Books published by University of California Press

This landmark work presents the most illuminating portrait we have to date of goddesses and sacred female imagery in Western culture-from prehistory to contemporary goddess movements. Beautifully written, lucidly conceived, and far-ranging in its implications, this work will help readers gain a better appreciation of the complexity of the social forces- mostly androcentric-that have shaped the symbolism of the sacred feminine. At the same time, it charts a new direction for finding a truly egalitarian vision of God and human relations through a feminist-ecological spirituality. Rosemary Radford Ruether begins her exploration of the divine feminine with an analysis of prehistoric archaeology that challenges the popular idea that, until their overthrow by male-dominated monotheism, many ancient societies were matriarchal in structure, governed by a feminine divinity and existing in harmony with nature. For Ruether, the historical evidence suggests the reality about these societies is much more complex. She goes on to consider key myths and rituals from Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Anatolian cultures; to examine the relationships among gender, deity, and nature in the Hebrew religion; and to discuss the development of Mariology and female mysticism in medieval Catholicism, and the continuation of Wisdom mysticism in Protestanism. She also gives a provocative analysis of the meeting of Aztec and Christian female symbols in Mexico and of today's neo-pagan movements in the United States.

Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It provides an authoritative challenge to the prevailing explanation that U.S. officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a "e;domino effect"e; leading to communist domination of the area. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China. He demonstrates how the slide into war in Vietnam is relevant to understanding why the United States went to war in Iraq, and why such wars are likely as long as U.S. military power is overwhelmingly dominant in the world. Challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, Porter argues that the main impetus for military intervention in Vietnam came not from presidents Kennedy and Johnson but from high-ranking national security officials in their administrations who were heavily influenced by U.S. dominance over its Cold War foes. Porter argues that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson were all strongly opposed to sending combat forces to Vietnam, but that both Kennedy and Johnson were strongly pressured by their national security advisers to undertake military intervention. Porter reveals for the first time that Kennedy attempted to open a diplomatic track for peace negotiations with North Vietnam in 1962 but was frustrated by bureaucratic resistance. Significantly revising the historical account of a major turning point, Porter describes how Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara deliberately misled Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, effectively taking the decision to bomb North Vietnam out of the president's hands.

In this penetrating examination of African American politics and culture, Paul Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations-secret societies, women's clubs, labor unions, and churches-to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz's eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day.

The last phase of Mark Twain's life is sadly familiar: Crippled by losses and tragedies, America's greatest humorist sank into a deep and bitter depression. It is also wrong. This book recovers Twain's final years as they really were-lived in the shadow of deception and prejudice, but also in the light of the author's unflagging energy and enthusiasm. Dangerous Intimacy relates the story of how, shortly after his wife's death in 1904, Twain basked in the attentions of Isabel Lyon, his flirtatious-and calculating-secretary. Lyon desperately wanted to marry her boss, who was almost thirty years her senior. She managed to exile Twain's youngest daughter, Jean, who had epilepsy. With the help of Twain's assistant, Ralph Ashcroft, who fraudulently acquired power of attorney over the author's finances, Lyon nearly succeeded in assuming complete control over Twain's life and estate. Fortunately, Twain recognized the plot being woven around him just in time. So rife with twists and turns as to defy belief, the story nonetheless comes to undeniable, vibrant life in the letters and diaries of those who witnessed it firsthand: Katy the housekeeper, Jean, Lyon, and others whose own distinctive, perceptive, often amusing voices take us straight into the heart of the Clemens household. Just as Twain extricated himself from the lies, prejudice, and self-delusion that almost turned him into an American Lear, so Karen Lystra liberates the author's last decade from a century of popular misunderstanding. In this gripping book we at last see how, late in life, this American icon discovered a deep kinship with his youngest child and continued to explore the precarious balance of love and pain that is one of the trademarks of his work.

This volume contains Dryden's 1684 translation of Louis Maimbourg's "e;The History of the League,"e; a work relating to the religious wars of France in the preceding century, and which Dryden used as a commentary on the religious persecutions of his own time in England.

