California Press: 1495 books
Red Round Globe Hot Burning
A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard
Language: English
Release Date: March 26, 2019
On February 21, 1803, Colonel Edward (Ned) Marcus Despard was publicly hanged and decapitated in London before a crowd of 20,000 for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow King George III. His black Caribbean wife, Catherine (Kate), helped to write his gallows speech in which he proclaimed...
Fruit from the Sands
The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat
Language: English
Release Date: July 23, 2019
The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. From almonds and apples to tea and rice, many foods that we consume today have histories that can be traced out of prehistoric Central Asia along the tracks of the Silk Road to kitchens in Europe, America, China, and elsewhere in East Asia. The...
Dodging Extinction
Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2014
Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic...
Darkness before Daybreak
African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today
Language: English
Release Date: December 26, 2011
This riveting book chronicles the lives of a group of fishermen from Ghana who took the long and dangerous journey to Southern Italy in search of work in a cutthroat underground economy. A story that illuminates the nature of high-risk migration around the world, Darkness before Daybreak reveals the...
Humanitarian Reason
A Moral History of the Present
Language: English
Release Date: October 3, 2011
In the face of the world’s disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration...
Thinking Globally
A Global Studies Reader
Language: English
Release Date: December 20, 2013
In this accessible text, Mark Juergensmeyer, a pioneer in global studies, provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of global studies from regional, topical, and theoretical perspectives. Each of the twenty compact chapters in Thinking Globally features Juergensmeyer’s own lucid introduction...
The Spectacular Favela
Violence in Modern Brazil
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2015
In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous...
by Susan Schaller
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 2014
For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old...
The Land of Open Graves
Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail
Language: English
Release Date: October 23, 2015
In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De León sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time—the human consequences of US immigration policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as...
The Hadza
Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania
Language: English
Release Date: March 23, 2010
In The Hadza, Frank Marlowe provides a quantitative ethnography of one of the last remaining societies of hunter-gatherers in the world. The Hadza, who inhabit an area of East Africa near the Serengeti and Olduvai Gorge, have long drawn the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists for maintaining...
Soccer Empire
The World Cup and the Future of France
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2010
When France both hosted and won the World Cup in 1998, the face of its star player, Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe. During the 2006 World Cup finals, Zidane stunned the country by ending his spectacular career with an assault on an Italian player....
Trade of the Tricks
Inside the Magician's Craft
Language: English
Release Date: September 14, 2011
From risqué cabaret performances to engrossing after-hours shop talk, Trade of the Tricks offers an unprecedented look inside the secretive subculture of modern magicians. Entering the flourishing Paris magic scene as an apprentice, Graham M. Jones gives a firsthand account of how magicians learn...
Music and the Elusive Revolution
Cultural Politics and Political Culture in France, 1968–1981
Language: English
Release Date: July 2, 2011
In May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution as a series of student protests spiraled into the largest general strike the country has ever known. In the forty years since, May ’68 has come to occupy a singular place in the modern political imagination, not just in France but across the...
The Way Hollywood Tells It
Story and Style in Modern Movies
Language: English
Release Date: April 10, 2006
Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today’s bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers...