NEWS RELEASE

Media Contact Only:

Rick White

(415) 382-1927

rwwhite@aol.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 14, 2009

SANTA ROSAN ELECTED PRESIDENT OF GREAT BOOKS COUNCIL

Berkeley, California, June 14 – Today Jim Hall of Santa Rosa’s Rincon Valley was elected president of the Great Books Council of San Francisco at the organization’s annual meeting in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. After studying physics for two years at UC Santa Barbara, Jim raced cars in Southern California for a decade which was interrupted by two years as a Medevac helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He was twice wounded by shrapnel. After discharge, he was 1974 Southern California regional Formula B racing champion as driver for Russ Mayberry Racing. Jim shifted to training drivers and preparing race cars, moving in 1985 to his present address in Santa Rosa to continue this work in his own shop at Sears Point Raceway. For the past several years he has sold and serviced equipment for area wineries.

Jim married Helen in 1975 at age 30. Their daughter Katherine lives in San Francisco, plays the flute, and manages technical operations in a medical research firm.

As president of the Great Books Council of San Francisco, a volunteer position, Jim will spearhead a thousand-member volunteer organization founded in the middle of the Twentieth Century which holds book discussion events throughout northern California and supports more than forty local discussion groups. Jim leads one of these in Santa Rosa and another in Sebastopol. He says that his priorities for the organization are to reach a new generation of readers and to add one-day book discussion retreats to its current programs--a spring weekend at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, a late summer Long Novel weekend at Walker Creek Ranch in West Marin, a poetry weekend in Alamo, and a one-day winter event in San Francisco. His first such foray will be this October 3, a morning in Calistoga discussing the novel Catch 22 followed by a showing of the movie and a short discussion in the afternoon. For more information, Jim can be reached at jimsrhall@earthlink.net.

About the Great Books Council of San Francisco (serving Northern California)

The Great Books Council of San Francisco is an affiliate of the Great Books Foundation, founded at the University of Chicago 60 years ago by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. A non-profit educational organization, its mission is to provide people of all ages the opportunity to read, discuss, and learn from outstanding works of literature, current and past, western and non-western.

The San Francisco council coordinates 40 book groups throughout Northern California, publishes a printed newsletter, Reading Matters and an e-newsletter, provides leader training, helps start new book groups, and sponsors literary events in scenic locations. To learn more or join a group, log onto www.greatbooks-sf.com or contact GBSF president Jim Hall at 707-538-8227 or jimsrhall@earthlink.net.