Books published by University of California Press

Nearly half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an invasive cancer-an all-too ordinary aspect of daily life. Through a powerful combination of cultural analysis and memoir, this stunningly original book explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. Amidst furious debates over its causes and treatments, scientists generate reams of data-information that ultimately obscures as much as it clarifies. Award-winning anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain deftly unscrambles the high stakes of the resulting confusion. Expertly reading across a range of material that includes history, oncology, law, economics, and literature, Jain explains how a national culture that simultaneously aims to deny, profit from, and cure cancer entraps us in a state of paradox-one that makes the world of cancer virtually impossible to navigate for doctors, patients, caretakers, and policy makers alike. This chronicle, burning with urgency and substance leavened with brio and wit, offers a lucid guide to understanding and navigating the quicksand of uncertainty at the heart of cancer. Malignant vitally shifts the terms of an epic battle we have been losing for decades: the war on cancer.

A comprehensive and analytical study of therapeutic concepts and practices in China. It traces the history of documented health care from its earliest extant records to present developments. It features a preface which details the ideological intersections between Chinese and European medicines.

Examines the built environment of Los Angeles, looking at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its traditional modes of residential and commercial building. This title also examines 'four ecologies' in the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills.

Offers a framework for understanding contemporary debates as they have evolved in Europe and the United States. From the visionary museums of Boullee in the eighteenth century to the new Guggenheim in Bilbao and beyond, this book explores various aspects of museum theory and practice: ideals and mission; architecture; the public and commercialism.

In this powerful, compassionate work, one of anthropology's most distinguished ethnographers weaves together rich fieldwork with a compelling critical analysis in a book that will surely make a signal contribution to contemporary thinking about violence and how it affects everyday life. Veena Das examines case studies including the extreme violence of the Partition of India in 1947 and the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In a major departure from much anthropological inquiry, Das asks how this violence has entered "e;the recesses of the ordinary"e; instead of viewing it as an interruption of life to which we simply bear witness. Das engages with anthropological work on collective violence, rumor, sectarian conflict, new kinship, and state and bureaucracy as she embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of the relations among violence, gender, and subjectivity. Weaving anthropological and philosophical reflections on the ordinary into her analysis, Das points toward a new way of interpreting violence in societies and cultures around the globe. The book will be indispensable reading across disciplinary boundaries as we strive to better understand violence, especially as it is perpetrated against women.

Home to the spicy Syrah, or Shiraz, and the floral Viognier grapes, the northern Rhone Valley is one of France's oldest wine-growing regions; its appellations include Hermitage, Cote-Rotie, Condrieu, Crozes-Hermitage, St-Joseph, and Chateau-Grillet. This book contains the secrets of the geology, vineyards, wines, and the growers of the region.

Takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, this title asks, 'Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?'.

A study of one of the most pivotal movements in the art of the 1957. This title seemed like an eccentric manifestation far removed from what was then considered the mainstream of modern art.

Serves as a sociological examination of art which explores the cooperative network of suppliers, performers, dealers, critics, and consumers who - along with the artist - 'produce' a work of art. This book looks at the conventions essential to this operation and, prospectively, at the extent to which art is shaped by this collective activity.

Highlights the larger meaning of what is happening to the author's subjects with an imagery that testifies to the fundamental dignity of all humanity while simultaneously protesting its violation by war, poverty, and other injustices.

An essay that outlines a perspective for the study of leadership in administrative organizations. It was written in the conviction that more reflective, theoretical discussion is needed to guide the gathering of facts that the diagnosis of troubles.

"This book is utterly indispensable to an understanding of Matisse, and therefore of early modernism as well. The original edition transformed Matisse studies by making broadly accessible as never before this great artist's writings, interviews, and other statements on the purposes of his work. This new, revised edition, with its additional texts, sharpened translations, and new annotations, will prove even more essential--as both a work of reference and as an engrossing, highly accessible introduction to the depth and diversity of Matisse's thought." --John Elderfield, Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Flam has edited Matisse . . . with close translation (thank God), admirable editorial introductions, and detailed notes to the forty-four brief pieces from forty-seven years." --Robert Motherwell, New York Times Book Review "The publication of this anthology of forty-four of Matisse's 'writings' on art is long overdue and should prove to be an extremely useful and popular addition to the growing documentary literature of twentieth-century art." --John Hallmark Neff, Burlington Magazine

Taking absolute nothingness as the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, this book examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city of Florence experienced the most creative period in her entire history. This book offers an analysis of that community, focusing on the years 1380-1450 in an examination of the city's physical character, its economic and social structure and developments, and its political and religious life.

"Although Andre Bazin died shortly before the onset of what we now regard as the modern cinema, our understanding of this cinema wouldn't be the same without him. He's also one of the most scrupulous humanists and polemicists we've had, on a par with George Orwell, and these essays map out the busy highways we're all still navigating."--Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the "Chicago Reader"

Examines houses in the small Massachusetts town of Edgartown; in Santa Barbara, California, where a commitment was made to re-create an imaginary Spanish past; and in Sea Ranch, on the northern California coast, where the authors attempt to create a community.

Brings together the various discoveries of microbiology. Of interest to general readers, this book provides a view of evolution as a process based on interdependency and their interconnectedness of life on the planet.

Presents a framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. This book contains a dialectical tension between two reciprocally related orientations: it is both a cross-cultural perspective on the components of clinical care and a clinical perspective on anthropological studies of medicine and psychiatry.

This text contains the essence of Thomas Church's design philosophy, as well as practical advice. It is illustrated by site plans and photographs of some of the 2000 gardens that Church designed during his career.

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside "favela".

Tells what really happened in history rather than simply what obviously happened.

"Jason Cons's ethnography of Bangladesh's Sundarbans is filled with fascinating insights into the multiple and often contradictory entanglements of global warming, crime, politics, development, and projected 'climate solutions.' This important work presents a detailed, ground-level portrait of the region's ongoing transformation, examining the ways in which climate change, economic uncertainty, and historical legacies are shaping its future." Amitav Ghosh, author of Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories "Both synoptic and ethnographic, Delta Futures illustrates how the Bengal Delta and its inhabitants are being 'captured' by particular actors and imaginations, struggling to navigate the 'siltscape' with ever smaller margins between climate frontier futures. A very powerful book."--Franz Krause, author of Thinking Like a River: An Anthropology of Water and Its Uses along the Kemi River, Northern Finland "In this creative and original work, Cons makes the reader think more closely about how climate change is remaking a place that could be considered a 'sentinel space' for the planetary crisis, and how people are living through it."--Nayanika Mathur, author of Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene