Stanford University Press

Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the United States before 1970. The publication features original essays by ten leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and over 400 reproductions of artwork, ephemera, and images of the artists.

Aside from a few artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Yun Gee, artists of Asian ancestry have received inadequate historical attention, even though many of them received wide critical acclaim during their productive years. This pioneering work recovers the extraordinarily impressive artistic production of numerous Asian Americans, and offers richly informed interpretations of a long-neglected art history. To unravel the complexity of Asian American art expression and its vital place in American art, the texts consider aesthetics, the social structures of art production and criticism, and national and international historical contexts.

Without a doubt, Asian American Art will profoundly influence our understanding of the history of art in America and the Asian American experience for years to come.

Recognized as the most authoritative general account of Indonesia, this revised and expanded fourth edition has been updated in light of new scholarship. New chapters at the end of the book bring the story up to the present day, including discussion of recent events such as the 2002 Bali terrorist bombings and the 2004 tsunami.

Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the United States before 1970. The publication features original essays by ten leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and over 400 reproductions of artwork, ephemera, and images of the artists.

Aside from a few artists such as Dong Kingman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Yun Gee, artists of Asian ancestry have received inadequate historical attention, even though many of them received wide critical acclaim during their productive years. This pioneering work recovers the extraordinarily impressive artistic production of numerous Asian Americans, and offers richly informed interpretations of a long-neglected art history. To unravel the complexity of Asian American art expression and its vital place in American art, the texts consider aesthetics, the social structures of art production and criticism, and national and international historical contexts.

Without a doubt, Asian American Art will profoundly influence our understanding of the history of art in America and the Asian American experience for years to come.

In 1846 several hundred wagons set out from Independence, Missouri, to follow the California Trail nearly 2,000 miles across unpopulated prairies, up sluggish and seemingly endless rivers, and through the Rocky Mountains over the Continental Divide. There, where the water flowed west to the far Pacific, the more prudent emigrants swung north through present-day Idaho, though that was the longer way west. One group, the Donner Party, braver or more foolhardy than the rest, chose an untried route that would shorten the distance.

It did. It also subjected them to obstacles so formidable that it cost many of them their lives. Yet it preserved their names and the story of their travail down through history-crowded years. No work of fiction has rendered this remarkable epic of ordeal with more vividness and power than Richard Rhodes's novel of the Donner Party, The Ungodly.

Upon its initial printing in 1973, Rhodes's masterful tale was praised for its realistic and gripping depiction of the struggles faced by that ill-fated group of men, women, and children. Now, more than thirty years later, Stanford University Press has reissued this harrowing and haunting novel. The Ungodly is an unforgettable story of terrible hardship and awesome courage—a story that increases our understanding of what kind of people made this nation and what a full and immeasurable price they paid.

In the 1950s, ninety-five percent of patients with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of lymph tissue which afflicts young adults, died. Today most are cured, due mainly to the efforts of Dr. Henry Kaplan. Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease explores the life of this multifaceted, internationally known radiation oncologist, called a "saint" by some, a "malignant son of a bitch" by others. Kaplan's passion to cure cancer dominated his life and helped him weather the controversy that marked each of his innovations, but it extracted a high price, leaving casualties along the way. Most never knew of his family struggles, his ill-fated love affair with Stanford University, or the humanitarian efforts that imperiled him.

Today, Kaplan ranks as one of the foremost physician-scientists in the history of cancer medicine. In this book Charlotte Jacobs gives us the first account of a remarkable man who changed the face of cancer therapy and the history of a once fatal, now curable, cancer. She presents a dual drama —the biography of this renowned man who called cancer his "Moby Dick" and the history of Hodgkin's disease, the malignancy he set out to annihilate. The book recounts the history of Hodgkin's disease, first described in 1832: the key figures, the serendipitous discoveries of radiation and chemotherapy, the improving cure rates, the unanticipated toxicities. The lives of individual patients, bold enough to undergo experimental therapies, lend poignancy to the successes and failures.

Please visit the author's website at www.charlottejacobs.net.

