Heyday

An essential resource for outdoor enthusiasts in California.

With his vibrant photographs and lively writing, Matt Ritter takes the reader on a journey through the Golden State's iconic landscapes and abundant plant life.

This definitive guide includes:

• Over 300 pages with more than 500 species described and photographed
  
• More than 1,000 full-color photographs and 150 species range maps
• Detailed descriptions and fascinating natural history stories
• California tree identification flowchart
• Wildflower identification color guide
• Detailed glossary and comprehensive index

A portion of the proceeds from each book supports the California Native Plant Society and The Wildlands Conservancy. The book features a foreword by Jerry Brown, former Governor of California.

Now in paperback, Pulitzer-winning novelist Jane Smiley's first nonfiction volume on writing since 2005’s best-selling Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.

"Smiley gives educators, readers, and writers much to discuss. Highly recommended." —Library Journal, starred review

"Line for line, Smiley delivers such clear, vibrant, precise prose—handed forth as calmly and equitably as an ice cream cone, even when she’s incensed—that a reader feels smarter just taking it in." —The Boston Globe

Long acclaimed as one of America’s preeminent novelists, Jane Smiley is also an exquisite observer of the craft of writing. In The Questions That Matter Most this Pulitzer Prize–winning writer offers penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. Beginning with a personal introduction tracing Smiley's migration from Iowa to California, the author reflects on her findings in the varied literature of the Golden State, whose writers have for decades pondered the West's contested legacies of racism, class conflict, and sexual politics. As she considers the ambiguity of character and the weight of history, her essays provide fresh entry points into literature, and we lucky readers can see how Smiley draws inspiration from across the literary spectrum to invigorate her own writing. With enthusiasm and meticulous attention, Smiley dives beneath surface-level interpretations to examine the works of Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldór Laxness, and Jessica Mitford. Throughout, Smiley seeks to think harder and, in her words, with "more clarity and nuance" about the questions that matter most.

An all-access guide to the abundant natural splendor of Sonoma County.

Wild Sonoma celebrates the spectacular and resilient natural landscapes of Sonoma County, which along with its neighboring counties is one of the world’s premier winegrowing regions.  Our exploration launches with an entertaining primer on ecology basics, including the impact of fire, before a fun fact–filled survey of sixty-two of the area’s iconic and commonly encountered species—from vivacious acorn woodpeckers to disease-neutralizing Western fence lizards. It caps off with a tour of six sites to experience Sonoma’s diverse natural beauty, with a special emphasis on access. Written by Wild LA author Charles Hood, introduced by renowned naturalist Jane Goodall, and illustrated by John Muir Laws, Wild Sonoma offers residents and tourists from eight to eighty a sense of wonder and cause for hope.

The first book about the Nobel Laureate's transformative but conflicted time in the Golden State.

"There is much to learn from this book about Miłosz and California, yes, but also about poetry and the world."—Ilya Kaminsky

Czesław Miłosz, one of the greatest poets and thinkers of the past hundred years, is not generally considered a Californian. But the Nobel laureate spent four decades in Berkeley—more time than any other single place he lived—and he wrote many of his most enduring works there. This is the first book to look at his life through a California lens. Filled with original research and written with the grace and liveliness of a novel, it is both an essential volume for his most devoted readers and a perfect introduction for newcomers.

Miłosz was a premier witness to the sweep of the twentieth century, from the bombing of Warsaw in World War II to the student protests of the sixties and the early days of the high-tech boom. He maintained an open-minded but skeptical view of American life, a perspective shadowed by the terrors he experienced in Europe. In the light of recent political instability and environmental catastrophe, his poems and ideas carry extra weight, and they are ripe for a new generation of readers to discover them. This immersive portrait demonstrates what Miłosz learned from the Golden State, and what Californians can learn from him.

