Steve Wasserman with Paul Yamazaki

Steve Wasserman has spent the past four decades working in publishing, writing and editing. He joins us to celebrate Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even It’s a Lie. In thirty splendid essays originally published in such diverse publications as the New Republic and the Nation, the American Conservative and the Progressive, the Village Voice and the Economist, Wasserman delivers a riveting account of the awakening of an empathetic sensibility and a lively mind. Taken together, they reveal the depth and breadth of his enthusiasms and range over politics, literature, and the tumults of a world in upheaval. They include the remarkable tale of a bookstore owner who wouldn’t let him buy the books he wanted, to his brave against-the-grain take on the Black Panthers, to his shrewd assessment of the fast-changing world of publishing. Here is, as Joyce Carol Oates notes, “arguably the very best concise history of Cuba and the legendary Fidel Castro; beautifully composed eulogies for two close friends, Susan Sontag and Christopher Hitchens; sharply perceptive commentary on Daniel Ellsberg; a thrillingly candid interview with W. G. Sebald.”

Join us as Wasserman discusses books, culture, and the people who make them with fellow traveler Paul Yamazaki, chief buyer at the iconic City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

Photo of Steve Wasserman by Dennis Anderson

About the Speakers

Steve Wasserman is currently publisher of Heyday, a nonprofit independent press founded in Berkeley in 1974. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press and editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has worked with many authors and published numerous books including, most recently, Greil Marcus’s The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Martha Hodes’s Mourning Lincoln, David Thomson’s Why Acting Matters, and two posthumous volumes of the late critic Ralph J. Gleason’s musical and political writings.

Paul Yamazaki has been City Lights Bookstore’s chief buyer for over fifty years, responsible for filling the shelves of the San Francisco shop with the diverse range of titles that make City Lights one of the most beloved independent bookstores in the United States. Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community and has mentored generations of booksellers across the United States. Earlier this year he published his memoir, Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale.

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Host or Publisher Kepler's Literary Foundation