Frances Dinkelspiel, author of "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman created California," talks about the history and legacy of the Hellman family, focusing on Warren Hellman. This talk is in conjunction with "Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman."
Frances Dinkelspiel is the author of "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California," published by St. Martins Press in November 2008. Frances is a fifth-generation Californian who grew up in San Francisco. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Frances spent more than twenty years in the newspaper business, working as a reporter for a broad array of papers, from the Syracuse Newspapers in upstate New York to the San Jose Mercury News in northern California. Her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Magazine, and other places. In 2009, she co-founded Berkeleyside, an online news site about the city of Berkeley. Frances has also taught at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Towers of Gold" was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and was named one of the best books of 2008 by the Chronicle and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. It was also a finalist for the Northern California Book Award.