In the 1950s, ninety-five percent of patients with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of lymph tissue which afflicts young adults, died. Today most are cured, due mainly to the efforts of Dr. Henry Kaplan. Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease explores the life of this multifaceted, internationally known radiation oncologist, called a "saint" by some, a "malignant son of a bitch" by others. Kaplan's passion to cure cancer dominated his life and helped him weather the controversy that marked each of his innovations, but it extracted a high price, leaving casualties along the way. Most never knew of his family struggles, his ill-fated love affair with Stanford University, or the humanitarian efforts that imperiled him.

Today, Kaplan ranks as one of the foremost physician-scientists in the history of cancer medicine. In this book Charlotte Jacobs gives us the first account of a remarkable man who changed the face of cancer therapy and the history of a once fatal, now curable, cancer. She presents a dual drama —the biography of this renowned man who called cancer his "Moby Dick" and the history of Hodgkin's disease, the malignancy he set out to annihilate. The book recounts the history of Hodgkin's disease, first described in 1832: the key figures, the serendipitous discoveries of radiation and chemotherapy, the improving cure rates, the unanticipated toxicities. The lives of individual patients, bold enough to undergo experimental therapies, lend poignancy to the successes and failures.

Please visit the author's website at www.charlottejacobs.net.

Part document and part visual poem, Far from Zion is the response of a young American Jew to the historical experience of Ashkenazic Jewry in the last century. In the spirit of a contemplative but unsentimental reckoning, the photographs consider the fragmentation and historical contingency of Jewish experience, the discontinuity and fragility of Jewish identity, and the uncertain meaning of diaspora as a Jewish inheritance. The result is a sequence of pictures that moves between marked and unmarked historical locations in Europe and the United States, portraits of contemporary Jews, and the events of Jewish life. An original essay, "Diasporic Investigations," elaborates the photographs' concerns.

In contrast to traditional documentary works aligned with confirmative and expository attitudes toward social testimony, this project looks to the indeterminacies of the photographic image to illuminate social experience that is itself indeterminate and elusive. By turns empathic and circumspect, quiet and pointed, the project addresses the complex actuality of diaspora in our own time.

Beyond its contribution to contemporary photography, the work also responds to Jewish photography (both by and about Jews) specifically. In contrast to the historical work of Roman Vishniac, for example, the book rejects nostalgic reclamation of vanished worlds; in contrast to the contemporary work of Frédéric Brenner, the book refrains from modish theatricality, and instead confronts the legacy of the passing Jewish century through interrogatory observation. Locating documentary photography at the intersection of history, geography, literature, and philosophy, the book promotes a dialogue between these fields through pictures.

The Cadillac story is more than the story of a car company. It is, in many ways, the story of the American automobile industry itself— which, as much as any industry, drove America’s growth in the twentieth century and defined who we are as a people: mobile and prosperous. Cadillac, again and again, played a critical role in that story, for both good and ill.

In the depths of the Great Depression, the brand redefined itself and the luxury market. After World War II, it epitomized expansive prosperity. Then, in the 1980s, it epitomized the industrial crisis that had suddenly overtaken America. Today, Cadillac’s struggle to survive in a furiously competitive—and suddenly international—automobile industry mirrors the challenges facing American industry as a whole. Its success in meeting those challenges will have much to say about the future of American industry and of General Motors.

This book brings together 57 of the best black-and-white photographs of Marion Patterson, who describes her work as “photographs of the intimate landscape, simple and contemplative like a zen garden.” The images focus on the natural surroundings of the central California coast and Sierra—rocks, waterfalls, creeks, trees, seashells, sand, driftwood, and kelp washed ashore by the tides—as well as images from the Southwest and the deserts of California. The book provides a quiet meditation on the beauty of our natural environment in a manner that reflects the author’s lifelong ties to the West Coast school of photography, deeply influenced by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Although Patterson’s work is in some sense a virtual homage to those two giant figures, what sets it distinctly apart is her ability to use some of their stylistic and technical methods to express her own individual and deeply felt responses to the natural landscape. Where so many have understood the West Coast school as a graphic or technical exercise, Patterson has grasped the expressive language that originated in photographic modernism and has used that language to the most sincere and guileless ends.