"[Jonathan Taplin] was the one who made Mean Streets and The Last Waltz possible, for which I will always be grateful. We had quite a few adventures on both projects, and they’re all chronicled in this memoir of his colorful life in show business." —Martin Scorsese

"The Magic Years reads like a Magical Mystery Tour of music, loss, beauty, family, justice, and social upheaval." —Rosanne Cash

Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts—from the folk scene to Woodstock, Hollywood’s rebellious film movement, and beyond. Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground.

With cameos by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Martin Scorsese, and countless other icons, The Magic Years is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism. Taplin offers a clear-eyed roadmap of how we got here and makes a convincing case for art’s power to deliver us from “passionless detachment” and rekindle our humanism.

In this groundbreaking and meticulously field-tested guide, the rich variety of Sierra life—trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, and insects—comes alive.

"There are lots of Sierra field guides, some specialized, some general, but this is the best both for beauty and usefulness." —Kim Stanley Robinson

Easy-to-use features include:

• Intuitive organization, color tabs, and simple keys
• Similar-looking species side by side
• Over 2,800 full-color illustrations
• Range maps of species that are otherwise difficult to distinguish
• Index of common and scientific names
• Lightweight and compact—ideal for backpacking

Impressively detailed and comprehensive, the guide includes:

• More than 1,700 species
• Descriptions of behavior, adaptations, and interactions between species
• Species and topics not found in most guides, including aquatic life, spiders and webs, plankton, plant galls, bark beetle galleries, animal tracks and evidence, seasonal star charts, weather patterns, and cloud formations

Since it was first published in 1975, Ecotopia has inspired readers throughout the world with its vision of an ecologically and socially sustainable future. This fortieth-anniversary edition includes Ernest Callenbach's final essay, “An Epistle to the Ecotopians,” and a new foreword by Callenbach's close friend and publisher, Malcolm Margolin.

Selected by NYU as one of the century's best books of American journalism.

Gathered in this volume are seven long-form articles that John Steinbeck wrote in 1936 for The San Francisco News about the plight of migrant farmworkers during the Dust Bowl, accompanied by photographs by Dorothea Lange and others. Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California, creating unforgettable portraits of once strong, independent farmers reduced to misery. The inquisitiveness and outrage of an investigative reporter combined with the expressive powers of a novelist in his prime fueled The Harvest Gypsies, which in turn furnished the factual and emotional roots for The Grapes of Wrath and has long been hailed as an American classic in its own right.

“Whether you are an experienced birder or just learning natural history, this book will deepen your sense of place and open insights to beauty, wonder, and connection to the natural world.”—John Muir Laws, author of The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada

A richly illustrated birding guide to the nation’s first official wildlife refuge.

"Beautifully illustrated and written, this is a must-have for anyone who wants to better understand and appreciate our neighbors." —Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing

This charming full-color field guide introduces us to fifteen waterbirds easily found in the urban wildlife refuge of Lake Merritt. In his introduction, author-illustrator Alex Harris includes a history of the lake, providing context for a place that is alluring to humans and shorebirds alike. Each species profile of the lake’s feathered residents is accompanied by a beautiful, detailed watercolor that captures the bird’s distinctive coloring and sinuous physicality. The black-crowned night heron, Oakland’s official city bird, stares with its startling orange eyes, while the American coot flexes its fancy, flared feet. Along with straightforward notes on the identification of each bird, Harris features the voices of Oakland community members, sharing moments of delight from the birds’ most dedicated observers. A celebration of avian life and the human pleasure of witnessing it, Birds of Lake Merritt is an essential guide to the natural world in the heart of the city.

The first-ever comprehensive book devoted to helping educators use nature journaling as an inspiring teaching tool to engage young people with wild places.

