Author: David Kessler

David Kessler was born in Brooklyn. He learned his first lesson in love and loss when the Dodgers left town. He relocated to Hartford, where he was exposed to New England culture. He then headed west, first to Kalamazoo College, and eventually fulfilled his lifelong desire to live in Berkeley. After doing graduate work in history at the University of California, he went to work in the university library. He recently retired from its fabled Bancroft Library. He continues to indulge his passions for swimming, baking bread, and reading contemporary fiction. He sometimes entirely disappears from view during the baseball season. He and Nancy Mennel, his wife of thirty-five years, lost their home in the calamitous 1991 Oakland Hills Fire. They rebuilt. David has been active in the neighborhood’s community life since that signal event.