James Ivory in Conversation is an exclusive series of interviews with a director known for the international scope of his filmmaking on several continents. Three-time Academy Award nominee for best director, responsible for such film classics as A Room with a View and The Remains of the Day, Ivory speaks with remarkable candor and wit about his more than forty years as an independent filmmaker. In this deeply engaging book, he comments on the many aspects of his world-traveling career: his growing up in Oregon (he is not an Englishman, as most Europeans and many Americans think), his early involvement with documentary films that first brought attention to him, his discovery of India, his friendships with celebrated figures here and abroad, his skirmishes with the Picasso family and Thomas Jefferson scholars, his usually candid yet at times explosive relations with actors. Supported by seventy illuminating photographs selected by Ivory himself, the book offers a wealth of previously unavailable information about the director's life and the art of making movies.James Ivory on:On the Merchant Ivory Jhabvala partnership:"e;I've always said that Merchant Ivory is a bit like the U. S. Govenment; I'm the President, Ismail is the Congress, and Ruth is the Supreme Court. Though Ismail and I disagree sometimes, Ruth acts as a referee, or she and I may gang up on him, or vice versa. The main thing is, no one ever truly interferes in the area of work of the other."e;On Shooting Mr. and Mrs. Bridge:"e;Who told you we had long 18 hour days? We had a regular schedule, not at all rushed, worked regular hours and had regular two-day weekends, during which the crew shopped in the excellent malls of Kansas City, Paul Newman raced cars somewhere, unknown to us and the insurance company, and I lay on a couch reading The Remains of the Day."e;On Jessica Tandy as Miss Birdseye in The Bostonians:"e;Jessica Tandy was seventy-two or something, and she felt she had to 'play' being an old woman, to 'act' an old woman. Unfortunately, I'couldn't say to her, 'You don't have to 'act' this, just 'be,' that will be sufficient.' You can't tell the former Blanche Du Bois that she's an old woman now."e;On Adapting E. M. Forster's novels"e;His was a very pleasing voice, and it was easy to follow. Why turn his books into films unless you want to do that? But I suppose my voice was there, too; it was a kind of duet, you could say, and he provided the melody."e;On India:"e;If you see my Indian movies then you get some idea of what it was that attracted me about India and Indians...any explanation would sound lamer than the thing warrants. The mood was so great and overwhelming that any explanation of it would seem physically thin....I put all my feeling about India into several Indian films, and if you know those films and like them, you see from these films what it was that attracted me to India."e;On whether he was influenced by Renoir in filming A Room with a View "e;I was certainly not influenced by Renoir in that film. But if you put some good looking women in long white dresses in a field dotted with red poppies, andthey're holding parasols, then people will say, 'Renoir.'"e;On the Critics:"e;I came to believe that to have a powerful enemy like Pauline Kael only made me stronger. You know, like a kind of voodoo. I wonder if it worked that way in those days for any of her other victims-Woody Allen, for instance, or Stanley Kubrick."e;On Andy Warhol as a dinner guest:"e;I met him many times over the last twenty years of his life, but I can't say I knew him, which is what most people say, even those who were his intimates. Once he came to dinner with a group of his Factory friends at my apartment. I remember that he or someone else left a dirty plate, with chicken bones and knife and fork, in my bathroom wash basin. It seemed to be a symbolic gesture, to be a matter of style, and not just bad manners."e;

Missing from most accounts of the modern history of Jews in Europe is the experience of what was once the largest Jewish community in the world-an oversight that Gershon David Hundert corrects in this history of Eastern European Jews in the eighteenth century. The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization-in short, of westernization-that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "e;internal"e; developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "e;core Jewish identity"e;-an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.

"A very important book that everyone concerned about housing affordability should read."--Michael C. Lens, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs "This city-by-city examination of the nation's spreading affordability problem shows how long commutes, housing instability, and decentralized communities have become national issues."--Curbed "Generation Priced Out boldly challenges the progressive community to rethink how to achieve greater economic and racial diversity by providing more affordable housing."--Seattle Times

This text is a comprehensive study of extended performance techniques found in violin literature of the latter half of the 20th-century. Drawing from both published and private manuscripts, the authors present extended performance options for the accoustic, modified, electric and MIDI violin.

A survey of the techniques of clarinet performance as they have evolved since the 1950s, which illustrates how contemporary practices differ from those formerly standardized. The author provides perspectives and suggestions on performance capabilities.

"An amazing book. There is nothing remotely like it anywhere in the world. I am in awe at the skill with which the many different voices in this collection have been kept alive. It is a terrific and stunningly interesting read."--Wendy Doniger, author of The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade "This is a superb collection, which presents to the English reading public for the first time a literature of great beauty and importance. There is no similar or comparable anthology for any Indian language let alone Telugu. All of the translations of the poems are exquisite and learned. The introduction is both a much needed history of Telugu poetry and also a guide to the aesthetics of Telugu poetry and the art of reading it."--Phyllis Granoff, translator of The Journey: Stories by K.C. Das

"An underground classic. Though declassified in 1965, [the primer] has not been widely available. . . . This edition is an essential part of the library of anyone interested in Manhattan Project history."--American Physical Society Journal "An extraordinary document. . . . [Serber's] analyses were elegant and compact yet sensibly accurate."--Physics Today

"In rewriting the entangled histories of coal, Powering Empire recasts the history of the Middle East as well as our understanding of empire and the map of our present predicament. Barak has written a brilliant book."--Timothy Mitchell, author of Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil "An imaginative, timely intervention in debates on the popular but contested idea of the Anthropocene, Barak's account of coal and the British Empire in the Middle East effectively historicizes many of our contemporary anxieties and concerns. His wide-ranging and impeccable scholarship and his judicious discussion of 'energy transition' in the Middle East will make this book compulsory reading for all historians and students of energy regimes."--Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories "We all know that the energy source that made the modern Middle East is oil--wrong! As On Barak shows in this fascinating book, British coal during the nineteenth century--and an archipelago of coaling stations designed to safeguard Britain's seaborne links to India and beyond--triggered enormous changes in everything from high politics to diet, labor, environment, and ideas about the body in Egypt, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Peninsula. But 'coalonialism, ' as the author calls it, was not only powered by coal. Water, human and animal muscles, plus abstract notions of energy, work, and risk both made the projection of coal-based power possible and also were transformed by it--often in ways that anticipated and persisted into the so-called 'age of oil' that would follow. This book will stimulate lots of new thinking about how our current relationships to energy sources took shape and what it might mean to transform them."--Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy "Powering Empire is an extraordinarily original account that unsettles conventional energy histories of the Middle East, which focus to a great degree on oil. What Barak shows is that it was the nineteenth century intersection of British coal exports and colonialism that helped create the infrastructural and social basis for the twentieth century's oil regime. Brilliantly insightful and marvelously written, this book reminds us of how deeply the legacy of coal continues to inform contemporary energy politics."--Dominic Boyer, author of The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era

In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, Sean W. Anthony demonstrates how critical readings of non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem can breathe new life into the historical study of Muhammad and how his message transformed the world. By placing these sources within the intellectual and cultural world of Late Antiquity, Anthony offers a fresh assessment of the earliest sources for Muhammad's life, taking readers on a grand tour of the available evidence, and suggests what new insights stand to be gained from the techniques and methods pioneered by countless scholars over the decades in a variety of fields. Muhammad and the Empires of Faith offers both an authoritative introduction to the multilayered traditions surrounding the life of Muhammad and a compelling exploration of how these traditions interacted with the broader landscape of Late Antiquity.

"Cabinet cards were America's main format for photographic portraiture through last three decades of the nineteenth century. Standardized at 6 1/2-by-4 1/4-inches, they were just large enough to reveal extensive detail, leading to the incorporation of elaborate poses, backdrops, and props. Inexpensive and sold by the dozen, they transformed getting one's portrait made from a formal event taken up once or twice in a lifetime into a commonplace practice shared with friends. The cards reinforced middle class Americans' sense of family. They allowed people to show off their material achievements and comforts, and the best cards projected an informal immediacy that encouraged viewers feel emotionally connected with those portrayed. The phenomenon even led sitters to act out before the camera. By making photographs an easygoing fact of life, the cards set the root for the snapshot and even today's photo sharing. This first-ever in-depth examination of the cabinet card phenomena, assembled by Dr. John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, takes the form of a major travelling exhibition and book. The project finds its roots in the work of New York City photography Napoleon Sarony who, starting in the 1860s, made cabinet cards his central tool for marketing the stars of the day. The project reveals how in reaction to the cards' ubiquity, photographers across the United States worked assiduously to set their businesses apart through use of elaborate, often incongruous, backdrops, overlays, and promotional advertising printed on both sides of the cards. It highlights how the cards transformed photography from a formal event into an avenue for personal expression where sitters took full advantage of photography's realism while openly playing with the medium's believability. In short, cabinet cards made photography modern. Essays by Rohrbach, Salvesen, and Pauwels address how cabinet cards reflected and encouraged the wide embrace of photography (Rohrbach), an in-depth essay on California photographer R. J. Arnold, who built a successful small-town business on the cabinet card (Salvesen), and an essay on New York City photographer Napoleon Sarony's innovative efforts using his patented Posing Apparatus"--

"By giving the African side of the story of modernism and primitivism, Joshua Cohen changes the way we think about transnational encounters in a sensitive and enlightening way. A fascinating journey through unpublished archives and visual material that leads the reader to a new understanding of twentieth-century interconnected histories. A must-read."--Maureen Murphy, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University "Cohen's study of modernism is rich in original archival research. He adopts a new, critical approach that both unpacks the ways Picasso used African sources and disaggregates the different manifestations of the notion of 'black art' across continents and across the twentieth century. It is a most fitting addition to the literature in the field."--Anitra Nettleton, Emeritus Professor, History of Art, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg