Al Capone, George "e;Machine Gun"e; Kelly, Alvin Karpis, "e;Dock"e; Barker-these were just a few of the legendary "e;public enemies"e; for whom America's first supermax prison was created.
Bohemian Los Angeles brings to life a vibrant and all-but forgotten milieu of artists, leftists, and gay men and women whose story played out over the first half of the twentieth century and continues to shape the entire American landscape.
This innovative history of California opens up new vistas on the interrelationship among culture, nature, and society by focusing on the state's signature export-the orange.
Illuminating the dark side of economic globalization, this book gives a rare insider's view of the migrant farmworkers' binational circuit that stretches from the west central Mexico countryside to central California.
Paul Bontemps decided to move his family to Los Angeles from Louisiana in 1906 on the day he finally submitted to a strictly enforced Southern custom-he stepped off the sidewalk to allow white men who had just insulted him to pass by.
Among the most far-reaching effects of the modern environmental movement was the widespread acknowledgment that human beings were inescapably part of a larger ecosystem.
Two centuries after their expedition awoke the nation both to the promise and to the disquiet of the vast territory out west, Lewis and Clark still stir the imagination, and their adventure remains one of the most celebrated and studied chapters in American history.
From Sacagawea's travels with Lewis and Clark to rock groupie Pamela Des Barres's California trips, women have moved across the American West with profound consequences for the people and places they encounter.
Taming the Elephant is the last of four volumes in the distinguished California History Sesquicentennial Series, an outstanding compilation of original essays by leading historians and writers.
The Railroad Age, The Depression, World War II, The Atomic Age, The Sixties-these periods shaped and were in turn shaped by Berkeley, California-a city that has had a remarkable influence given its modest size.
In this powerful and evocative narrative, Gail Lee Bernstein vividly re-creates the past three centuries of Japanese history by following the fortunes of a prominent Japanese family over fourteen generations.
Wide-Open Town traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history.
In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals-including Thomas Mann, Theodore W.
First published in 1999, this celebrated history of San Francisco traces the exploitation of both local and distant regions by prominent families-the Hearsts, de Youngs, Spreckelses, and others-who gained power through mining, ranching, water and energy, transportation, real estate, weapons, and the mass media.
Chronicling the rise of Los Angeles through shifting ideas of race and ethnicity, William Deverell offers a unique perspective on how the city grew and changed.
Peter Schrag takes on the big issues-immigration, globalization, and the impact of California's politics on its quality of life-in this dynamic account of the Golden State's struggle to recapture the American dream.
At the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct, yet at times overlapping, male same-sex sexual subcultures had emerged in the Pacific Northwest: one among the men and boys who toiled in the regions logging, fishing, mining, farming, and railroad-building industries; the other among the young urban white-collar workers of the emerging corporate order.
Donald Pisani's history of perhaps the boldest economic and social program ever undertaken in the United States--to reclaim and cultivate vast areas of previously unusable land across the country-shows in fascinating detail how ambitious government programs fall prey to the power of local interest groups and the federal system of governance itself.
This book chronicles the fascinating story of the enthusiastic, stalwart, and talented naturalists who were drawn to California's spectacular natural bounty over the decades from 1786, when the La Perouse Expedition arrived at Monterey, to the Death Valley expedition in 1890-91, the proclaimed "e;end"e; of the American frontier.
The history of the American West is a history of struggles over land, and none has inspired so much passion and misunderstanding as the conflict between ranchers and the federal government over public grazing lands.
At a time when women could not vote and very few were involved in the world outside the home, Annie Montague Alexander (1867-1950) was an intrepid explorer, amateur naturalist, skilled markswoman, philanthropist, farmer, and founder and patron of two natural history museums at the University of California, Berkeley.
David Pierpont Gardner was president of one of the world's most distinguished centers of higher learning-the nine-campus University of California-from 1983 to 1992.
Revealing and frank, this highly engaging biography tells the story of an American original, California's Big Daddy, Jesse Unruh (1922-1987), a charismatic man whose power reached far beyond the offices he held.
In 1949, lawyer, historian, and journalist Carey McWilliams stepped back to assess the state of California at the end of its first one hundred years-its history, population, politics, agriculture, and social concerns.
San Francisco is perhaps the most exhilarating of all American cities--its beauty, cultural and political avant-gardism, and history are legendary, while its idiosyncrasies make front-page news.
When August Fruge joined the University of California Press in 1944, it was part of the University's printing department, publishing a modest number of books a year, mainly monographs by UC faculty members.
More comprehensive than any other book on this topic, Los Angeles and the Automobile places the evolution of Los Angeles within the context of American political and urban history.
It is not the purpose of this work to propose a specific format for the settlement of the citys current difficulties with the valley, to resolve the environmental questions associated with Los Angeless proposed groundwater pumping program, or to promote any cause associated with the developing situation in the Owens Valley.
