Season of the Witch & To End all Wars
The more specific the story, the more the reader/listener can expand on it bringing his or her own wisdom and grief. Last year’s To End All Wars, (Adam Hochschield, Tantor) seemed narrowly focused on the English in WWI, but developed into an essay on the dreadful persistence of war, against all reason. David Talbot's, The Season of the Witch…, (Brilliance) on San Francisco from the late sixties to the middle eighties. An awful and wonderful epoch in one of the world’s truly beautiful cities. Beyond that, Talbot reminds us of the fragility of the American spirit, its many near-death experiences, its resuscitations, the questionable future. The words are about San Francisco but the music could be heard everywhere in America. Talbot understands that the 60s was not a fashion statement, but an attempt to revive patriotism in a country that had lost its memory. Both authors are serious historian/journalists, Hochschild was a founder of Mother Jones, Talbot founded and is editor-in-chief of Salon.
