Bob Biderman
Personal Information
Description
Bob Biderman is a novelist, editor and social historian. He spent his early adulthood in San Francisco and Berkeley where he did his university studies in science and literature. During the 70s he helped develop a local arts-in-education program which he managed for several years. He also started an alternative publishing house which produced a number of books focusing on the social issues of the time. He moved to Europe in the 1980s, living both in France and Britain - where he settled in 1984. Since then he has worked as a writer, lecturer and editor with specific interest in the nature of cities. He currently edits two magazines - Cafe Magazine and Visions of the City. He is also the editor of a series of historical novels focusing on 19th century London.
Books
Red Dreams
Alan a la malchance de grandir en plein maccarthysme dans une famille de juifs communistes. Son père, recherché par le Comité de lutte contre les organisations antipatriotiques, est contraint de disparaître un temps. Le jeune Alan et sa mère vont devoir affronter les difficultés économiques et connaître l’humiliation. Le retour du père ne fera que révéler un peu plus le mal de vivre en Amérique, pourtant le pays de tous...
A people's history of coffee and cafés
A People's History of Coffee and Cafes is an exploration of how a certain plant became a global commodity, creating fortunes and despair, bringing people together and tearing them apart, playing a staring role in the remarkable awakening of our modern world. The theme is coffee; the venue is the coffeehouse - one of the few places where prince and pauper might meet on equal footing. But where did coffee come from? And how did it get to us? For in the course of a single generation, coffee burst onto the European scene like an Arabian Sirocco without the trumpeting of the media, as we know it, paving the way for a new and wonderful product.
Sacha Dumont's Euro-Mysteries
Sacha Dumont is a British journalist of French and German extraction assigned to cover the emerging Europe of the 21st century by comparing stories of past and present. This adventure focuses on Amsterdam, where Sacha lived as a young man and where a close friend, an artist and bohemian, has been accused of murdering a prostitute. Following a twisty path through history, Sacha is led on a heady journey of discovery along the backstreets and canals of this amazing city where nothing is what it first seems.
Letters to Nanette
From the Beatnik cafes of San Francisco, hanging out with the likes of Ginsberg, to an Army boot camp in Georgia, this novel explores America's entry into Vietnam seen through the eyes of a young man caught up in the madness. “Other wars have inspired not only best selling tales of heroic but also biting satires. Vietnam did not. Not, that is, until Bob Biderman gave us his superb Letters to Nanette…” About Books, American Library Association “Set in 1963, this wonderfully warm novel imaginatively recaptures the American atmosphere at the beginning of the Vietnam War and depicts one man’s resolve to meet manhood on his own terms. Letters to Nanette is really one long, open letter to a young nation that refuses to throw off its own adolescent misconceptions of growing up. ALA Booklist