California Press: 1495 books
Hard-Boiled Hollywood
Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
Language: English
Release Date: April 19, 2017
The tragic and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Elizabeth Short, or the Black Dahlia, and Marilyn Monroe ripped open Hollywood’s glitzy façade, exposing the city's ugly underbelly of corruption, crime, and murder. These two spectacular dead bodies, one found dumped and posed in...
Life along the Silk Road
Second Edition
Language: English
Release Date: March 25, 2015
In this long-awaited second edition, Susan Whitfield broadens her exploration of the Silk Road and expands her rich and varied portrait of life along the great pre-modern trade routes of Eurasia. This new edition is comprehensively updated to support further understanding of themes relevant to global...
Into the Land of Bones
Alexander the Great in Afghanistan
Language: English
Release Date: October 3, 2012
The so-called first war of the twenty-first century actually began more than 2,300 years ago when Alexander the Great led his army into what is now a sprawling ruin in northern Afghanistan. Frank L. Holt vividly recounts Alexander's invasion of ancient Bactria, situating in a broader historical perspective America's war in Afghanistan.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Language: English
Release Date: October 20, 1998
Language: English
Release Date: October 20, 1998
The ancient Greeks were for the most part a rural, not an urban, society. And for much of the Classical period, war was more common than peace. Almost all accounts of ancient history assume that farming and fighting were critical events in the lives of the citizenry. Yet never before have we had a...
Acting in the Night
Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2010
What can the performance of a single play on one specific night tell us about the world this event inhabited so briefly? Alexander Nemerov takes a performance of Macbeth in Washington, DC on October 17, 1863—with Abraham Lincoln in attendance—to explore this question and illuminate American art,...
New Philadelphia
An Archaeology of Race in the Heartland
Language: English
Release Date: November 16, 2010
New Philadelphia, Illinois, was founded in 1836 by Frank McWorter, a Kentucky slave who purchased his own freedom and then acquired land on the prairie for establishing a new—and integrated—community. McWorter sold property to other freed slaves and to whites, and used the proceeds to buy his...
The Devil in History
Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century
Language: English
Release Date: September 28, 2012
The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth...
The Dialectical Imagination
A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950
Language: English
Release Date: March 5, 1996
Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal—the impact of the Frankfurt School on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. The Dialectical Imagination is a major history of this monumental cultural...
The Last Gasp
The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber
Language: English
Release Date: July 12, 2010
The Last Gasp takes us to the dark side of human history in the first full chronicle of the gas chamber in the United States. In page-turning detail, award-winning writer Scott Christianson tells a dreadful story that is full of surprising and provocative new findings. First constructed in Nevada...
Alcatraz
The Gangster Years
Language: English
Release Date: May 19, 2009
Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Alvin Karpis, "Dock" Barker—these were just a few of the legendary "public enemies" for whom America's first supermax prison was created. In Alcatraz: The Gangster Years, David Ward brings their stories to life, along with vivid...
Caligula
A Biography
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2011
The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from A.D. 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. An exceptionally smart and cruelly witty man, Caligula made his contemporaries worship him as a god. He drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and ate food covered in gold leaf. He forced men and women...
Vietnam
State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946)
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2013
Amidst the revolutionary euphoria of August 1945, most Vietnamese believed that colonialism and war were being left behind in favor of independence and modernization. The late-September British-French coup de force in Saigon cast a pall over such assumptions. Ho Chi Minh tried to negotiate a mutually...
Transforming Terror
Remembering the Soul of the World
Language: English
Release Date: June 2, 2011
This inspired collection offers a new paradigm for moving the world beyond violence as the first, and often only, response to violence. Through essays and poetry, prayers and meditations, Transforming Terror powerfully demonstrates that terrorist violence—defined here as any attack on unarmed civilians—can...
Breaking Ranks
Iraq Veterans Speak Out against the War
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2010
Breaking Ranks brings a new and deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on extensive interviews with each of the six, the book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early...