Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast
Episodes
Christina Schwenkel, "Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi" (U California Press, 2025)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In an era dominated by visual information, what can the sounds of a pandemic reveal about crisis and care? How might attuning to sonic atmospheres unc...
Patricia B. O'Hara, "Food Chemistry in Small Bites: The Alchemist in the Kitchen" (U California Press, 2025)
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Food Chemistry in Small Bites takes readers on an up-close scientific journey through the transformation of food when meals are prepared. Organized i...
James Lin, "The Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan" (U California Press, 2025)
25 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a small state to imagine itself as a model for the developing world? And how were these visions of agrarian development received...
Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)
21 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction considers nonfiction filmmakers and film collectives whose work advances an understanding of land as a locus of s...
Jake Nabel, "The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstanding in Roman-Parthian Relations" (U California Press, 2025)
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of the common era, the two major imperial powers of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East were Rome and Parthia. In this (open...
Manuela Ceballos, "Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2025)
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Manuela Ceballos’ new book Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean (University of Californi...
Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without t...
Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We are glad to talk to Britt Paris about her book Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up (U California Press, 2025). ...
Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)
07 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Mattie Armstrong-Pri...
Jennifer Randles, "Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood" (U California Press, 2026)
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us take diapers for granted. Yet diaper insecurity is a common, often hidden consequence of poverty in the US, where nearly half of American f...
Josh Seim, "The Welfare Assembly Line: Public Servants in the Suffering City" (U California Press, 2026)
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Despite claims that we live in a "post-welfare society," welfare offices remain vital not only for those who depend on them for benefits but also for ...
Jason Cons, "Delta Futures: Time, Territory, and Capture on a Climate Frontier" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A free e-book version of Delta Futures is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access program. Visit www.luminosoa.or...
Wendy Wolford, "The Plantation Ideal: Landscapes of Extraction in Mozambique" (U California Press, 2025)
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Plantations have been the privileged tool of colonial rule and extraction in Mozambique for more than one hundred years despite never having delivered...
Beth A. Berkowitz, "What Animals Teach us About Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature" (U California Press, 2026)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Reading the Bible and rabbinic literature to reimagine the bonds between animals. Moving beyond debates about the ethics of animal consumption to focu...
Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)
14 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their b...
Cindy Anh Nguyen, "Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam" (U California Press, 2026)
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers purs...
Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga, "The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Coping with Crisis in Post-Roman Egypt" (U California Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of profound political changes in late seventh-century Egypt, after the end of Roman hegemony and during Islamic rule, a bishop named John...
Brahim El Guabli, "Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences" (U California Press, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (U California Press, 2025) traces the cultural and intellectual histories t...
Misty L. Heggeness, "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy" (U California Press, 2026)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A feminist romp through pop culture that illuminates how women influence and shape the economy. Taylor Swift isn't just a pop megastar. She is a work...
Daniel Eastman An, "Fear of God: Practicing Emotion in Late Antique Monasticism" (U California Press, 2025)
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the writings of ancient Christians, the near-ubiquitous references to the "fear of God" have traditionally been seen as a generic placeholder for p...
Emily Mendenhall, "Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID" (U California Press, 2026)
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by her work with long COVID patients, in Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID (U California Press, 2026) medical anthr...
Hanna Garth, "Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement" (U California Press, 2026)
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the United States. Yet despite their b...
Christopher J. Bonura, "A Prophecy of Empire: The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius from Late Antique Mesopotamia to the Global Medieval Imagination" (U California Press, 2025)
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was one of the medieval world’s most popular and widely translated texts. Composed in Syriac in Mesopotamia in th...
Khaled A. Beydoun, "The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims" (U California Press, 2023)
17 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (U California Press, 2023), Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on T...
A. Mechele Dickerson, "The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream" (U California Press, 2026)
17 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state a...
Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. ...
Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U California Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethno...
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, "Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity" (U California Press, 2025)
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of...
Andrea Flores, "The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America" (UC Press, 2021)
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Andrea Flores’ most recent book, The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America (University of Califo...
Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)
07 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I’m excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End...
Anny Gaul, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (U California Press, 2025)
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuis...
Elisabetta Ferrari, "Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies" (U California Press, 2024)
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Activists utilize digital technologies to communicate, coordinate, and organize for social change. In Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist ...
Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag ...
Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah...
Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz...
Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At a time when college students and their parents often question the "return on investment" from humanities courses, accomplished feature writer and E...
Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U Californ...
Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the ...
Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, t...
Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play i...
Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow (sailing vessel), the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around...
Jennifer Barry, "Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination" (U California Press, 2025)
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Jennifer Barry confront...
Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another ta...
Teresa M. Mares and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, "Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain" (U California Press, 2025)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food: Labor A...
Delia Casadei, "Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound" (U California Press, 2024)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound (University of California Press, 2024) explores the forgotten history of laughter, fro...
John Mathias, "Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala" (U California Press, 2024)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? In this episode Joh...
Subah Dayal, "Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Circulation in Peninsular India" (U California Press, 2024)
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Subah Dayal recently joined the New Books Network to discuss her new work Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Ci...
Jennifer Barry, "Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination" (U California Press, 2025)
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gender Violence in Late Antiquity confronts the violent ideological frameworks underpinning the early Christian imagination, arguing that gender-based...
Aaron Cayer, "Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire" (U California Press, 2025)
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of the twentieth century, US architecture and engineering firms held more capital than entire countries, employed more people than were hou...
Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025)
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals,...
Joel Best, "Just the Facts: Untangling Contradictory Claims" (U California Press, 2025)
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why can’t we seem to agree on facts? In this succinct volume, sociologist Joel Best turns his inimitable eye toward the social construction of what ...
Christine Shepardson, "A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity (U California Press, 2025) traces the rh...
Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" (U of California Press, 2025)
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (U of California Press, 2025) follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage ...
David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capital...
Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and ...
Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney, "Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration" (U California Press, 2025)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from...
Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of mak...
Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Hu...
Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the S...
Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position ...
Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...
Kit W. Myers, "The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States"(U California Press, 2025)
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features Dr. Kit W. Myers, associate professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, d...
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roa...
Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-ex...
Robert N. Spengler, "Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 15,000-year story of how grass seduced humanity into being its unwitting labor force--and the science behind it. Domesticated crops were not huma...
Karen Redrobe, "Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Karen Redrobe's latest book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (Univ of California Press, 2025) is a fascinating account o...
Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023)
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city...
Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, an...
Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduce...
Tamara Lea Spira, "Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times" (U California Press, 2025)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in incr...
Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most child...
Cynthia Enloe, "Twelve Feminist Lessons of War" (U California Press, 2023)
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Women's wars are not men's wars. This is the first lesson of Cynthias Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (U California Press, 2023): the lack ...
Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who hav...
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)
26 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the cris...
Giorgio Bertellini, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America" (U California Press, 2019)
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute...
Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author ...
Titas Chakraborty, "Empire of Labor: How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work" (U California Press, 2025)
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)
13 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, ...
Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been writ...
"Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt's Incarcerated" (U California Press, 2025)
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated (U California Press, 2025), edited by Collective Antigone, is a groundbreaking collec...
Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (University of California Press, 2025) illuminates the throughline betwe...
Tracie Canada, "Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football" (U California Press, 2025)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different...
Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance indus...
Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, "The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2023)
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023) chronicles the ea...
Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthe...
On Barak, "Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet" (U California Press, 2024)
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What...
Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army...
Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...
Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi...
Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to com...
Zai Liang. "From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States" (U California Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States (University of California Press, 2024...
Andrew Campana, "Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media" (U California Press, 2024)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cinepoems, tape recorder poems, protest performance poems, music video poems, internet sign language poems, and augmented reality poems: these poems m...
Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024)
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson r...
Stacy Torres, "At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To understand elders' experiences of aging in place, sociologist Stacy Torres spent five years with longtime New York City residents as they coped wit...
Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...
Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies: Lessons Fr...
Allen James Fromherz, "The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present" (U California Press, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Whether it’s in commerce or conflict, today’s world pays rapt attention to the Persian Gulf. But the centrality of the Gulf to world history stret...
Without Parents or Papers: A Discussion with Stephanie L. Canizales
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States (U California Press, 2024), a which explo...
Park Jeong-Mi, "The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea" (U California Press, 2024)
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Park Jeong-Mi uncov...
Saadia Yacoob, "Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law" (U California Press, 2024)
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Saadia Yacoob’s excellent new book, Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law (U of California Press 2024), makes a compellin...