Author! Author! is a monthly-ish roundup of new books by Bay Area Jews.
Always have too much to do and no time to slow down? Management consultant Marilyn Paul of Berkeley has a solution to your woes: Shabbat.
“There is a way out of the constant action, pressure and tension,” she writes. “It’s a practice that is thousands of years old, with many different names — Shabbat, Sabbath, respite, and an oasis in time — and it is just as necessary and meaningful now as it was back centuries ago.”
Paul has worked in both the corporate world and public sector domestically and abroad (including leading a management development program under the auspices of the World Health Foundation and the Israel Defense Forces). She is a senior consultant with Bridgeway Partners in San Francisco.
Drawing on Sabbath history, contemporary research and real-life experience, Paul suggests how to carve out the time you need to slow down and change your mindset, so you can achieve your goals.
A book launch party has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 22 at Books Inc., 1491 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley.
“An Oasis in Time” by Marilyn Paul, Ph.D. (272 pages, Rodale Books)
A snippet from the book’s official blurb provides a glimpse of what Turbow covers:
Under the visionary leadership of owner Charles O. Finley, the team assembled such luminaries as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and Vida Blue. Finley acted as his own general manager, his insatiable need for control dictating everything from the playlist of the ballpark organist to the menu for the media lounge. So pervasive was his meddling that one of his managers, Dick Williams, quit in the middle of the championship celebration” after the 1973 World Series win over the New York Mets.
In 1972, by the way, the A’s had three Jewish players: first baseman Mike Epstein, pitcher Ken Holtzman and former Met Art Shamsky, who played eight games for the green and gold before retiring due to back problems.
“Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic” by Jason Turbow (400 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Matt Richtel, a San Francisco-based Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, has written another book: the technological thriller “Dead on Arrival.”
His new novel, based on real science, imagines a world where technology turns against us.
Richtel will be giving book talks at 7 p.m. Aug. 22 at Bookshop West Portal, 80 West Portal Ave., San Francisco, and 7 p.m. Aug. 24 at Books Inc., 301 Castro St., Mountain View.