--TICKETED DINNER CANCELLED, REPLACED BY AUTHOR MEET & GREET-- 

In Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (Skipstone), Seattle's Langdon Cook writes of forsaking the corporate world for life in a cabin off the grid—with his wife and son. Food is a major part of this undertaking, as chronicled here with insight and a sense adventure. "In Fat of the Land, Langdon Cook invites us to share in his enthusiastic, salubrious, wild food foraging quests. Get out of town, breathe in the fresh air, hear the quiet, exercise, feel good, connect with nature and the season—then return to the kitchen to delicious preparations of dandelion greens, squid, fiddleheads, or whatever the quarry. Lively, informative, soul-satisfying narrative." - Jon Rowley. Meet Langdon Cook and order some Fat of the Land fare on the Elliott Bay Café menu tonight in a special pre-reading author meet and greet in the café's Salon Space at 6 p.m. For more information, please see www.elliottbaycafe.com. The 7 p.m. program is also free of charge. Please join us!

We'll participate in one of the year's last events, if not the final one, honoring the 2009 Centenary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, or AYPE, today, with the authors of three major recent books concerned with this 'first Seattle World's Fair' speak about the AYPE's enduring legacy. Joan Hockaday's Greenscapes: Olmsted's Pacific Northwest (Washington State University Press) is the first full-length treatment of the work of John Charles Olmsted in this region. His many projects include the design of the AYPE site on the University of Washington campus. UW Visual Collections curator Nicole Bromberg's book, Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: The Photographs of Frank H. Nowell (University of Washington Press), features the work of the Fair's official photographer, who documented its construction, workers, landscaping, and visitors. History Link staff historians Alan J. Stein and Paula Becker's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Washington's First World's Fair: A Timeline History (HistoryLink/UW Press) provides a detailed, fully illustrated history of the fair and fairgoers, and of many political issues (women's suffrage) in the air at the time. A lively program, much sharing of the visuals—this should be fun.