Commonwealth The
Business & EDITORIAL offices
Editor’s Note Dinner Party
The Commonwealth 595 Market St., 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94131 feedback@commonwealthclub.org
John Zipperer
VP, MEDIA & EDITORIAL
Vice President, Media & Editorial Photo by d-line / Flickr
John Zipperer
SENIOR Editor Sonya Abrams
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Steven Fromtling
Editorial Intern Sally Schilling
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS William F. Adams Ed Ritger
Beth Byrne
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The Commonwealth (ISSN 0010-3349) is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. Printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Copyright © 2011 The Commonwealth Club of California. Tel: (415) 597-6700 Fax: (415) 597-6729 E-mail: feedback@commonwealthclub.org EDITORIAL POLICY FOR PROGRAM TRANSCRIPTS: The Commonwealth magazine seeks to cover a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question and answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings of events online at commonwealthclub.org/archive or contact Club offices to order a compact disc.
ADVERtising information Mary Beth Cerjan Development Manager (415) 869-5919 mbcerjan@commonwealthclub.org
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THE COMMO N WE AL TH
f you could sit down for dinner with eight interesting people, who would they be? No doubt, you’ve played that mental game in the past, drawing up your list of people you thought would be the most fascinating people to talk with during a good meal. You could do a lot worse than choosing the eight people featured in this issue: Timothy Geithner, Arianna Huffington, Reza Aslan, James Ellroy, Arthur Brooks, Simon Winchester, Aneesh Chopra and Thomas Frieden. Politics, economics, literature, history, crime, health care. There would be lots to discuss with these people. It is always a great dinner party when there are several interesting discussions occurring at any given time. It’s also what I like to think of as the basis for a good issue of The Commonwealth. Open up any article, and you should be able to find someone talking intelligently about important and/or provocative things. By the way, having a great dinner with fascinating people is also the theme of the Club’s 23rd Annual Distinguished Citizen Award Dinner, our biggest fundraiser of the year. Called “A Room with Views,” the March 15 event at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel will feature some of the Bay Area’s most interesting people leading conversations at the dinner tables. See the inside front cover of this magazine for details, or get the latest information online at commonwealthclub.org/annualdinner. if you can pull yourself away from the dinner table long enough, might I suggest you visit the Club in some other media formats? Those of you who live in the neighborhoods of San Francisco where Northside magazine is distributed can read the Club’s column each month. It’s called Common Knowledge, and it ties together recent or upcoming Club speakers with topics in the news. If you don’t get Northside delivered to your home, you can read it online (at northsidesf.com). I am also pleased to let you know that we have been hard at work redesigning and rebuilding our entire web site. We partnered with Pyramid Communications to make a web site that is easier to use, more pleasant to look at, and allows us to put front-andcenter more of the great information and resources we have available, such as our popular video and social media efforts. I’ve seen the new look, and I think you’ll be pleased with the features and functionality of the new site. Look for it to launch in the near future. The site’s address will be the same – commonwealthclub.org – but the experience will be very different and, we think, much better.
feb r ua ry/mar ch 2011