What Moore Do You Want?

Did you know? Because we didn't: In 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore became the only woman ever to fire a bullet at a U.S. president. What's more, she did it in San Francisco, right in front of the St. Francis Hotel. (Epilogue: She was paroled early last year.) In Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford, author and onetime Moore confidante Geri Spieler draws a fairly straightforward map of the facts. Moore was intensely crazy in a million ways, but the story is written in the voice of a trained and responsible journalist, not a tabloid screech. Spieler's understanding of radical left-wing politics is distractingly lame — Moore was deeply involved in a number of Bay Area groups — but otherwise, the book is pretty hard to put down.
Thu., Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m., 2009