In their workshops, John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren are often asked the how-tos of teaching nature journaling: how to manage student groups in the outdoors, teach drawing skills (especially from those who profess to have none), connect journaling to educational standards, and incorporate journaling into longer lessons. This book, expanding on the philosophy and methods of The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling puts together curriculum plans, advice, and in-the-field experience so that educators of all stripes can leap into journaling with their students. The approaches are designed to work in a range of ecosystems and settings, and are suitable for classroom teachers, outdoor educators, camp counselors, and homeschooling parents.

Full-color illustrations and sample journal pages from notable naturalists show how to put each lesson into practice. Field-tested by over a hundred educators, this book includes dozens of activities that easily support the Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards—and, just as important, it will show kids and mentors alike how to recognize the wonder and intrigue in their midst.

Despite the impact Lake Tahoe has had on America, environmental threats loom large, and Tahoe Blue—a term that Lankford uses to encompass the whole range of life, beauty, and meaning the lake represents—grows increasingly vulnerable. In Tahoe beneath the Surface, human history and natural history combine in a most engaging way, one that will both inform and inspire all who would keep Tahoe blue.

Naturalist John Muir Laws has adapted his painted-from-life flower illustrations from The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada into a lightweight yet durable guidebook to the area's florae.

From sprawling fields of showy hillside poppies, lupines, and paintbrushes in the foothills to orchids, lilies, and primroses in the higher meadows of our national parks, the Sierra Nevada is one of the premier wildflower destinations in California. Sierra Wildflowers includes the most common species that you will encounter, with fully updated common and scientific names. Flowers are organized by color and shape, making identification easy for flower enthusiasts of all experience levels.

Winner, Carter G. Woodson Book Award

Winner, New-York Historical Society Children’s Book Prize

Winner, Social Justice Literature Award

Honor Title, Jane Addams Children’s Book Award

Finalist, 2017 Cybils Awards

Nominee, Georgia Children’s Book Award

Nominee, Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award

Nominee, South Carolina Junior Book Award

A Kirkus Best Book of the Year

An Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California Outstanding Title

Fred Korematsu liked listening to music on the radio, playing tennis, and hanging around with his friends—just like lots of other Americans. But everything changed when the United States went to war with Japan in 1941 and the government forced all people of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes on the West Coast and move to distant prison camps. This included Fred, whose parents had immigrated to the United States from Japan many years before. But Fred refused to go. He knew that what the government was doing was unfair. And when he got put in jail for resisting, he knew he couldn't give up.

Inspired by the award-winning book for adults Wherever There's a Fight, the Fighting for Justice series introduces young readers to real-life heroes and heroines of social progress. The story of Fred Korematsu's fight against discrimination explores the life of one courageous person who made the United States a fairer place for all Americans, and it encourages all of us to speak up for justice.

Thirteen autobiographical accounts of language revitalization, ranging from Irish Gaelic to Mohawk, Kawaiisu to Māori, are brought together by Leanne Hinton, professor emerita of linguistics at UC Berkeley, who for decades has been leading efforts to preserve the rich linguistic heritage of the world. Those seeking to save their language will find unique instruction in these pages; everyone who admires the human spirit will find abundant inspiration.

John Muir Laws's guide to drawing birds is itself winged, soaring between a devotion not only to art but also to the lives, forms, and postures of the birds themselves.

Here, artistic technique and the exquisite details of natural history intertwine, and drawing becomes the vehicle for seeing. As Laws writes, "To draw feathers, you must understand how feathers grow, overlap, and insert into the body. To create the body, you must have an understanding of the bird’s skeletal structure. To pose this skeleton, you must be able to perceive the energy, intention, and life of the bird."

This how-to guide will perfect the technique of serious artists but also, perhaps more importantly, it will provide guidance for those who insist they can’t draw. Leading the mind and hand through a series of detailed exercises, Laws delivers what he promises: that "drawing birds opens you to the beauty of the world." An Audubon Book.

More journaling titles by John Muir Laws:

• The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling
• How to Teach Nature Journaling
• The Laws Sketchbook for Nature Journaling

A galvanizing road trip across California's immense public wilderness from a beloved adventurer.

