California Press: 1495 books
Luminous Traitor
The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement, a Biographical Novel
Language: English
Release Date: November 6, 2018
"Martin Duberman is a national treasure."
—Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
Roger Casement was an internationally renowned figure at the beginning of the 20th century, famous for exposing the widespread atrocities against the indigenous people in King Leopold's Congo and his subsequent...
Lise Meitner
A Life in Physics
Language: English
Release Date: March 10, 1996
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was a pioneer of nuclear physics and co-discoverer, with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, of nuclear fission. Braving the sexism of the scientific world, she joined the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and became a prominent member of the international physics...
The Filth of Progress
Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West
Language: English
Release Date: October 30, 2015
The Filth of Progress explores the untold side of a well-known American story. For more than a century, accounts of progress in the West foregrounded the technological feats performed while canals and railroads were built and lionized the capitalists who financed the projects. This book salvages...
Potosi
The Silver City That Changed the World
Language: English
Release Date: May 28, 2019
In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico or "Rich Hill" and the Imperial Villa of Potosí instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone...
Magnetic Mountain
Stalinism as a Civilization
Language: English
Release Date: February 27, 1997
This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly...
A Half Century of Occupation
Israel, Palestine, and the World's Most Intractable Conflict
Language: English
Release Date: April 25, 2017
The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the world’s most polarizing confrontations. Its current phase, Israel’s “temporary” occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, turned a half century old in June 2017. In these timely and provocative essays, Gershon Shafir asks three questions—What...
The Separation Solution?
Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality
Language: English
Release Date: February 2, 2016
Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex education across the United States, and many public schools have created all-boys and all-girls classes for students in grades K through 12. The Separation Solution? provides an in-depth analysis of controversies sparked by recent...
Zapata Lives!
Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico
Language: English
Release Date: January 2, 2002
This richly detailed study chronicles recent political events in southern Mexico, up to and including the July 2000 election of Vicente Fox. Lynn Stephen focuses on the meaning that Emiliano Zapata, the great symbol of land reform and human rights, has had and now has for rural Mexicans. Stephen documents...
A Global History of Runaways
Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850
Language: English
Release Date: July 30, 2019
During global capitalism's long ascent from 1600–1850, workers of all kinds—slaves, indentured servants, convicts, domestic workers, soldiers, and sailors—repeatedly ran away from their masters and bosses, with profound effects. A Global History of Runaways, edited by Marcus Rediker, Titas...
by Carol Hakim
Language: English
Release Date: January 19, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: January 19, 2013
In this fascinating study, Carol Hakim presents a new and original narrative on the origins of the Lebanese national idea. Hakim’s study reconsiders conventional accounts that locate the origins of Lebanese nationalism in a distant legendary past and then trace its evolution in a linear and gradual...
Game Changer
Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa’s Wildlife
Language: English
Release Date: March 30, 2012
Are conservation and protecting animals the same thing? In Game Changer, award-winning environmental reporter Glen Martin takes a fresh look at this question as it applies to Africa’s megafauna. Martin assesses the rising influence of the animal rights movement and finds that the policies championed...
by Stephane Dufoix
Language: English
Release Date: February 4, 2008
Language: English
Release Date: February 4, 2008
Coined in the third century B.C., the term diaspora has evolved into a buzzword used to describe the migrations of groups as diverse as ethnic populations, religious communities, and even engineers working abroad. This concise book provides a critical introduction to the concept of diaspora, bringing...
Before Taliban
Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad
Language: English
Release Date: April 2, 2002
In this powerful book, David B. Edwards traces the lives of three recent Afghan leaders in Afghanistan's history--Nur Muhammad Taraki, Samiullah Safi, and Qazi Amin Waqad--to explain how the promise of progress and prosperity that animated Afghanistan in the 1960s crumbled and became the present tragedy...
The Modern Middle East, Third Edition
A Political History since the First World War
Language: English
Release Date: September 27, 2013
From the fall of the Ottoman Empire through the Arab Spring, this completely revised and updated edition of Mehran Kamrava’s classic treatise on the making of the contemporary Middle East remains essential reading for students and general readers who want to gain a better understanding of this diverse region.