Kasra Naji, author of Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran's Radical Leader (UC Press, February 2008), was recently interviewed by Fresh Air at WHYY/NPR. In the interview, Naji talks about the controversial leader and his rise to power. You can find his interview on the NPR website.
If you know your mother well, chances are most generic Mother’s Day gifts don’t apply. If your mom isn’t a chocolate-obsessed, stuffed-animal loving kitchen gadget collector, then perhaps she's a wolf fanatic, a photographer, or an international traveler. Maybe she’s a foodie, a cinemaphile, a Stravinsky expert, or a writer of the Beat generation and beyond. No matter who your mom is, indulge her mind with a book about her favorite people, ideas and stories.
Episode 3 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In May's episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions interviews David Ngaruri Kenney and Philip G. Schrag, the authors of Asylum Denied: A Refugee's Struggle for Safety in America and Mark Juergensmeyer, the author of Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda. The audio for episode 3 is included herewith. You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store. You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at www.ucpress.edu/podcast or on the individual book pages using the embedded player.
Tomorrow, May 3, is Free Comic Book Day! Walk in the door of any participating comic book store from San Francisco to South Africa, and stuff your pockets with all the free comics you can grab. After you devour the latest Jughead adventure, expand your visual imagination further by pre-ordering Bruce Grenville’s KRAZY!, an art exhibit in book form, curated by this planet’s experts on comics, graphic novels, video games, manga and visual art. Whether your life is more R. Crumb than Superman, or more The Simpsons than The Sims, KRAZY! will zap you from your reading chair to the outer reaches of the graphic universe, where anime heroines blast laser-wielding transformers, and your Sims alter ego improves her hunger level with a pixelated turkey.
KRAZY! will be available in August. If you can't wait until then to fill your head with KRAZYness, head to the Vancouver Art Gallery between May 17 and September 7 for the exhibit KRAZY!: The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art.
We are happy to announce that the New York Library Association has named The Atlas of Religion to its Best of Reference list for 2008. A panel of librarians compiles the list each year, selecting the top print and electronic library resources. Atlas authors Joanne O'Brien and Martin Palmer explore the intricate origins, beliefs, and challenges of the most popular religions across the globe, providing a color-coded, all-inclusive map of the interconnections between these complex spiritual, political, economic, and cultural systems.
Click here to see the entire 2008 Best of Reference list.
As Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University, author and editor, Jonah Raskin puts Jack London's revolutionary writings into context in his latest book, The Radical Jack London. Furthermore, you can read more about Jonah and his book on his website, The Radical Jack London. Among other books, he is author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (UC Press, 2004) and For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman (UC Press, 1997)
The Radical Jack London in 1968
By Jonah Raskin
Had Jack London lived until 1968 he would have been 96 years old - not a biological impossibility. After all, his close friend, Upton Sinclair, lived until ‘68 and the ripe old age of 94. It’s tempting to imagine London ’68, the year that changed America and the world, and that London would have loved because upheaval inspired him, and engaged his deepest sympathies.
London was always young – he died in 1916 at the age of 40, and even at 40 there was something boyish about him, as his friends noted. He would have fit in with the youthful students who stormed college campuses in ’68, and he would have been attracted to the youth-orientated culture of the 1960s. In 1905, along with Upton Sinclair, London founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an organization of radical students, and the forerunner of Students for a Democratic Society, the Sixties group that opposed the war in Vietnam. An extremist almost all his life, London wrote about war and revolution, and it’s likely that he would have written about the war in Vietnam and the cultural revolution that created hippies, Yippies, feminists and Black Panthers. He smoked hashish, rejected the sexual mores of his time, went back to the land and was drawn to Asian spirituality.
1968 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year I was arrested as a protestor, went to jail for the first time, and began to write for underground newspapers. I was not then a big fan of Jack London’s work but I knew about it and him. I admired his 1908 novel The Iron Heel, which describes the coming of a brutal dictatorship to the United States. At times in 1968 it seemed like the United States was headed in that direction, especially when the police attacked demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. London’s prescience couldn’t have been more in evidence.
What London didn’t share with the radicals of 1968 was a sense of outrage about racial injustice. In fact, at times he would be downright racist himself. He identified himself as a white man, praised the white race and looked down at people of color. That’s the part of him I like the least, and it’s the part of him that his biographers andcritics have for the most part declined to explore, much less condemn. When I began to write The Radical Jack London I knew I would have to tackle the issue of race and racism. I think I have done it in a level-headed way and I’m proud of my approach. It’s not the first time I have written about that subject. I did it in my first book, The Mythology of Imperialism, which I wrote in 1968, and in many ways The Radical Jack London is a continuation of my own scholarship as a young man aiming to describe the links between culture and politics, which the academic world of that era was eager to deny. Without a big stretch of the imagination, I can see Jack London with us in ’68, marching, chanting defying the powers-that-be.
As a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, Neve Gordon, writes about the history of Israel's occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as the on-going rift between Israel and Palestine dating back to the 1967 war. You can read more about his book and Middle Eastern politics at his website, Israel's Occupation. The University of California Press will be publishing his forthcoming title, Israel's Occupation in Fall 2008.
Author and Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, Ben Orlove writes in his blog about glacier retreat and how it effects inhabitants in surrounding areas. For more information, check out his blog, Darkening Peaks. The University of California Press published the February 2008 edited collection, Darkening Peaks: Glacier Retreat, Science, and Society, edited by Ben Orlove, Ellen Wiegandt, and Brian H. Luckman.
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