Rosner has a talent for flagging science-related tidbits that suggest we can sharpen our attentiveness by observing animals. Owls, she writes, use mimicry to ward off mortal danger, while some bats ...

Hi Mick: In your opinion, what are the best movies about campaigns? I’m going to kick-start the conversation with Alexander Payne’s 1999 classic “ Election.” Chris Gruwell, San Francisco Hi Chris: My ...

As the lineups and feel of major music festivals across the U.S. become increasingly homogenized, the wildly eclectic offerings of Mosswood Meltdown stand out. Taking over Oakland’s modest Mosswood ...

Brazilian architect Roger Zmekhol’s crowning achievement, Pele de Vidro (“Skin of Glass” in Portuguese), opened in Săo Paulo in 1968. The gleaming glass tower was an architectural marvel and became ...

In Rome, Aciman read old novels and brooded, “hiding” in his room and hoping that Italy would be a brief stopover before grander adventures. He’s since recognized that this period of isolation, ...

Disaster, in forms both natural and manmade, haunts the fiction of Anita Felicelli. Wildfire smoke chokes out moonlight. A tsunami threatens the drought-scorched West Coast. Nuclear fallout degrades ...

It’s a strange one, and like several of the stories in the linked collection, “The Acorn” teeters between magical realism and the fantastical. It’s also one of the more visceral stories (one on which ...

The enigmatically titled Icelandic film “Touch” is about two different types of men: one an elderly widower who is tying up some loose ends, the other a young man on a journey of self-discovery. They ...

The two-disc vinyl LP was the first soundtrack that I ever bought. I wasn’t the only one; it sold more than a million copies, not only because of the massive popularity of the film, but because Lucas ...

Mick LaSalle Mick LaSalle is the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. He is the author of two books on pre-censorship Hollywood, "Complicated Women: Sex and ...

John McMurtrie doesn’t need to venture far to travel the world. The Albany writer, editor and book curator arrived at Heyma Yemeni Coffee on University Avenue in Berkeley on a bike he bought on ...

As with any Word for Word show, phrases you’d assume would be deadly onstage — “he said,” say — are instead springboards for imagination. As the Old Woman, Hunt blurts out the “Trees!” she sees out ...