UC Press - History New Titles

Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence by Mary Margaret Steedly

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

On August 17, 1945, Indonesia proclaimed its independence from Dutch colonial rule. Five years later, the Republic of Indonesia was recognized as a unified, sovereign state. The period in between was a time of aspiration, mobilization, and violence, in which nationalists fought to expel the Dutch while also trying to come to grips with the meaning of independence. Rifle Reports is an ethnographic history of this extraordinary time as it was experienced on the outskirts of the nation among Karo Batak villagers in the rural highlands of North Sumatra....
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Surfaces: A History by Joseph A. Amato

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Human beings are surrounded by surfaces: from our skin to faces, to the walls and streets of our homes and cities, to the images, books, and screens of our cultures and civilizations, to the natural world and what we imagine beyond. In this thought-provoking and richly textured book, Joseph A. Amato traces the human relationship with surfaces from the deep history of human evolution, which unfolded across millennia, up to the contemporary world. Fusing his work on Dust and On Foot, he shows how, in the last two centuries, our understanding, creation, control, and manipulation of surfaces has become truly revolutionary--in both scale and volume....
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Trailblazer: A Biography of Jerry Brown by Chuck McFadden

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In this first biography of Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. in more than thirty years, Chuck McFadden explores the unique persona of one of the most idiosyncratic politicians in California history. Son of California political royalty who forged his own political style against the tumultuous backdrop of a huge, balkanized state--and shoved to and fro by complex currents--Jerry Brown plumbed his visionary impulses as well as his grandiose ambitions. McFadden traces Brown's childhood in San Francisco, his time studying for the priesthood, his unusual political career, and his romances--including a long-term relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt....
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Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic by Edited by Karen Wilson

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Influenced by popular notions that the West is a place of vanishing Jews and disappearing Judaism, most people draw a blank at the words Los Angeles Jew. Yet, the region is home to the second largest number of Jews in North America, and boasts the fourth largest Jewish population in the world, behind only Tel Aviv, New York City, and Jerusalem. This book, and its companion exhibition at the Autry National Center, reveals how Los Angeles has shaped Jewish identities and how Jewish Angelenos have shaped the metropolis....
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Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children by Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In this incisive examination of lead poisoning during the past half century, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner focus on one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. Lead Wars details how the nature of the epidemic has changed and highlights the dilemmas public health agencies face today in terms of prevention strategies and chronic illness linked to low levels of toxic exposure. The authors use the opinion by Maryland's Court of Appeals--which considered whether researchers at Johns Hopkins University's prestigious Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) engaged in unethical research on 108 African-American children--as a springboard to ask fundamental questions about the practice and future of public health....
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California in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the Golden State by Federal Writers Project of the Works Pro

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Alive with the exuberance, contradictions, and variety of the Golden State, this Depression-era guide to California is more than 700 pages of information that is, as David Kipen writes in his spirited introduction, anecdotal, opinionated, and altogether habit-forming. Describing the history, culture, and roadside attractions of the 1930s, the WPA Guide to California features some of the very best anonymous literature of its era, with writing by luminaries such as San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth, composer-writer- hobo Harry Partch, and authors Tillie Olsen and Kenneth Patchen.
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San Diego in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to America's Finest City by Federal Writers Project of the Works Pro

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

San Diego in the 1930s offers a lively account of the city's culture, roadside attractions, and history--from the days of the Spanish missions to the pre-Second World War boom. The guide is revealing both in the opinions it embodies and in the juicy details it records--tidbits such as the bloodiest and most incompetently fought battle of the Mexican-American War, Emma Goldman's abruptly terminated speech to local Wobblies in 1912, and even a delightfully anachronistic way to beat a San Diego speeding ticket....
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Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946) by David G. Marr

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Amidst the revolutionary euphoria of August 1945, most Vietnamese believed that colonialism and war were being left behind in favor of independence and modernization. The late-September British-French coup de force in Saigon cast a pall over such assumptions. Ho Chi Minh tried to negotiate a mutually advantageous relationship with France, but meanwhile told his lieutenants to plan for a war in which the nascent state might have to survive without allies. In this landmark study, David Marr evokes the uncertainty and contingency as well as coherence and momentum of fast-paced events....
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Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan by Louise Young

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In Beyond the Metropolis, Louise Young looks at the emergence of urbanism in the interwar period, a global moment when the material and ideological structures that constitute the city took their characteristic modern shape. In Japan, as elsewhere, cities became the staging ground for wide ranging social, cultural, economic, and political transformations. The rise of social problems, the formation of a consumer marketplace, the proliferation of streetcars and streetcar suburbs, and the cascade of investments in urban development reinvented the city as both socio-spatial form and set of ideas....
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Iron Muse: Photographing the Transcontinental Railroad by Glenn Willumson

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865-1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country's two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. But it was through the power of images--and especially the photograph--that the railroad attained its iconic status. Iron Muse provides a unique look at the production, distribution, and publication of images of the transcontinental railroad: from their use as an official record by the railroad corporations, to their reproduction in the illustrated press and travel guides, and finally to their adaptation to direct sales and albums in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries....
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Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall by Kristin Ann Hass

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

For the city's first two hundred years, the story told at Washington DC's symbolic center, the National Mall, was about triumphant American leaders. Since 1982, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated, the narrative has shifted to emphasize the memory of American wars. In the last thirty years, five significant war memorials have been built on, or very nearly on, the Mall. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, The National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During WWII, and the National World War II Memorial have not only transformed the physical space of the Mall but have also dramatically rewritten ideas about U....
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