This Week - January 19: Simon Winchester & Dylan Schaffer
January 19th, 2007
Writer’s Voice talks with Simon Winchester about A CRACK IN THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: America And The Great California Earthquake Of 1906. Also, Dylan Schaffer talks about his funny and poignant memoir, LIFE, DEATH AND BIALYS: A Father/Son Baking Story.
The international best-selling author of KRAKATOA, Winchester tells us about another geological cataclysm, this time about the San Francisco earthquake of 1907. He outlines how plate tectonics caused the disaster — and how human mistakes made it much, much worse. Winchester studied geology at Oxford and has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. His other books include THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN and THE FRACTURE ZONE.
And Dylan Schaffer usually writes legal whodunits, the Misdemeanorman mysteries. But with his memoir, LIFE, DEATH & BIALYS, he moves into new territory — solving the mystery of his father and his relationship to him through the medium of a course at the French Culinary Institute. His father, ill with terminal cancer, invited Schaffer to take a course there, and, much to his own surprise, Schaffer agreed. He tells us what he learned about his father — and himself.
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