Patterson has also contributed a short introductory essay on her photographic inspiration and techniques, and endnotes that comment on a number of the plates.

Lincoln’s heritage is as rich as that of any car built anywhere in the world, and more impressive than all but a few. The Continental produced in the 1940s was one of the first cars to be universally recognized by classic car cognoscenti. The list of Lincoln-built cars in the postwar era certified with classic—or comparable “milestone”— status by various sanctioning bodies is likewise lengthy. The Mark II tops that list, but the slab-sided Continental sedans of the 1960s led the industry in design, and the forthcoming Mark 9 promises to continue the tradition.

In recent years, Lincoln has risen from an also-ran in the sales race to a leadership role opposite arch-rival Cadillac. Today, it is vying for preeminence in what has suddenly become an international market. Along the way, the cars have been unfailingly interesting, frequently magnificent and—in several instances—quite literally legends in their own time.

Few cars in history have grabbed the public’s fancy as much as the ill-fated Edsel—the Titanic of automobiles, a marketing disaster whose magnitude has made it a household word. Remarkably, there has never before been a book that tells the whole story—how the Edsel was planned, created, produced, and marketed.

This richly illustrated book is the result of years of research by an award-winning automotive historian with access to the dark reaches of the Ford Motor Company’s archives. The author also interviewed most of the original key Edsel design team stylists, who have supplied additional archival material. The result is a unique history of the Edsel program from the initial discussions in the late 1940s, through the first sketches in the mid-1950s, to the last, unlamented 1960 models.

The Edsel story, however, deals with much more than a new brand of car. It was a key component in a deadly serious corporate undertaking at Ford Motor Company following World War II. Ford wanted to remedy years of mismanagement and return the company to parity with General Motors by dramatically expanding Ford’s presence in the burgeoning medium-priced field. The Edsel was the most spectacular failure in that effort, but was only one pawn in a complex, high-stakes chess game that was a thoroughgoing disaster from start to finish.

In the case of the Edsel, the failure was the result of almost too many factors to count: poorly conceived marketing, contentious internal corporate politics, bad quality control, and, ultimately, lack of support at the higher reaches of the corporation. The greatest irony of all, though, is that the Edsel—as this book demonstrates in its surprising conclusion—was actually a modest success that deserved continued management support.

Using the expansive vernacular of black and white night photography to modify the antiquarian sensibility ordinarily brought to the study of Mexico's colonial architectures, Colonial Noir brings together the unsettling tenor of Mexico's colonial legacies with the ambiguous landscape of noir. Set against the backdrop of Baroque and Neoclassical architecture, the images in this collection draw on the aesthetics of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism to create the collection's existential tone—where the innuendo of chiaroscuro becomes an analog to the tenuous relationship between Mexico's celebrated cultural plurality and its nefarious colonial history.

Composed over a period of five years, the images in this collection reflect elements of Reid Samuel Yalom's background in modernist architectural photography and bear the subtle influence of Mexican works by Edward Weston and Paul Strand. The images also pay homage to the work of George Brassai and collections of Guillermo Kahlo and Henry Ravell that celebrate the architectural landscape of colonial Mexico. The book includes an essay by Frederick Luis Aldama, which uses ephemera of personal experience and elements of Latin American literary culture to provide an interpretive window into Yalom's work, and it includes an introduction by Santhosh Daniel, which places Yalom's work in the context of the history of photographic work on Mexico. The book also includes a foreword by the photographer Mark Citret.

This is a lavishly illustrated history of the Oregon-American Lumber Company, during its heyday one of the most important lumber firms in the Pacific Northwest. Operating from 1922 until its closure in 1957, the company provides an illuminating example of the history of lumbering in the region, showing in detail both the opportunities and problems encountered by firms seeking to exploit the area’s rich natural stands of Douglas fir. The story is enhanced by the inclusion of 285 illustrations, most of which are previously unpublished, that depict logging, railroading, and sawmilling activities, and 17 period-specific maps that give the reader a unique perspective on the growth of the company.

