Julia Flynn Siler | |
---|---|
Born | Palo Alto, California | March 25, 1960
Occupation |
|
Notable works |
|
Spouse | Charles (Charlie) Siler |
Website | |
juliaflynnsiler |
Julia Flynn Siler is an American journalist and author known for her narrative nonfiction books about American history and business. Her works include The House of Mondavi (2007), about the Mondavi wine dynasty; Lost Kingdom (2011), about the overthrow of Hawaii's last queen; and The White Devil's Daughters (2019), which chronicles the fight against human trafficking in San Francisco's Chinatown. A graduate of Brown University, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Siler worked as a staff correspondent for BusinessWeek magazine and The Wall Street Journal . She continues to contribute to various publications including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times . Her books have received multiple accolades, including being named finalists for the Gerald Loeb Award and James Beard Foundation Awards, and appearing on The New York Times bestseller list. In 2025, she will serve as a visiting scholar at Oxford University through the Next Horizons program at Harris Manchester College and the Rhodes House.
Born in Palo Alto, California, in 1960, Siler grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and received a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Brown University in 1982, a master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1985, and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1991. [1] While on assignment in London for BusinessWeek magazine, she did additional postgraduate work at the London School of Economics. [1] She was a staff correspondent for BusinessWeek magazine in Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, and a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal in London. She has been a longtime contributor to The Wall Street Journal from the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2004, Siler wrote a front-page article for The Wall Street Journal titled, "Inside a Napa Valley Empire, a Family Struggles With Itself, [2] " about how brothers Robert and Peter Mondavi's past battles imperiled the Robert Mondavi wine empire in California. In 2007, Siler published The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, a nonfiction account of four generations of the Mondavi family. The House of Mondavi concerns a repeating pattern of sibling conflict in a family wine business. The book details the 2004 board coup that led to the breakup and the forced sale of the publicly-traded Robert Mondavi company. The House of Mondavi revealed that patriarch Robert Mondavi's philanthropic gifts to the University of California at Davis and elsewhere had led to a personal financial crisis for the company, which was one of the factors leading to its $1 billion takeover. [3]
The book was a finalist for a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial journalism in the category of business books in 2008. [4] It was also a James Beard Foundation finalist that year in the category of books on wine and spirits. [5] BusinessWeek picked it as one of the top ten business books of the year for 2007. [6] New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov wrote about it: “Call it Greek tragedy or Shakespearean drama, Biblical strife, Freudian acting out or even soap opera. You wouldn’t be exaggerating, and you wouldn’t be wrong." [7] It also received criticism for focusing on the salacious. [8]
In 2011, Siler published Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure, a narrative history of the overthrow of Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani. Lost Kingdom was a 2011 Northern California bestseller. [9] It was also a New York Times bestseller. [10] In Fortune magazine, Nin-Hai Tseng wrote “The story of an island grappling to hold onto traditions in the face of burgeoning capitalist powers…Siler gives us a riveting and intimate look at the rise and tragic fall of Hawaii’s royal family." [11] Siler was an expert on Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani interviewed for the PBS American Masters series, Unladylike, in 2020. [12]
In May 2019, Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, published The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a narrative history of the trafficking of Asian girls and women that flourished in the West during the first hundred years of Chinese immigration. The book focuses on San Francisco’s Occidental Mission Home, a “safe house” that opened in 1874 for enslaved and vulnerable Chinese women and girls. The book also shines a light on Donaldina (Dolly) Cameron, who rescued more than 60 mostly Chinese girls, women and babies to a shelter in San Anselmo. [13]
Siler “vividly recounts a shocking episode from America’s past in this gripping history,” wrote Publishers Weekly. "It will fascinate readers interested in the history of women, immigration, and racism.” [14] In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews called The White Devil's Daughters "An accessible, well-written, riveting tale of a dismal, little-known corner of American history." [15] The White Devil's Daughters was selected as an Editors' Choice pick by the New York Times Book Review. [16] The Commonwealth Club of California named The White Devil's Daughters as a finalist for a 2019 California Book Award, [17] and The California Independent Bookseller Alliance granted 2019 "Golden Poppy" awards to The White Devil's Daughters in the non-fiction and regional categories. [18] Siler was an expert interviewed about Tye Leung Schulze, the first Chinese American woman to vote, for the PBS American Masters series, Unladylike, in 2020.
Siler has written about her own journey to becoming a late-in-life competitive rower after undergoing brain surgery for National Geographic, about the survival of the banyan tree in Lahaina after the 2023 fire in The New York Times, and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s books section. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and is co-director of nonfiction for the Community of Writers. In 2025, Siler will be a visiting scholar at Oxford University as part of Next Horizons, a program of Harris Manchester College and the Rhodes House.
Napa County is a county north of San Pablo Bay located in the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 138,019. The county seat is the City of Napa. Napa County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. Parts of the county's territory were given to Lake County in 1861.
Robert Gerald Mondavi was an American winemaker. His technical and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California. From an early period, Mondavi promoted labeling wines varietally rather than generically, which became the standard for New World wines. The Robert Mondavi Institute (RMI) for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis opened in October 2008 in his honor.