It all began with a camping trip. Outdoor enthusiast Josh Jackson had never heard of "BLM land" before a casual recommendation from a friend led him to a free campsite in the desert—and the revelation that over 15 million acres of land in California are owned collectively by the people. In The Enduring Wild, he takes us on a road trip spanning thousands of miles, crisscrossing the Golden State to seek out every parcel of public wilderness therein belonging to the federal Bureau of Land Management, from the Pacific shores of the King Range down to the Mojave Desert. Over mountains, across prairies, and through sagebrush, Jackson unravels the stories of these lands. He tells of the Indigenous peoples who have called them home for millennia, of the extractivist threats that imperil them today, and of the grassroots organizers and political champions who have rallied to their common defense to uphold the radical mandate to protect these natural treasures for generations to come. For the adventurers, campers, explorers, map readers, road trippers, nature enthusiasts, and public lands lovers out there, The Enduring Wild is an indispensable invitation to know these places more deeply and to embrace our common inheritance. Illustrations by Rebekah Nolan.

Take a road trip through deep time and California history, with a friendly expert geologist at the wheel.

From its epic earthquakes to its famed epithet "the Golden State," California as we know it would not exist without geology. Gary L. Prost, an expert geologist born and raised in California, embarked on a quest to better understand the state's rocky history. His road trips have culminated in Rocks and Riches, an accessible and entertaining look at the land that has shaped the lives of all Californians. With humor and abiding curiosity, Prost examines the workings of deep time, the fascinating and troubled legacies of the Gold Rush, and the ways geology continues to influence life in California today. Visiting 56 stops of geologic interest, he traverses the Marin and Sonoma coasts, the Central Valley, the Sierra Foothills, Yosemite, and the Basin and Range country, ending with an extended journey through Death Valley to meditate on the awe-inspiring intensity of California's deserts. Including dozens of illustrations and road maps, as well as guidance for fellow travelers, Rocks and Riches is both a practical handbook and an invitation to see California's landscapes with wonder.

Lauded essayist takes to the high seas in hot pursuit of elusive birds, artistic ghosts, fathers and their memories, and above all, safe harbor.

"Among nature writers now working, Charles Hood may be my favorite." —Jonathan Franzen

Charles Hood is on a boat, wearing at least two life jackets as he scans the sky for seabirds and plumbs the depths of his—and our—relationship with the vast Pacific Ocean. Winner of the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for his collection of essays A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature, Hood now brings his irrepressible curiosity to the lives of petrels, frigate birds, sea snakes, and flying fish. During our voyage, he resurrects Melville's journey on tempestuous seas to San Francisco, takes us into the storm-tossed minds and paintings of J. M. W. Turner and Winslow Homer, and surfaces the trauma—still reverberating—to ocean and family ecologies alike from World War II. As sharp and witty as ever, Hood also turns his scrutiny on a more personal history, navigating murky waters of harm and forgiveness, love and entrapment. Full of wonder, joy, and terror at the shared capacity of the ocean and the humans on its edges to nurture life and damage it irreparably, this book is a vessel, seaworthy and transportive.

Now in paperback: a gripping, witty travel memoir that offers "a fascinating look at voluntourism from an Indigenous perspective" (Book Riot)

"Ursula Pike's memoir is unlike any other I've read, with her perceptive, always-seeking, and lovely narrative voice." —Susan Straight, author of Mecca

"This book is alive with a spirit that welcomed mine to meet it." —Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

When she was twenty-five, Ursula Pike boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her term of service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karuk Tribe, Pike sought to make meaningful connections with Indigenous people halfway around the world. But she arrived in La Paz with trepidation as well as excitement, "knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had also claimed they were there to help." In the following two years, as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to a boiling point, she began to ask: What does it mean to have experienced the effects of colonialism firsthand, and yet to risk becoming a colonizing force in turn? An Indian Among los Indígenas, Pike's memoir of this experience, upends a canon of travel memoirs that has historically been dominated by white writers. It is a sharp, honest, and unnerving examination of the shadows that colonial history casts over even the most well-intentioned attempts at cross-cultural aid. With masterful deadpan wit, it signals a shift in travel writing that is long overdue.

