Books published by University of California Press

Latinos have been a significant presence in organized baseball from the beginning. This study on Latinos and professional baseball since the 1880s tells a story of the men who negotiated the color line at every turn - passing as 'Spanish' in the major leagues or seeking respect and acceptance in the Negro leagues.

In this photograph-driven field guide to California's spectacular wildflowers, Laird R. Blackwell expertly provides several ways to find them in bloom: by month, by place, and by flower. The month-by-month descriptions-found in no other statewide guide-suggest what to see and where to go throughout the state during the blooming season. The author also supplies more than 300 locations arranged in 10 geographical regions, highlighting 67 of his favorite places with detailed driving and walking directions and difficulty, blooming times, and lists of predominant wildflowers as well as a featured flower. The guide contains more than 650 color photographs by the author, including 600 species arranged by flower, with natural history notes and places and months to find the flower in bloom. Throughout, experienced wildflower guide Blackwell shares his love of the beautiful places and flowers he has visited throughout California.

R M Schindler's Kings Road House is celebrated as an icon of early modern architecture, but this wasn't the case when it was finished in 1922. This title focuses on the construction of the house and the people who lived, worked, and performed there, demonstrating the building's significance in the social history of Southern California.

The complex idea of "e;species"e; has evolved over time, yet its meaning is far from resolved. This comprehensive work takes a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its history from antiquity to today. John S. Wilkins explores the essentialist view, a staple of logic from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages to fairly recent times, and considers the idea of species in natural history-a concept often connected to reproduction. Tracing "e;generative conceptions"e; of species back through Darwin to Epicurus, Wilkins provides a new perspective on the relationship between philosophical and biological approaches to this concept. He also reviews the array of current definitions. Species is a benchmark exploration and clarification of a concept fundamental to the past, present, and future of the natural sciences.

"e;There is no crime for those who have Christ,"e; claimed a fifth-century zealot, neatly expressing the belief of religious extremists that righteous zeal for God trumps worldly law. This book provides an in-depth and penetrating look at religious violence and the attitudes that drove it in the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, a unique period shaped by the marriage of Christian ideology and Roman imperial power. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, Gaddis asks what religious conflict meant to those involved, both perpetrators and victims, and how violence was experienced, represented, justified, or contested. His innovative analysis reveals how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, and to advance themselves in the competitive and high-stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire.Gaddis pursues case studies and themes including martyrdom and persecution, the Donatist controversy and other sectarian conflicts, zealous monks' assaults on pagan temples, the tyrannical behavior of powerful bishops, and the intrigues of church councils. In addition to illuminating a core issue of late antiquity, this book also sheds light on thematic and comparative dimensions of religious violence in other times, including our own.

The enigmatic personal qualities that marked Sun Yat-sen during his lifetime have encouraged controversy concerning him ever since his death more than a generation ago. This book deals with the first forty years of Sun's life, and attempts to find the key to this controversial personality.

"Karin Zitzewitz's Infrastructure and Form represents an important contribution to the literature on global contemporary art, making a crucial argument about the importance of infrastructure to the formats, themes, materials, and very forms of contemporary art."--Ming Tiampo, Professor of Art History, Carleton University "Infrastructure and Form marks a signal intervention by rigorously articulating an approach via 'infrastructure.' Through this lens, we see the art between 1991 and 2008 as emergent from and embedded in institutions, funders, physical spaces, nation-states, and the intimate networks of friendship and gossip. Infrastructure and Form thoroughly reinvigorates art historical study of this important period and its vibrant art infrastructures."--Rebecca M. Brown, Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Includes interviews that capture 'live' the intense racial tension of 1968 as people talk with unusual candor about their deepest fears and prejudices. This book reveals the paradoxical realities wrought by three decades of tumultuous racial change.