Daniel Bergner at Books Inc. in the Castro March 12, 2009

Author Daniel Bergner will be stopping by to read from his new and anticipated book, "The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys Into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing."

Introducing him will be Kemble Scott, author of Soma.

How do we come to be who we are sexually? How do we cope with the forces of desire? How can we understand the relationship between the transcendent and the physical, between the wish for love and the anarchy of the erotic?

Daniel Bergner looks for answers in the stories of four people whose longings are very different from our own: a devoted husband burdened by an insatiable foot fetish, a clothing designer who finds ecstasy in the pain of others, a man smitten with his young stepdaughter, and an advertising director who casts traditionally beautiful models but who is attracted only to amputees. Bergner finds in their desires metaphors for the issues that confront us all and raises fascinating questions about the erotic differences between men and women and the nature of ecstasy itself: Are some people actually experiencing "more" ecstasy than the rest of us?

In speaking to experts in the fields of psychology and neurology, and by threading the personal stories of several modern-day Kinseys throughout his riveting case studies, Bergner has written a provocative, profoundly insightful, and brilliantly illuminating book about the most fundamental of human needs

About the author:

Daniel Bergner is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of two previous books of nonfiction, "In The Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa", a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and "God of the Rodeo: The Quest for Redemption in Louisiana's Angola Prison", a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Bergner's writing has also appeared in Granta, Harper's, Mother Jones, Talk, the New York Times Book Review, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He graduated from Columbia University's MFA Program in 1988. Daniel Bergner lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children.

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Books Inc. is a locally owned and operated independent bookseller with 10 locations in California. Books Inc.'s origin dates back to the Gold Rush Days of 1851 when Anton Roman struck it rich in Shasta City, California and set himself up in business selling books. That small bookstore was moved, bought, sold, burned, rebuilt, renamed and became Books Inc., as we know it today, in 1946.

Today, with 10 Stores and 200 employees, Books Inc. serves as a shining example that independent bookselling can survive and prosper, even if we must dance among the elephants.

This Event is Free at Books Inc. 2275 Market St., San Francisco 94114
For Questions: 415.864.6777 or on the web at http://www.booksinc.net and
http://www.myspace.com/booksinccastro