Books published by University of California Press

This groundbreaking collection of writings by prisoners of conscience in Egypt offers a unique lens on the global rise of authoritarianism over the last decade.   This book contains letters, poetry, and art produced by Egyptians imprisoned from the eruption of the January 25, 2011, uprising through the fall of 2023. Some are by journalists, lawyers, activists, and artists imprisoned for expressing their opposition to Egypt's authoritarian order; others are by ordinary citizens caught up in the zeal to silence any hint of challenge to state power, including bystanders whose only crime was to be near a police sweep.   Together, the contributors to Imprisoning a Revolution raise profound questions about the nature of politics both in authoritarian regimes and in their "democratic" allies, who continue to enable and support such violence. This collection offers few answers and even less consolation, but it does offer voices from behind the prison walls that remind readers of our collective obligation not to look away or remain silent. With a foreword by acclaimed Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji and an afterword with Kenyan literary giant Ngugi wa Thiong'o, this book holds a mirror not just to Egypt but to the world today, urging us to stop the rampant abuse and denial of fundamental human rights around the globe.

"No novelist captured the relentless devastation of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or the cruel treatment of the desperate 'Okies' forced to leave their homes on the Plains for California, better than Sanora Babb. In this biography, Iris Jamahl Dunkle explains why. Hardship, hunger and struggle, discrimination and stubborn prejudice, big dreams thwarted by fate and bad luck--these were also recurring elements of Babb's own remarkable personal story. But she met it all with an indomitable will, a vivaciously free spirit, and an unbending devotion to her artistic vision. Riding Like the Wind is a both heartbreaking and heroic tale that brings to vivid life an important American writer who never received the critical acclaim and commercial success she deserved."--Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, producers of The Dust Bowl "In my years of researching the lost historical stories of resilient women, few have resonated with me as much as Sanora Babb. A journalist and writer, she was a true trailblazer and a woman who deserves to be remembered for her contributions to both literature and history. This recognition and remembrance of her work is long overdue. I am thrilled that Dunkle has chosen to shine a light on the heartbreaking story of Babb's life and her remarkable novel about the Dust Bowl and the migration of workers to California during the Great Depression. I hope this book encourages readers to also read Whose Names Are Unknown, Babb's account of the period."--Kristin Hannah, author of The Four Winds and The Women "Dunkle is doing fascinating work as a biographer and cultural historian and makes it succeed because she is a brilliant and vivid storyteller."--Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States, 1995-1997 "This amazing book has changed forever my sense of what it really means to be an American. Dunkle joins today's ranks of women biographers who blow open a closed canon of novels and novelists with her keenly researched and powerfully written saga of the life and times of Sanora Babb. Babb should be read alongside Steinbeck by every high school kid--and Dunkle shows us why."--Alicia Ostriker, New York State Poet, 2018-2021 "Dunkle, through her extensive research and passion for her subject, brings Sanora Babb, a vibrant woman ahead of her times, to life. And it's about time! Dunkle captures the spirit, not just the facts, of Babb's life. By meticulously reading her letters and other unpublished material, Dunkle gets the reader inside Babb's head and motivations, revealing an even more adventurous and complex life than previously imagined. Thanks to plentiful excerpts from Babb's work, the reader experiences and understands her compassion for the outsider and her intimate connection to nature as told through her lyrical writing style. This will be a movie--no doubt."--Joanne Dearcopp, literary executor, agent, and friend of Sanora Babb

"Shirley Chisholm In Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings is a timely, detailed, and inspiring book that helps maintain the intellectual legacy of Shirley Chisholm. The book reveals new dimensions of the congresswoman's politics, activism, and spirit. As the editor, Zinga Fraser shows an understanding of Chisholm that motivates us to listen closely to her enduring voice in this political moment."--Regina King, Academy Award-winning actor and star of Shirley "There's no better way to know someone than through their own words. Fraser's book is an invaluable resource for anyone looking for insight into who Shirley Chisholm was both as a politician and as a person."--John Ridley, director and screenwriter of Shirley

Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are two of the most prominent twenty-first-century social movements in the United States. On the ground and on social media, more people have taken an active stance in support of either or both movements than almost any others in the country's history. Social Movements and the Law brings together the voices of twelve scholars and public intellectuals to explore how Black Lives Matter and #MeToo unfolded-separately and together-and how they enrich, inform, and complicate each other. Structured in dialogues and punctuated with informative text boxes, illustrations, and discussion questions, this accessible guide to an increasingly influential area of the law centers rich intersectional analysis of both movements and prompts readers to undertake further reflection and conversation. At a time of heightened public attention to the broader scholarly study of human social behavior and interaction, this book shows rather than tells how people with different perspectives can engage one another with open minds and a generosity of spirit.