Now in paperback: This San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and California Book Award finalist drills down into Oakland's geological history and its impacts on the city's urban present.

"This book has turned me into a newcomer to my own city, but has also changed the way I will view any landscape. I can think of few greater gifts than that."—Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing and Saving Time

"Spending time with Andrew Alden is like giving yourself x-ray eyes." —Roman Mars, host and creator of 99% Invisible

Beneath Oakland's streets and underfoot of every scurrying creature atop them, rocks roil, shift, crash, and collide in an ever-churning seismological saga. In Deep Oakland, geologist Andrew Alden excavates the ancient story of Oakland's geologic underbelly and reveals how its silt, soil, and subterranean sinews are intimately entwined with its human history—and future. Poised atop a world-famous fault line now slumbering, Alden charts how these quaking rocks gave rise to the hills and the flats; how ice-age sand dunes gave root to the city's eponymous oak forests; how the Jurassic volcanoes of Leona Heights gave way to mining boom times; how Lake Merritt has swelled and disappeared a dozen times over the course of its million-year lifespan; and how each epochal shift has created the terrain cradling Oaklanders today. With Alden as our guide—and with illustrations by Laura Cunningham, author of A State of Change—we see that just as Oakland is a human crossroads, a convergence of cultures from the world over, so too is the bedrock below, carried here from parts still incompletely known.

The author of California Snakes and How to Find Them invites budding reptile enthusiasts into a wonderland of lizards.

Lizards: they are cute, endearing, and mind-bogglingly diverse, and yet they are so easy to overlook among California’s natural abundance. Start watching them, though, and a wonderland of lizard life appears. In California Lizards and How to Find Them, lizard lover Emily Taylor profiles over 60 native and introduced species, from California's iconic Western Fence Lizard to the adorable Desert Iguana to the chonky Ringed Wall Gecko. With her expert knowledge and joyous, laugh-out-loud writing, Taylor provides tips for finding, watching, and responsibly catching lizards. She offers absorbing insights on lizard evolution, and she explains the toll of invasive lizard species on California's ecosystems. Featuring more than 100 full-color photographs, and designed for easy use in everyday life, this is the ideal guide for budding reptile enthusiasts and longtime naturalists alike.

Now in paperback: "A profound alternative institutional history, one that sees the long arm of institutional racism implicated everywhere." (Publishers Weekly)

"This is a land acknowledgment." —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography: Essays towards Liberation

"The Scandal of Cal is a template for scrutinizing other land-grant universities … This is a beautifully written and heartbreaking narrative." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

The University of California, Berkeley—widely known as "Cal"—is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university's roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley's history. Platt looks unflinchingly at the university's desecration of graves and large-scale hoarding of Indigenous remains. He tracks its role in developing the racist pseudoscience of eugenics in the early twentieth century. He sheds light on the school's complicity with the military-industrial complex and its incubation of unprecedented violence through the Manhattan Project. And he underscores its deliberate and continued evasions about its own wrongdoings, which echo in the institution's decision-making up to the present day. This book, above all, illuminates Cal's culpability in some of the cruelest chapters of US history and sounds a clarion call for the university to undertake a thorough and earnest reckoning with its past. It is required reading for Cal alumni, students, faculty, and staff, and for anyone concerned with the impact of higher education in the United States and beyond.

"[Jonathan Taplin] was the one who made Mean Streets and The Last Waltz possible, for which I will always be grateful. We had quite a few adventures on both projects, and they’re all chronicled in this memoir of his colorful life in show business." —Martin Scorsese

"The Magic Years reads like a Magical Mystery Tour of music, loss, beauty, family, justice, and social upheaval." —Rosanne Cash

Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts—from the folk scene to Woodstock, Hollywood’s rebellious film movement, and beyond. Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground.