The lumbering industry was pivotal to America’s settlement and development, reaching its zenith in the period covered by this book, which shows how Oregon-American’s survival depended on successfully adapting to great changes in market forces and in industry structures, to natural disasters, and to economic crises like the Great Depression. Essential to the company’s objective of supplying lumber to markets in the Midwest farm belt was its relationship with the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads; accordingly, the book provides much information on the railroad networks that made timber extraction possible.

The study is based on fifteen years of archival and on-the-ground research and draws heavily on the extensive collection of Oregon-American records, notably the correspondence files of Judd Greenman, the company president who conceived and executed most of the company’s operating policies. It also includes, as sidebars, engaging oral histories related by employees, which enrich the text and provide a vivid contrast between management and employee viewpoints.

In late 1910, three American adventurers set off on a remarkable around-the-world journey by automobile. Sponsored by the Hupp Motor Car Corporation, the trip was intended to publicize the durability of the Hupmobile and help stimulate export sales.

The car was first driven from Detroit to San Francisco—a very difficult journey in its own right in 1910. From San Francisco, the car and its drivers took a steamship to Hawaii, and from there to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, unloading and touring at each port of call. The men and their machine spent the next five weeks attempting to drive through the Philippines, and then pushed on to Japan and China, where they managed to stay one step ahead of the Chinese revolution. They then drove across India, and from there, sailed to Egypt, brining the first automobile ever to be seen in that country. Next, the Hupmobilists sailed to Italy. In Rome, the adventurers met Pope Pius X, and then drove north to Germany and France. They crossed the English Channel to Folkstone, toured England, and then ferried from Liverpool to Ireland. They returned to New York in time for the 1912 auto show.

In the end, the Hupmobile was driven 41,000 miles and transported by steamship another 28,000. A new world was dawning, both for transportation and for American business enterprise.

Two questions have intrigued observers of the Lou Henry Hoover House, built at Stanford University in 1919 by Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover and now the official residence of the university’s president. Who was the building’s architect? And what was the motive for its unusual, cubic, flat-roofed, undecorated form? Although professional architects were involved in the project, this book shows that the architect was actually Lou Henry Hoover herself, who conceived the design of the house and worked out its details, using her architects largely for technical matters and to produce the drawings and supervise construction. As for the design, the book argues that it was inspired mainly by the Native American Pueblo architecture of New Mexico and Arizona. Herbert Hoover, in fact, called it a “Hopi house,” and Lou referred to her “Pueblo walls,” but the Pueblo connection was later denied by others involved in the project.

The book reveals that both of the Hoovers were interested in Native American culture, and that Lou, in particular, was fascinated with the “primitive” architecture of the non-Western world, which she had studied during the years when she and Herbert had lived and worked in Asia and elsewhere. Primitive forms did not appeal to her for their exoticism, as was typical at that time, but for the virtues she found in them. The Hoover House is a remarkable example of the contribution of non-Western or indigenous architecture to the development of modernism.

Stanford in Turmoil is a rare insider's look at one school's experience of dramatic political unrest during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It provides a unique perspective on the events that roiled the campus during this period—a period in which the author, Richard Lyman, served as the university's vice president, provost, and then president. In a cross between memoir and history, the book guides us through major cases of arson, including the destruction of the president's office, the notorious "Cambodia Spring" of 1970—when dozens of students and police were injured—and the forced resignation of another Stanford president after just nineteen months in office. Remarkably, Stanford's prestige and academic strength grew unabated throughout this time of crisis. How this came to pass is the central theme of Stanford in Turmoil.

The Sun Never Sets tells the extraordinary story of L.W. "Bill" Lane, Jr., longtime publisher of Sunset magazine, pioneering environmentalist, and U.S. ambassador. Written with Stanford historian Bertrand Patenaude, this fascinating memoir traces Sunset's profound impact on a new generation of Americans seeking opportunity and adventure in the great American West. Bill Lane was a Californian whose life spanned a vital period of the state's emergence as the embodiment (or symbol) of the country's aspirations. His recollections offer readers a rich slice of the history of California and the West in the 20th century. Recounting his boyhood move from Iowa to California after his father purchased Sunset magazine in 1928, and his subsequent rise through the ranks of Sunset, Bill Lane's memoir evokes the American West that his magazine helped to shape. It illuminates the sources of Sunset's canny appeal and its manifold influence in the four major editorial fields it covered—travel, home, gardening, and cooking—while taking readers behind the scenes of American magazine publishing in the 20th century. The Sun Never Sets also reveals the evolution of Bill Lane's views and roles as an influential environmentalist and conservationist with strong connections to the national and California state parks, and it recounts his two stints as U.S. ambassador: in Japan in the 1970s, and in Australia in the 1980s. This memoir will especially appeal to readers interested in the history of the American West, environmental conservation and preservation, and publishing.

