Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast

Tony K. Stewart, "Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination" (U California Press, 2019)

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and god...

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

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...

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels be...

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs, "Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs' book Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor (U California Press, 2023) is a timel...

E. Cram, "Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (U California Press, 2022) deepens the analysis of settler coloni...

Leigh Goodmark, "Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the st...

Daniel L. Hatcher, "Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems...

Aaron Rock-Singer, "In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East" (U California Press, 2022)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who are the Salafis, and what are the roots of Salafism? What does it even mean to be Salafi? Why is Salafism concerned with ethics of visibility and ...

Eric Porter, "A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport" (U California Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What can an airport tell us about a city? Quite a bit, according to UC-Santa Cruz history professor Eric Porter in A People's History of SFO: The M...

Jessa Lingel, "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could h...

Alberto García, "Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico (U California Press, 2023) offers an essential new history of the Bracero ...

Timothy O. Benedict, "Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Timothy Benedict’s Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan (U California Press, 2023) is an exploration of spiritual care in the...

Arthur Kleinman, "Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine" (U California Press, 1997)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most influential and creative scholars in medical anthropology takes stock of his recent intellectual odysseys in this collection of essays...

Celeste Vaughan Curington et al., "The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance" (U California Press, 2021)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (U California Press, 2021) is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism,...

Damien M. Sojoyner, "Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This highly original story reflects on how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and ...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some...

Saida Grundy, "Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does it feel to be groomed as the "solution" to a national Black male "problem"? This is the guiding paradox of Respectable: Politics and Paradox...

Lara Gabrielle, "Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies" (U California Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star...

Mitchell Schwarzer, "Hella Town: Oakland's History of Development and Disruption" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Oakland grew up on the shadow of the dynamo of the nineteenth century West, always the "other" city on San Francisco Bay.  But as Mitchell Schwarzer,...

Mark Juergensmeyer, "When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does religious violence end? When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends (U California Press, 2022) probes for answers through case st...

David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossi...

Lisa Hajjar, "The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture (University of California Press, 2022) by Dr. Lisa Hajjar examines how hundreds of lawyers mo...

Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical...

Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empir...

Lee D. Baker, "From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954" (U California Press, 1998)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and ...

Yu Tokunaga, "Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations" (U California Press, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles: A...

Lois Presser, "Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (U California Press, 2022) is...

Namita Vijay Dharia, "The Industrial Ephemeral: Labor and Love in Indian Architecture and Construction" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What transformative effects does a multimillion-dollar industry have on those who work within it? The Industrial Ephemeral presents the untold stories...

Helen Anne Curry, "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (U California Press, 2022), historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more th...

Patrick Bixby, "License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport" (U California Press, 2022)

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This surprising global history of an indispensable document reveals how the passport has shaped art, thought, and human experience while helping to de...

Josiah Ober, "The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled perform...

Munira Khayyat, "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What worlds take root in war? In A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (U California Press, 2022), anthropologis...

Darra Goldstein, "The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food (U California Press, 2022) unearths the foods and flavors of the Russian land. Preeminent food s...

Yigal Bronner et al., "Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What are the pleasures of reading translations of South Asian literature, and what does it take to enjoy a translated text? Sensitive Reading: The Pl...

Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical intervention...

Sarah T. Hines, "Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia" (U California Press, 2021)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah T. Hines's Water for All Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia (University of California Press, 2021) chronicles how Bolivian...

Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in f...

Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlan...

Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, ...

Kwame Edwin Otu, "Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana (University of California Press, 2022) is an ethnogr...

Thomas E. Burman et al., "The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (U California Press, 2022) presents an original and revisionist narrative of the developmen...

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism" (U California Press, 2021)

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire have often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon o...

Patricia A. Turner, "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lo...

Julie Sze, "Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger" (U California Press, 2020)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political m...

