Scott Borchert on Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America
2022-01-14 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Hosted by the Caxton Club.
Starving authors. The Federal Writers’ Project. All 48 states plus territories, cities, and even rivers. Stories beyond numbering. Books tucked away next to a chimney in an attic. Jim Thompson, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, Studs Terkel, Vardis Fischer, Ralph Ellison and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
All of these combine in Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) to tell the rollicking tale of the WPA State Guides and the hundreds of pamphlets created under the auspices of what may have been the largest literary project in history.
Borchert’s great uncle Fred (who was interviewed for A Gentle Madness) collected a full set of the State Guides and inspired this work, which was featured on the cover of the autumn edition of Fine Books & Collections.
Join us for a trip through time and great open spaces. Signed bookplates will be available. Email your shipping address to info@caxtonclub.org.
Register for this free program today!

San Francisco Beer: A History of Brewing by the Bay
2022-01-10 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The story of beer in San Francisco is as old as the city itself. San Francisco had its first commercial brewery by 1847, two years before the gold rush, and went on to reign as the major brewing center in the American West through the nineteenth century. From the 1930s to the early 1950s, iconic San Francisco-based breweries Lucky and Acme owned the statewide California market. In the 1960s, Fritz Maytag transformed San Francisco’s tiny and primitive Anchor Brewing into America’s first craft brewery.
Now, well into its fourth generation of craft breweries, San Francisco has seen more new breweries open in the second decade of the twenty-first century than were opened in the entire previous century, proving that tech is not San Francisco’s only booming industry.
Join local author and beer enthusiast Bill Yenne as he explores San Francisco’s rich tapestry of beers and breweries that have made it a brewing capital in the West.
A live presentation by Bill Yenne, author
Click here to REGISTER for the IN-PERSON EVENT (5:30pm PST)
Click here to REGISTER for the ZOOM LIVESTREAM (6:00pm PST)