"Delivered in beautiful and accessible prose that gallops, prances, and saunters with equine majesty, this genre-bending book is a compelling global history of the world people and horses made together. A captivating story that horse lovers, scholars, teachers, students, and the general public will find irresistible."--Akinwumi Ogundiran, author of The Yoruba: A New History "Working on three continents with geneticists, historians, anthropologists, and Indigenous people, William T. Taylor has been pursuing for more than a decade the story of how people and horses came together. This is a crisp, thoughtful survey of one of the most exciting new areas in the study of the human past, unraveling the secrets of one of our species' oldest, deepest, and most essential relationships."--Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and The Wizard and the Prophet "A tremendous feat. Taylor integrates a vast quantity of different kinds of data to illustrate how the relationship between humans and horses, past and present, has shaped the world we live in today--and tells a terrific story along the way."--Emily Lena Jones, coauthor of Questioning Rebound: People and Environmental Change in the Protohistoric and Early Historic Americas "The most comprehensive narrative to date about the relationship between humans and horses, a panoramic analysis of how the noble equid has led us to where we are today. No other book so succinctly describes the animal's role in the development of the global community."--Will Grant, author of The Last Ride of the Pony Express "For millennia, historians have recounted the story of the horse in bits and pieces, much of it infused with myth and romance. William Taylor thoughtfully revisits the epic story of humankind's most important partner, weaving a sweeping new tale that replaces outdated thinking with the latest scientific revelations and adds a significant contribution to the literature."--Peter Gwin, Senior Editor, National Geographic

The first comprehensive study of Cassatt's life, work, and legacy through the prism of a transatlantic framework.   This book re-envisions Mary Cassatt in the context of her transatlantic network, friendships, exhibitions, politics, and legacy. Rather than defining her as either an American artist or a French impressionist, author Ruth E. Iskin argues that we can best understand Cassatt through the complexity of her multiple identifications as an American patriot, a committed French impressionist, and a suffragist.   Contextualizing Cassatt's feminist outlook within the intense pro- and anti-suffrage debates in the United States, Iskin shows how these impacted her artistic representations of motherhood, fatherhood, and older women. Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York also argues for the historical importance of her work as an advisor to American collectors, and demonstrates the role of museums in shaping her legacy, highlighting the combined impact of gender, national, and transnational dynamics.

"A timely, consequential work from one of our greatest historians, Building the Black City is a reparative justice and urban historical tour de force."--Marcus Anthony Hunter, author of Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation "In this masterful new study, preeminent historian Joe William Trotter, Jr., provides an unflinching look at how Black people built and navigated urban spaces from the colonial period to the present. While acknowledging the devastating toll that slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have wrought in Black communities, Trotter boldly insists that our nation can never eradicate racism and implement restorative justice until we look beyond suffering--until we fully appreciate the strength, creativity, and determination of a people who unceasingly sought to make a place for themselves in the United States. In this expansive study, Trotter powerfully reminds us that Black people built cities not only to create home, community, and a sense of permanence, but also to fight against white supremacy itself."--Leslie M. Alexander, author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 "Trotter offers a capacious view of the building of the Black city from the colonial era to the present, emphasizing the creativity, resilience, and resourcefulness of its residents. He explores regional variations related to the struggles for equal citizenship, property ownership, public education, and vibrant religious and cultural institutions. A superb addition to US urban history."--Jacqueline Jones, author of No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era

"No one taught me more about poetry than Jerome Rothenberg."--Nick Cave

An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform.   Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. How can we end this cycle of trillion-dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us? Busting the Bankers' Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system-and the struggle to create an alternative. Drawing from decades of research on the history, economics, and politics of banking, economist Gerald Epstein shows that any meaningful reform will require breaking up this club of politicians, economists, lawyers, and CEOs who sustain the status quo. Thankfully, there are thousands of activists, experts, and public officials who are working to do just that. Clear-eyed and hopeful, Busting the Bankers' Club centers the individuals and groups fighting for a financial system that will better serve the needs of the marginalized and support important transitions to a greener, fairer economy.

This groundbreaking resource moves us from theory to action with a practical plan for reparations.   A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project gathers an accomplished interdisciplinary team of scholars-members of the Reparations Planning Committee-who have considered the issues pertinent to making reparations happen. This book will be an essential resource in the national conversation going forward.   The first section of The Black Reparations Project crystallizes the rationale for reparations, cataloguing centuries of racial repression, discrimination, violence, mass incarceration, and the immense black-white wealth gap. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in economics, history, law, public policy, public health, and education, the second section unfurls direct guidance for building and implementing a reparations program, including draft legislation that addresses how the program should be financed and how claimants can be identified and compensated. Rigorous and comprehensive, The Black Reparations Project will motivate, guide, and speed the final leg of the journey for justice.

