarizes them as “quirky, sly, brilliant, playful stories that belong shelved somewhere between Barthelme and Saunders.”

B. J. Hollars is author of two works of nonfiction, three literary collections, and is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Ben Tanzer is a Chicago-based novelist novelist and an Emmy Award-winning public service announcement writer.

Joseph Bates is author of The Nighttime Novelist and other works of short fiction. He teaches in the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Next week double-preview.
Monday, January 20, 7 pm, at Boswell:
William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights.

We are pleased to welcome William P. Jones, history professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, for this timely Martin Luther King, Jr. Day talk, co-sponsored by the UWM Urban Studies department.

It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King's speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its resonance has also narrowed our understanding of the march.

The opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every American. Equal access to accommodations and services would mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford them. Randolph's egalitarian vision of economic and social citizenship is the strong thread running through the full history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women's groups, unions, and churches across the country. Jones's fresh, compelling history delivers a new understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil rights movement it propelled.

Read Benjamin Hedin's review in the Chicago Tribune.

Monday, January 20, 7 pm, at the Brookfield Public Library:
Jennifer Chiaverini, author of Mrs. Lincoln's Rival
The Brookfield Public Library is located at 1900 N. Calhoun Rd., in Brookfield.

Jennifer Chiaverini excels at using fiction to memorably chronicle the lives of extraordinary yet little-known women in history: Elizabeth Keckley in Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker and Elizabeth Van Lew in The Spymistress. Now, in Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, she introduces us to Kate Chase Sprague.

Born in 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Kate Chase was the second daughter to the second wife of a devout but ambitious lawyer, Salmon P. Chase, who was appointed secretary of the treasury in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. Young Kate stepped into the role of establishing her thrice-widowed father in Washington society and as a future presidential candidate, positioning herself in direct competition with Mary Todd Lincoln for the role of first lady of Washington society.

Though Mrs. Lincoln and her young rival held much in common--political acumen, love of country, and a resolute determination to help the men they loved achieve greatness--they could never be friends, for the success of one could come only at the expense of the other. When Kate Chase married William Sprague, the wealthy young governor of Rhode Island, it was widely regarded as the pinnacle of Washington society weddings. President Lincoln was in attendance. The First Lady was not.

Read Jim Higgins on Jennifer Chicaverini's Mrs. Lincoln's Rival in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This event is co-sponsored by Friends of the Brookfield Public Library and  Patched Works.

Hope to see you at one of this week's events.