Salim Tamari et al., "Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine" (U California Press, 2022)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine (U California Press, 2022) is a critical exploration of Jerusalemite chronicler W...

Samhita Sunya, "Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay" (U California Press, 2022)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this inaugural episode, our host Aswin Punathambekar speaks with Samhita Sun...

NBN Classic: Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019)

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Seven decades of military spen...

Raj Patel, "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things" (U California Press, 2017)

23 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to prod...

Catalina M. de Onís, "Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) provides an urgent and nuanced p...

Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in Amer...

Joshua Savala, "Beyond Patriotic Phobias: Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) looms large in the history of Peru and Chile. Upending the prevailing historiographical focus on the history of c...

Kenneth H. Kolb, "Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate" (U California Press, 2021)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (U California Press, 2021) examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by ...

Sara Ronis, "Demons in the Details: Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in Late Antique Babylonia" (U California Press, 2022)

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Babylonian Talmud is full of stories of demonic encounters, and it also includes many laws that attempt to regulate such encounters. In Demons in...

Peter S. Alagona, "The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States we...

Jerry C. Zee, "Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today Julia Keblinska and I had the pleasure of talking to Assistant Professor Jerry Zee about his book, Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chine...

Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)

31 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast, Amy Edwards, author of Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2022), ...

Asad Q. Ahmed, "Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In his dense yet delightful new book Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia (University of California Pr...

Jarrod Hore, "Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism" (U California Press, 2022)

10 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the early years of photography, settlers around the Pacific World were fascinated with the landscapes of the places they conquered. According t...

Sarah Lamb, "Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the majority of the world's population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and...

Roberto J. González, "War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually: The Quest...

Agustín Fuentes, "Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature" (Second Edition) (U California Press, 2022)

22 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There are three major myths of human nature: humans are divided into biological races; humans are naturally aggressive; and men and women are wholly d...

Natalia Molina, "A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community" (U California Press, 2022)

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1951, Doña Natalia Barraza opened the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles. With A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaur...

Treva B. Lindsey, "America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice" (U California Press, 2022)

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song that inspired the title, this book is a call to action in our collective journey toward just ...

Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner, "Can Legal Weed Win?: The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Cannabis "legalization" hasn't lived up to the hype. Across North America, investors are reeling, tax collections are below projections, and people ar...

Jason Sion Mokhtarian, "Medicine in the Talmud: Natural and Supernatural Therapies Between Magic and Science" (U California Press, 2022)

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the Talmud being the richest repository of medical remedies in ancient Judaism, this important strain of Jewish thought has been largely ignor...

Adam M. Romero, "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" (U California Press, 2021)

30 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Ec...

Amanda Phillips, "Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles Between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2021)

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the sale and exchange o...

Sean J. Drake, "Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2022)

25 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses...

Carolina Bank Muñoz and Penny Lewis, "A People's Guide to New York City" (U California Press, 2022)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

New York City is a preeminent global city, serving as the headquarters for hundreds of multinational firms and a world-renowned cultural hub for fashi...

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, "Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization Across Guam and Israel-Palestine" (U California Press, 2022)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Nước Việt Nam: a home, a cradle, a point of departure” (Gandhi, 1). The Vietnamese word nước embraces the duality of land and water wi...

Jacob Doherty, "Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability" (U California Press, 2021)

18 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Uganda's capital, Kampala, is undergoing dramatic urban transformations as its new technocratic government seeks to clean and green the city. Waste W...

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan" (U California Press, 2022)

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

2019 marked the five-hundred year anniversary of the launch of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world–a milestone marked by commemorative sa...

Anthony Cerulli, "The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic colleg...

Scott Stonington, "The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand" (U California Press, 2020)

25 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand (University of California Press, 2020) is a journey into decision-making at the end...

Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, "Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945" (U California Press, 2018)

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only ...

María Elena García, "Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race: Stories of Capital, Culture, and Coloniality in Peru" (U California Press, 2021)

15 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the New Books in Latin America Podcast, Kenneth Sánchez spoke with Maria Elena García about her wonderful new book Gastropolitic...

Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U of California Press, 2022)

04 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Is the finance industry fair? In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (University of California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely,...

Paige Sweet, "The Politics of Surviving: How Women Navigate Domestic Violence and Its Aftermath" (U California Press, 2021)

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For women who have experienced domestic violence, proving that you are a “good victim” is no longer enough. Victims must also show that they are r...

Natali Valdez, "Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era" (U California Press, 2022)

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era (University of California Press, 2022), Natali Valdez examines re...

Kate Guthrie, "The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain" (U California Press, 2021)

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century m...

Annie Berke, "Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television" (U California Press, 2022)

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What is the hidden history of women in the television industry? In Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television (U California Press...

Joshua Frens-String, "Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile" (UC Press, 2021)

09 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile (University of California Press, 2021), Joshua Frens-String explore...

Sarah-Neel Smith, "Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey" (U California Press, 2022)

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey (University of California Press, 2022) is a vivid portrait of the art world of 1950s Tu...

Andrea Flores, "The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America" (UC Press, 2021)

28 Feb 2022

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...

Anneka Lenssen, "Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria" (U California Press, 2020)

28 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (University of California Press, 2020), by Anneka Lenssen, focuses on modern art practice ...

Rashmi Sadana, "The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure" (U California Press, 2022)

09 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure (U California Press, 2022) is a rich and intimate account of urban...

Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern, "Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns (U California Press, 2022), Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern...

Elora Shehabuddin, "Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism" (U California Press, 2021)

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Elora Shehabuddin’s new book Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press,...

Henry K. Miller, "The First True Hitchcock: The Making of a Filmmaker" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This untold origin story of the filmmaker explores its transatlantic history. Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," one...

Dana Polan, "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture" (U California Press, 2021)

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Caught on film, the iconic jump of escaped POW Virgil Hilts (Steve McQueen) over an imposing barbed wire fence on a stolen motorcycle has become an un...

Julie Kleinman, "Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris" (U California Press, 2019)

14 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people move through the Gare du Nord train station in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, the largest train station...

Ethan Blue, "The Deportation Express: A History of America Through Forced Removal" (U California Press, 2021)

23 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Deportation Express: A History of America Through Forced Removal (University of California Press, 2021) details the history of the United Stat...

Rebecca J. Lester, "Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America" (U California Press, 2019)

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When Rebecca Lester was eleven years old--and again when she was eighteen--she almost died from anorexia nervosa. Now both a tenured professor in anth...

Erin Cech, "The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality" (U California Press, 2021)

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Should we love work? In The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (U California Press, 2021), Erin Cech, a...

Caetlin Benson-Allott, "The Stuff of Spectatorship: Material Cultures of Film and Television" (U California Press, 2021)

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“Made of light and later sound, the film experience cannot be touched, but that does not mean it is immaterial.” So writes Dr. Caetlin Benson-Allo...

Rose Wellman, "Feeding Iran: Shi`i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Since Iran's 1979 Revolution, the imperative to create and protect the inner purity of family and nation in the face of outside spiritual corruption h...

Andrew B. Kipnis, "The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China" (U California Press, 2021)

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are...

Nada Moumtaz, "God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State" (U California Press, 2021)

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Nada Moumtaz’s God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State (University of California Press, 2021) is an ethnography anchored in deep s...

Silvia Marina Arrom, "La Güera Rodrígue: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine" (U California Press, 2021)

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In La Guera Rodriguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine (U California Press, 2021), Silvia Marina Arrom traces the legends of ...

Roberto J. González, "Connected: How a Mexican Village Built Its Own Cell Phone Network" (U California Press, 2020)

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Connected: How a Mexican Village Built Its Own Cell Phone Network (U California Press, 2020) is the true story of how, against all odds, a remote Me...