A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr.   Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business-from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV-Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it?   Davis was at once a pioneering, barrier-busting, anti-Jim Crow activist and someone who was widely associated with accommodationism and wannabe whiteness. Historian Matthew Frye Jacobson attends to both threads, analyzing how industry norms, productions, scripts, roles, and audience expectations and responses were all framed by race against the backdrop of a changing America. In the spirit of better understanding Davis's life and career, Dancing Down the Barricades examines the complexities of his constraints, freedoms, and choices for what they reveal about Black history and American political culture.

"A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance."-?Publishers WeeklyA rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture.   Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form.   Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture-drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.

Edgar G. Ulmer is perhaps best known today for Detour, considered by many to be the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B-list origins. But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of his fellow Austrian and German emigre directors-Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Siodmak. Despite early work with Max Reinhardt and F. W. Murnau, his auspicious debut with Siodmak on their celebrated Weimar classic People on Sunday, and the success of films like Detour and Ruthless, Ulmer spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films that have either been overlooked or forgotten. In this fascinating and well-researched account of a career spent on the margins of Hollywood, Noah Isenberg provides the little-known details of Ulmer's personal life and a thorough analysis of his wide-ranging, eclectic films-features aimed at minority audiences, horror and sci-fi flicks, genre pictures made in the U.S. and abroad. Isenberg shows that Ulmer's unconventional path was in many ways more typical than that of his more famous colleagues. As he follows the twists and turns of Ulmer's fortunes, Isenberg also conveys a new understanding of low-budget filmmaking in the studio era and beyond.

"Makes an excellent case for Parrott as an unjustly forgotten historical figure."-The New Yorker"Remind[s] us of the brazenly talented women sidelined by convention."-New York Times The riveting biography of Ursula Parrott-best-selling author, Hollywood screenwriter, and voice for the modern woman.   Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance, and a host of new challenges facing modern women. Her best sellers, Hollywood film deals, marriages and divorces, and run-ins with the law made her a household name. Part biography, part cultural history, Becoming the Ex-Wife establishes Parrott's rightful place in twentieth-century American culture, uncovering her neglected work and keen insights into American women's lives during a period of immense social change.   Although she was frequently dismissed as a "woman's writer," reading Parrott's writing today makes it clear that she was a trenchant philosopher of modernity-her work was prescient, anticipating issues not widely raised until decades after her decline into obscurity. With elegant wit and a deft command of the archive, Marsha Gordon tells a timely story about the life of a woman on the front lines of a culture war that is still raging today.

Surviving prison as an innocent person is a surreal nightmare no one wants to think about. But it can happen to you.    Justin Brooks has spent his career freeing innocent people from prison. With You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent, he offers up-close accounts of the cases he has fought, embedding them within a larger landscape of innocence claims and robust research on what we know about the causes of wrongful convictions.   Putting readers at the defense table, this book forces us to consider how any of us might be swept up in the system, whether we hired a bad lawyer, bear a slight resemblance to someone else in the world, or are not good with awkward silence. The stories of Brooks's cases and clients paint the picture of a broken justice system, one where innocence is no protection from incarceration or even the death penalty. Simultaneously relatable and disturbing, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how injustice is served by our system.

"This wide-ranging book reveals Lawrence Kramer's command of poetry, novels, music, philosophy, history, and other topics too numerous to list. Refreshingly free of jargon, Experiencing Sound should be required reading for anyone who cares about how we understand ourselves and navigate the world through sound."--Michael L. Klein, author of Music and the Crises of the Modern Subject "Kramer ventures far off the beaten paths of sound studies. With inspiring intellectual ease, he strolls with his reader across the whole of Western cultural history, inviting us to hear music, literature, and philosophy in entirely new ways. This is the work of a master essayist."--Axel Englund, author of Deviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage

"Remarkably accessible, this book offers an authoritative history of the Gulf, boldly linking the region to the wider currents of global history."--Dale F. Eickelman, author of The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach "Simply compelling! Allen Fromherz does for the Gulf what Braudel did for the Mediterranean."--G. R. Garthwaite, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies and Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College

Showcases the wonderful world of honey from hive to jar.   A beautifully illustrated global survey of the flavor of honey, The World Atlas of Honey includes profiles of more than eighty countries and the botanical sources of honey found in each. With text, illustrations, and photos, honey expert C. Marina Marchese takes readers through the global history of honey production from the earliest beekeepers to today's harvests.   This colorful guide celebrates the exceptional range and diversity of honey, revealing how terroir-the environment in which a food is produced-influences honey's qualities just as it does for wine, olive oil, coffee, and chocolate. The book also covers the methods used by honey sommeliers to taste and evaluate honey. Unique and authoritative, The World Atlas of Honey puts honey on the culinary map and elevates it to an epicurean treasure.