Frances Dinkelspiel is a journalist and the author of the bestselling Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant named Isaias Hellman Created California. A co-founder of Berkeleyside.com, a two-year old news website about Berkeley, her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Mercury News, People Magazine, and San Francisco magazine. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has taught at UC Berkeley.