With cameos by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Martin Scorsese, and countless other icons, The Magic Years is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism. Taplin offers a clear-eyed roadmap of how we got here and makes a convincing case for art’s power to deliver us from “passionless detachment” and rekindle our humanism.

Delight in the Sierra Nevada’s diverse avifauna with this long-awaited field guide.

Identify and learn about over two hundred and fifty birds of the Sierra Nevada. From tiniest hummingbirds to condors with nine-foot wingspans; from lower-elevation wrens to the rasping nutcrackers of the High Sierra; from urban House Sparrows to wild water–loving American Dippers, Hansen’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Sierra Nevada showcases artist-naturalist Keith Hansen’s sixteen-year project to illustrate the birds of the Sierra Nevada. Paired with stunningly detailed portraits is text informed by decades of birding experience—prose that while firmly grounded in expertise will nonetheless delight readers with its whimsy, allusion, and affection. Take the Bufflehead: "A diminutive and endearing diving duck," which moves "with spirited abandon." Or the "scrappy and antagonistic" Merlin, "holding dominion over winter skies, tormenting eagles, hawks, and vultures alike." The White-tailed Kite is "angelic in poise, a streamlined bird of unblemished tailoring"; the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher sports a black eye-to-eye brow, imparting a "Frida Kahlo–like stare." This book is the field guide companion to the Birds of the Sierra Nevada: Their Natural History, Status, and Distribution, also coauthored by Edward C. Beedy and illustrated by Keith Hansen (University of California Press, 2013).

A gripping, witty memoir about indigeneity, travel, and colonialism.

"Ursula Pike's memoir is unlike any other I've read, with her perceptive, always-seeking, and lovely narrative voice." —Susan Straight, author of Mecca

"This book is alive with a spirit that welcomed mine to meet it." —Elissa Washuta, author of White Magic

When she was twenty-five, Ursula Pike boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her term of service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karuk Tribe, Pike sought to make meaningful connections with Indigenous people halfway around the world. But she arrived in La Paz with trepidation as well as excitement, 'knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had also claimed they were there to help.' In the following two years, as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to boiling point, she began to ask: what does it mean to have experienced the effects of colonialism firsthand, and yet to risk becoming a colonizing force in turn?

An Indian Among los Indígenas, Pike’s memoir of this experience, upends a canon of travel memoirs that has historically been dominated by white writers. It is a sharp, honest, and unnerving examination of the shadows that colonial history casts over even the most well-intentioned attempts at cross-cultural aid. It is also the debut of an exceptionally astute writer with a mastery of deadpan wit. It signals a shift in travel writing that is long overdue.

The unlikely but true story of the Japanese American Citizens League's fight for an official government apology and compensation for the imprisonment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

Author John Tateishi, himself the leader of the JACL Redress Committee for many years, is first to admit that the task was herculean in scale. The campaign was seeking an unprecedented admission of wrongdoing from Congress. It depended on a unified effort but began with an acutely divided community: for many, the shame of "camp" was so deep that they could not even speak of it; money was a taboo subject; the question of the value of liberty was insulting. Besides internal discord, the American public was largely unaware that there had been concentration camps on US soil, and Tateishi knew that concessions from Congress would come only with mass education about the government's civil rights violations.

Beyond the backroom politicking and verbal fisticuffs that make this book a swashbuckling read, Redress is the story of a community reckoning with what it means to be both culturally Japanese and American citizens; how to restore honor; and what duty it has to protect such harms from happening again. This book has powerful implications as the idea of reparations shapes our national conversation.