Erik Larson is an American journalist and author of mostly historical nonfiction books. His books include Isaac's Storm (1999), The Devil in the White City (2003), In the Garden of Beasts (2011), and Dead Wake (2015). The Devil in the White City won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards.
Michael Dominic Chiarello was an American celebrity chef, restauranteur, and businessperson, who was known for Italian-influenced California cuisine. He hosted the cooking TV shows Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello on Food Network, and NapaStyle on Fine Living Network. He was the owner of a tapas restaurant named Coqueta and an Italian restaurant named Bottega and has locations in Napa Valley, California and San Francisco, California. He was a competitor on the fourth season of The Next Iron Chef.
Franzia is a brand of wine produced by The Wine Group, known for its box wines sold in 3 and 5-liter cartons. Franzia wines, throughout their history, were known as affordable table wines, popular in the 1960s and 1970s as "jug wine", and now as "box wine". The Wine Group is the third largest wine company in the world, behind Constellation Brands and the E&J Gallo Winery. The Franzia brand today has no business relationship with Fred Franzia of the Bronco Wine Company, known for its low-cost Charles Shaw wines. The Franzia family sold the brand to Coca-Cola in 1973 when Fred Franzia was in his early adult years; and it was sold to The Wine Group in 1981.
Donaldina Cameron was a New Zealand-born American Presbyterian missionary who was a pioneer in the fight against slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown, who helped more than 2,000 Chinese immigrant girls and women escape from forced prostitution or indentured servitude. She was known as "Fahn Quai" or the "White Devil" of Chinatown, as well as the "Angry Angel of Chinatown" and "Lo Mo".
Warren Winiarski was an American Napa Valley winemaker and the founder and proprietor of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.
Opus One Winery is a winery in Oakville, California, United States. The wine was called napamedoc until 1982 when it was named Opus One. The winery was founded as a joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild and Robert Mondavi to create a single Bordeaux style blend based upon Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It is located across State Route 29 from the Robert Mondavi Winery. The creation of this winery venture in 1980 was big news in the wine industry; de Rothschild's involvement added an air of respectability to the burgeoning Napa wine region. The first vintage, 1979 was released in 1984 at the same time as the 1980 vintage. For a while it was the most expensive Californian wine, and to date still ranks among the most expensive red wines produced in the Napa Valley, with the 2014 vintage retailing for $325 per bottle. In 1989 a new winery was built just down the road, the first vintage from the new winery was from 1991 and was released in 1994.
Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts was a non-profit museum and educational center in downtown Napa, California, dedicated to wine, food and the arts of American culture. The center, planned and largely funded by vintners Robert and Margrit Mondavi, was open from 2001 to 2008. The 78,632-square-foot (7,305.2 m2) museum had galleries, two theaters, classrooms, a demonstration kitchen, a restaurant, a rare book library, and a 3.5-acre (1.4 ha) vegetable and herb garden; there it hosted wine and food tasting programs, exhibitions, films, and concerts. The main and permanent exhibition of the museum, "Forks in the Road", explained the origins of cooking through to modern advances. The museum's establishment benefited the city of Napa and the development and gentrification of its downtown.
Jon Bonné is an American wine and food writer, and since 2020 the managing editor of Resy. Formerly he was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle starting in 2006, and senior contributing editor for Punch. He has been a wine columnist for msnbc.com and Seattle Magazine, and has written for publications such as Food & Wine, The New York Times, The Art of Eating, Saveur and Decanter.
Anthony Terlato was an Italian-American wine executive who was chairman of Terlato Wines, a Lake Bluff, Illinois-based wine importer, producer and marketer. He has been called "The Father of Pinot Grigio" for his early role in bringing the now-ubiquitous varietal to the American market in the late 1970s when it was practically unknown outside Europe. He has been credited as a key figure in the shift in American wine tastes from "mass-produced, sweet, fortified jug wines ... to the likes of classified-growth Bordeaux, top Italian estates, and the best wineries in California that are enjoyed by many today."
Festival Napa Valley is a music, food, wine and lifestyle festival held in Napa Valley, California. It is presented by Napa Valley Festival Association, a nonprofit corporation governed by a board of vintners and local leaders.
Karen MacNeil is an American author, journalist, wine educator and consultant.
Hagafen Cellars is a winery located in the Napa Valley. Founded in 1979, it was the first kosher winery in California, and is "the first of the upscale kosher brands." The winery is owned and operated by winemaker Ernie Weir and his wife, Irit Weir.
Charles Krug (1825–1892) was among the pioneers of winemaking in the Napa Valley, California, and was the founder of the Charles Krug Winery.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again.
Patricia "Pat" Montandon is an American author and self-made socialite.
The Charles Krug Winery is a winery founded by Charles Krug in 1861. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1974.
Peter Mondavi Sr. was an American winemaker.
Jean-Charles Boisset is a French vintner and the proprietor of the Boisset Collection, which operates 28 wineries in California, France, and Canada.