This is a study of the famous controversy between Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, fellow explorers who quarreled over Speke's claim to have discovered the source of the Nile during their African expedition in 1857-59. Speke died of a gunshot wound, probably accidental, the day before a scheduled debate with Burton in 1864. Burton has had the upper hand in subsequent accounts. Speke has been called a “cad.” In light of new evidence and after a careful reading of duelling texts, Carnochan concludes that the case against Speke remains unproven-and that the story, as normally told, displays the inescapable uncertainty of historical narrative.

All was fair in this love-war.

KQED Radio's Michael Krasny is one of the country's leading interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. He is a writer's interviewer.

But it didn't start out that way.

In Off Mike, Krasny, host of one of public radio's most popular and intellectually compelling programs, talks of his strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor.

In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers inside his world. He gives an account of the polarizing transformation of talk radio, from his early days at KGO commercial radio, through to his current role at NPR, where he manages to keep the flow of talk in his San Francisco based show animated and politically balanced.

Forum fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the insightful and amusing vignettes and behind the scenes accounts. They will get a taste of the sharp commentary from his encounters with panels of experts, and interviews with cultural and political personalities as well as writers.

Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, died in Honolulu in 1905, shortly after surviving strychnine poisoning in San Francisco. The inquest testimony of the physicians who attended her death in Hawaii led to a coroner’s jury verdict of murder—by strychnine poisoning. Stanford University President David Starr Jordan promptly issued a press release claiming that Mrs. Stanford had died of heart disease, a claim that he supported by challenging the skills and judgment of the Honolulu physicians and toxicologist. Jordan’s diagnosis was largely accepted and promulgated in many subsequent historical accounts.

In this book, the author reviews the medical reports in detail to refute Dr. Jordan’s claim and to show that Mrs. Stanford indeed died of strychnine poisoning. His research reveals that the professionals who were denounced by Dr. Jordan enjoyed honorable and distinguished careers. He concludes that Dr. Jordan went to great lengths, over a period of nearly two decades, to cover up the real circumstances of Mrs. Stanford’s death.

This book recounts the life and achievements of Clarence King, widely recognized as one of America’s most gifted intellectuals of the nineteenth century, and a legendary figure in the American West. King’s genius, singular accomplishments, and near-death adventures unfold in a narrative centered on his personal relationship with his lifelong friend and colleague, James Gardner. The two, upon completing their studies at Yale, traveled by wagon train across the continent and worked with the California Geological Survey. King went on to establish the Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, a government mapping program that stretched across the western mountain chains from California to Wyoming. This was the precursor to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Founded in 1879, with Clarence King as its architect and first director, the USGS became the most important and influential science agency in the nation.

The adventurous aspects of conducting geological fieldwork in the West, much of them documented by letters written by King and Gardner, punctuate a book copiously illustrated with historic maps and photographs showing localities and people important to the story.

"Will there be a doctor—a good doctor—when I need one?"

This is the bedrock health care concern for Americans, encompassing as it does additional concerns about affordability, accessibility, efficiency, and specialty expertise.

Richard M. Scheffler brings an economist's insight to the question, showing how shifts in market power underlie the changes we have seen in the health workforce and how they will affect the future availability of doctors. Predicting the "right" ratio of doctors to population in the future is only a small piece of the puzzle, and one that has been the subject of much forecasting, and little agreement, over the past several decades.