A bracing, original look at the connected histories of real estate, institutionalized racism, and our political polarization

A landmark history told with supreme narrative skill, Freedom to Discriminate uncovers realtors’ definitive role in segregating America and shaping modern conservative thought. Gene Slater follows this story from inside the realtor profession, drawing on many industry documents that have remained unexamined until now. His book traces the increasingly aggressive ways realtors justified their practices, how they successfully weaponized the word “freedom” for their cause, and how conservative politicians have drawn directly from realtors’ rhetoric for the past several decades. Much of this story takes place in California, and Slater demonstrates why one of the very first all-white neighborhoods was in Berkeley, and why the state was the perfect place for Ronald Reagan’s political ascension.

The hinge point in this history is Proposition 14, a largely forgotten but monumentally important 1964 ballot initiative. Created and promoted by California realtors, the proposition sought to uphold housing discrimination permanently in the state’s constitution, and a vast majority of Californians voted for it. This vote had explosive consequences—ones that still inform our deepest political divisions today—and a true reckoning with the history of American racism requires a closer look at the events leading up to it. Freedom to Discriminate shatters preconceptions about American segregation, and it connects many seemingly disparate aspects of the nation’s history in a novel and galvanizing way.

A historical biography of a radical relationship at the dawn of the 20th Century.

In eyewitness testimonies and hundreds of remarkable photographs, The Battle for People's Park, Berkeley 1969 commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most searing conflicts that closed out the tumultuous 1960s: the Battle for People's Park. In April 1969, a few Berkeley activists planted the first tree on a University of California-owned, abandoned city block on Telegraph Avenue. Hundreds of people from all over the city helped build the park as an expression of a politics of joy. The University was appalled, and warned that unauthorized use of the land would not be tolerated; and on May 15, which would soon be known as Bloody Thursday, a violent struggle erupted, involving thousands of people. Hundreds were arrested, martial law was declared, and the National Guard was ordered by then-Governor Ronald Reagan to crush the uprising and to occupy the entire city. The police fired shotguns against unarmed students. A military helicopter gassed the campus indiscriminately, causing schoolchildren miles away to vomit. One man died from his wounds. Another was blinded. The vicious overreaction by Reagan helped catapult him into national prominence. Fifty years on, the question still lingers: Who owns the Park?

Heyday is proud to present a paperback of the six editorials, brought up to date with an introduction by Davan Maharaj, The Times’s publisher and editor-in-chief, and by Nicholas Goldberg, the paper’s editor of the editorial pages. When read in sequence the arguments gain force and momentum, delivering a formidable and indispensable critique by one of America’s most important newspapers.

Many books have chronicled the experience of Japanese Americans in the early days of World War II, when over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were taken from their homes along the West Coast and imprisoned in concentration camps. When they were finally allowed to leave, a new challenge faced them—how do you resume a life so interrupted?

For most, going home meant learning to live in a hostile, racist environment. Some returned to find they had lost their homes and had little choice but to bide their time in transitional housing, including community halls, churches, housing projects, and tent camps. Their employment options were also limited; they often worked as domestics, dishwashers, and field laborers to help support their families. The effects of these experiences reverberate to this day, and Making Home from War reaches into the past, melds together what was once hidden, and tells the often neglected or hushed story of what happened after the war.

With honesty and an eye for detail, Making Home from War is the long-awaited sequel to the award-winning From Our Side of the Fence. Written by twelve Japanese American elders who gathered regularly at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, Making Home from War is a collection of stories about their exodus from concentration camps into a world that in a few short years had drastically changed. In order to survive, they found the resilience they needed in the form of community, and gathered reserves of strength from family and friends. Through a spectrum of conflicting and rich emotions, Making Home from War demonstrates the depth of human resolve and faith during a time of devastating upheaval.

Complete with family stories and photos, this elegant memoir illuminates a world of sustainable bounty—full of abalone, salmon, seaweed, and strawberries. It is at once a pleasure to read and a lesson in survival: the survival of the foods and of the people themselves.