Home | More photos of previous events | Photos from the original store | More photos from the original store | Literary Links | D.G.Wills Books YouTube Channel

D.G.Wills Books

7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla, Ca. 92037 (858)456-1800
HOURS: Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm; Sunday 11am-5pm
La Jolla's largest collection of new and used scholarly books; and home of the La Jolla Cultural Society.

EMAIL

Visit the D.G.Wills Books YouTube Channel, featuring past appearances by Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Maureen Dowd, Freeman Dyson, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Billy Collins, Iris Chang, Patricia Neal with Stephen Michael Shearer, Edward Albee, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, and Senator Byron L. Dorgan. 
 
D.G.Wills Books events on Book TV, C-SPAN:
Professor Yunte Huang discussing his book Charlie Chan.
Journalist Dave Zirin discusses his book  Welcome to the Terrordome.
 
D.G.Wills Books events  on UCSD TV:
Professor Robert Polito and Patricia Patterson discussing
Professor Andrew Feenberg discussing his collection The Essential Marcuse.
 
 
D.G.Wills Books events on TSN: THE SCIENCE NETWORK:
Professor V.S. Ramachandran dicusses his book The Tell Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human. 

Professor Lawrence M. Krauss discusses his book Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life In Science.

p1010009.jpg

UPCOMING EVENTS

Prof. Gideon Rappaport,
renowned Shakespeare scholar and dramaturge,
will discuss his new book
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET:
 Edited and Annotated
Thursday, February 15, 7pm



gideoncover.jpg

Though it is one of Shakespeare's greatest and most beloved plays, Hamlet has been repeatedly misunderstood. This is partly because audience assumptions about the nature of reality have undergone huge changes between Shakespeare's time and ours. In the name of those different assumptions, modern scholars, play directors, and film producers have often wrenched Shakespeare's play out of its intended meaning. The result is that for most people what this great play is really about has been almost entirely obscured. Founded on the best scholarship of the past, William Shakespeare's Hamlet not only provides precise glosses on the meanings of particular words and phrases as they would have been understood by Shakespeare's audience and specific suggestions for actors and directors. More importantly, it clarifies the profound dramatic through-line of the play. The commentary in the annotation demonstrates that the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet is not of a man "who could not make up his mind," or who thinks too much to act, or who exhibits the relativity of all values, or who is Oedipally in love with his mother, or who melancholically wishes he were dead. These and other non-Shakespearean interpretations superimposed on the play in the last hundred years vanish into insignificance in the face of the actual story of Hamlet as revealed in the original meanings of its speeches and their interrelation. That story is of a man who, in a dangerous and paradoxical moral situation-which stands for the situation of every one of us-becomes guilty of a tragic moral fall and then undergoes a spiritual turning leading to redemption.


Gideon Rappaport has an honors B.A. in Literature and History from Cowell College, University of California at Santa Cruz, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in British and American Literature from Brandeis University. He has taught Shakespeare, British Literature, and Humanities at Hamilton College, SUNY Cortland, Concordia University, and the University of New Hampshire, and at The Bishop’s School and La Jolla Country Day School in La Jolla, California. His many articles, reviews and  books include Appreciating Shakespeare, which can also be heard as a podcast on Buzzsprout at “Appreciating Shakespeare with Doctor Rap.” Rappaport has also served as theatrical dramaturge for professional theaters including the Old Globe Theatre, the California Shakespeare Festival, the British-American Youth Festival Theatre, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the Intrepid Theatre, the Moonlight, the Poor Players, the New Fortune Theatre Company, and the Coronado Community Theatre, and the San Diego Shakespeare Society, as well as school productions at The Bishop’s School and La Jolla Country Day School. He has lectured on Shakespeare for continued learning programs at University of California at San Diego and University of San Diego, for the Honors Seminars of the San Diego City Schools, Friends of the Library in several cities, the San Diego Shakespeare Society, and conventions of the National Association of Independent Schools and the California Association of Independent Schools.    

Previous Events at D.G.Wills Books

hitchensevent.jpg

Christopher Hitchens

seanpenn.jpeg

Oscar-Winning Actor Sean Penn

oliverstone.jpg

Oscar-Winning Director Oliver Stone

martingilbert.jpg

Historian and Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert

francoisegilot.jpg

Francoise Gilot

gilot.jpg

Vogue magazine photo of Francoise Gilot at the original store

michaelmcclure.jpg

Michael McClure

scan0013.jpg

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

edelman.jpg

Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, Director of the Neurosciences Institute, with U.C. Berkeley philosopher John Searle with Mrs. Searle

eigen.jpg

Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen

troupe2.jpg

Quincy Troupe

irischang.jpg

Iris Chang

gerryspence.jpg

Gerry Spence

bobweil.jpg

Noted editor Robert Weil, editing a Patricia Highsmith manuscript for W.W. Norton & Co.

indianambassador.jpg

N. Parthasarathi, Indian Consul General, San Francisco; and Nirupama Rao, Ambassador of India to the U.S.

scan0004.jpg

loeb.jpg

Loeb Classical Library and Western Philosophy wall

Previous Events at D.G.Wills Books 

NORMAN MAILER, l995

burkewillsmailerscan.jpg

Ted Burke, Norman Mailer, Dennis Wills

scan0005.jpg

Allen Ginsberg, l994

maureendowd019.jpg

The New York Times Pulitzer Prize Columnist Maureen Dowd

maureendowd049.jpg

Jill Abramson, Executive Editor, The New York Times, with Maureen Dowd

billycollins161.jpg

Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001-2003

ferlinghetti_reading.jpg

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

vidal.jpg

Gore Vidal, November 2005

Listen to this event

altman.jpg

Gore Vidal with Professor Dennis Altman

vidal.jpeg

Gore Vidal, March l998, with noted South African playwright Athol Fugard in audience

scan0023.jpg

Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, February 1995

wat0-031.jpg

James D. Watson and Francis Crick with their model of the DNA molecule, the Double Helix, at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, l953

watson.jpg

Nobel Laureate James D. Watson, September 2007

walcott2.jpg

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott

mullis.jpg

Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis

albee149.jpg

Three & One-Half Time Pulitzer Prize Playwright Edward Albee

snydercolor.jpg

Pulitzer Prize Poet Gary Snyder

snyder.jpg.jpg

Pulitzer Prize poet Gary Snyder

075.jpg

Oscar-Winning Actress Patricia Neal with her biographer Stephen Michael Shearer

cimg0210.jpg

Patricia Neal holding a model of "Gort" from the science fiction film classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

richardatkinson.jpg

Richard C. Atkinson, President Emeritus of the University of California, former UCSD Chancellor and former Director of the National Science Foundation

p1010002.jpg

Renowned scientist Freeman Dyson 

photo.jpg

Freeman Dyson with Mrs. Dyson

paulgiamatti.jpg

A visit from Oscar Nominated and Emmy Award Winning Actor Paul Giamatti

belushi.jpg

A visit from Jim Belushi, 2003

scan0006.jpg

Jim Belushi at the original store, l988

claudefrancoisege.jpg

Claude Picasso and Francoise Gilot

More photos of previous events

D.G.Wills Books
7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla
(858) 456-1800