In this concise and readable analysis, Scheffler goes beyond the guessing game to demonstrate that today's health care system is the product of financial influences in both the policy realm and on the ground in the offices of medical centers, HMOs, insurers, and physicians throughout America. He shows how factors such as physician income, medical training costs, and new technologies affect the specialties and geographic distribution of doctors. Scheffler then brings these findings to bear on a set of predictions for the U.S. and international physician workforce that extend five and ten years into the future. As part of his vision of tomorrow's ideal workforce, he offers a template for enhancing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the health care system overall.

In the groundbreaking second half of the book, the author, a health policy expert himself, tests his ideas in conversations with leading figures in health policy, medical education, health economics, and physician practice. Their unguarded give-and-take offers a window on the best thinking currently available anywhere. Finally, Scheffler combines their insights with his own to offer observations that will change the way health care's stakeholders should think about the future.

From the eighteenth century to the present, travellers, explorers, journalists, imaginative writers like Samuel Johnson, and legendary reggae musician Bob Marley have shared a fascination with Abyssinia. So did even earlier writers and mapmakers, who thought Abyssinia was the land of the mythical (and fabulously rich) Christian ruler, Prester John.

The principal subject of this book is the allure of the exotic, as represented by Abyssinia, to the British imagination. In addition to Johnson and Marley, some others included are the eighteenth-century Scot James Bruce, nineteenth-century explorer Richard Burton, author Evelyn Waugh, Wilfred Thesiger (best known of twentieth-century British explorers), Sylvia Pankhurst (crusading journalist and daughter of the suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst), and the contemporary Irish traveller Dervla Murphy. The author also considers the beginnings of anthropology and the variations of quest narrative in modern travel writing.

An avid sportsman, Martin Anderson first visited Kenya on a hunting safari in 1960, three years before the country gained its independence from English colonial administration. Anxious to return and be a part of Kenya's new beginning and Jomo Kenyata's encouragement of "harambee" (working together with European settlers/farmers), he partnered with a Kenya settler and started to raise cattle. Four years later and with one more partner, he accepted the government's offer to develop a vast tract of raw African bush for a game and cattle ranch. This book is a history of that grand and remarkable journey.

Galana recounts the story of the creation, achievements, and demise of the largest cattle ranch in Kenya and perhaps all of Africa. Located on an arid 2,500-square-mile tract—1 percent of all the land in Kenya—the Galana Ranch was founded in 1968. Galana introduced cattle into a region with virulent insect-borne disease, adapted the animals to the land, and bred resistant stock. It conducted scientific research into the domestication of wildlife, and aimed to manage Galana's vast natural population of elephants, lions, rhino, lesser kudu, eland, oryx, and other game to help that population attain a level the land could support. In the 1970s and 80s, however, an epidemic of poaching nearly wiped out Galana's vast elephant herds, and the ranch shut down in 1989. This engrossing memoir goes to the heart of Kenya's wildlife management issues and political challenges through a personal tale of adventure and enterprise in Africa.

Even as actresses become increasingly marginalized by Hollywood, French cinema is witnessing an explosion of female talent—a Golden Age unlike anything the world has seen since the days of Stanwyck, Hepburn, Davis, and Garbo. In France, the joy of acting is alive and well. Scores of French actresses are doing the best work of their lives in movies tailored to their star images and unique personalities. Yet virtually no one this side of the Atlantic even knows about them. Viewers who feel shortchanged by Hollywood will be thrilled to discover The Beauty of the Real.

This book showcases a range of contemporary French actresses to an audience that will know how to appreciate them—an American public hungry for the exact qualities that these women represent. To spend time with them, to admire their flashing intelligence and fearless willingness to depict life as it is lived, gives us what we're looking for in movies but so rarely find: insights into womanhood, meditations on the dark and light aspect's of life's journey, revelations and explorations that move viewers to reflect on their own lives. The stories they bring to the screen leave us feeling renewed and excited about movies again.

Based on one-on-one interviews and the viewing of numerous films, Mick LaSalle has put together a fascinating profile of recent generations of French film stars and an overview of their best work. These women's insights and words illuminate his book, which will answer once and for all the two questions Americans most often have about women and the movies: Where did all the great actresses go? And how can I see their movies?

Please visit blog.sfgate.com/mlasalle/2012/09/23/rendezvous-damerique/ to see a video discussing The Beauty of the Real at the Roxie Film Festival.