Joseph Matthews

Born in Boston and raised there and in California, Joseph Matthews was for a number of years a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco, engaging in the criminal/political cases of anti–Vietnam War activists and Mission District barrio residents, defending prisoners during the California prison rebellions of the 1970s, serving as a public defender, and teaching at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley. He spent considerable time in Greece in the 1970s and 1980s, where his novel Shades of Resistance (1996) is set during the period of the military junta there. His other previous books are the short story collection The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk (1998) and the political analysis Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2005, with Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, and Michael Watts).

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Praise

“A tragic, gripping Orwellian tale of an orphan turned assassin in pre-World War II Paris. Based on the true story of the Jewish teen Hitler blamed for Kristallnacht, it’s a wild ride through the underside of Europe as the storm clouds of the Holocaust gather.  Not to be missed!”
—Terry Bisson, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of Fire on the Mountain

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Growing Up Fast Under the Nazis
• Everyone Has Their Reasons: An Off the Shelf Review
• Everyone Has Their Reasons: A Manhattan Book Review Review
• Everyone Has Their Reasons: A Donvans Literary Service Review
• Everyone Has Their Reasons: A Historical Novel Society Review
• Everyone Has Their Reasons: A Words and Peace Review
• The Madness of Reason
• Everyone Has Their Reasons in Collected Miscellany

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Interviews

• Class War in San Francisco— Joseph Matthews on Against the Grain
• 5 Questions with Joseph Matthews, author of The Blast
• The Boy Who Shot a Nazi
• An Interview with Joseph Matthews
• Joseph Matthews Excerpt Reading of Everyone Has Their Reasons

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Mentions

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Blog