In 2004, Ben Thompson, a self-described "corporate wage slave," began championing badasses via his website badassoftheweek.com. What began as a pet project to cope with the aforementioned "wage slave" situation blossomed into a book deal. Now, seven years later, Thompson will release his second book, Badass: The Birth of a Legend.
Thompson's website describes the deeds of badasses, real and fictional, from across time and the world. The expected company—Patton, Muhammad Ali, Odysseus, Geronimo—are present, along with a number of badasses who are obviously a product of Thompson's background in History. Amidst these tales of guts and spilled blood, hours of research are plain.
Badass: The Birth of a Legend is dedicated to mythic badasses, the sort that populate epic poems and the grisliest folktales. Beowulf. Moby-Dick. Captain Kirk. Shed the shirt-and-tie, corporate drone clown suit for the night and don some chain mail for the night. In your mind, at least. You don't want to get kicked out this bookstore for being batshit insane.
Ben Thompson
Reading from Badass: The Birth of a Legend
Tuesday, April 5
7:30 p.m.
The Booksmith
1644 Haight St, San Francisco
Free
