University of California Press Blog

Dangerous Pregnancies: New UC Press Podcast with Leslie Reagan

We are pleased to announce that Episode 30 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In this episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions speaks with Leslie Reagan about the German measles (rubella) epidemic of the 1960s, and its lasting effects on abortion, disability rights, and politics in America. Reagan explores this story in her book Dangerous Pregnancies.

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 our podcast page. Listen to this podcast now.

Pasta's Untold Story

Today's New York Times Dining section features Oretta Zanini de Vita, author of Encyclopedia of Pasta, as she opens the door onto the centuries of history that shape each type of Italian pasta. Every shape is infused with imagination and tradition—every one tells its own story, and together they shed light on Italy's past, from celebrations and conquests to daily life and the creativity of individual people over the centuries, dating back as early as A.D. 800. 

Read the New York Times article with Oretta Zanini de Vita, which also includes a recipe for handmade strozzapreti with roasted cherry tomatoes, and a slide show of Zanini de Vita shaping the strozzapreti.

A Toast to History

Dr. Patrick E. McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist and author of Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, works with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery to resurrect the world's earliest fermented beverages from molecular and archaeological evidence. Together they have created several brews from ancient recipes, including Theobroma, a chocolate ale from Honduras, and Midas Touch, recreated from traces of ingredients unearthed in a 2,700-year-old tomb in Turkey that may have belonged to King Midas. Brewed with honey, grapes, and saffron, Midas Touch won the bronze medal for specialty honey beer at the Great American Beer Festival in September. Above, McGovern (right), and a brewer/festivalgoer toast with Chateau Jiahu from Dogfish Head, which won the gold medal for specialty beer at the festival.

Chateau Jiahu is formulated from evidence found at Jiahu, a Neolithic archaeological site in China that also yielded China’s earliest pottery and oldest rice, and the oldest known working musical instruments (bone flutes made from the wings of the red-crowned crane). McGovern and colleagues analyzed the residue found in cups and drinking vessels at Jiahu, and unraveled the ingredients in the ancient brew: hawthorn fruit, grapes, honey, and rice. At 9,000 years old, this drink is the earliest known fermented beverage in the world, and, as McGovern details in Uncorking the Past, it may have been used in the rituals of early shamans, as well as for enjoyment and celebration.

Puzzle Contest Complete

Thanks to all who entered the puzzle contest last week, and congratulations to the lucky puzzlers who took home copies of The Book of Codes. For updates on future contests and other news, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ucpress.

Thanks to all who entered the puzzle contest last week, and congratulations to the lucky puzzlers who took home copies of The Book of Codes. For updates on future contests and other news, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ucpress.

Jean Pfaelzer in The Globalist: Are Apologies Enough?

In 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, declaring a ten-year ban on labor immigration from China. It was the first major US law to limit immigration, and a marker of the anti-Chinese racism that permeated the American West. For decades before and after the Exclusion Act, Chinese Americans fought back against violence, roundups, and pogroms in California and other western states—a resistance movement that included California's earliest workers' strikes and the largest act of mass civil disobedience to this day, as Jean Pfaelzer shows in Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. The Chinese Exclusion Act stayed in place until December 17, 1943, when Congress officially repealed it. In 2009 the state of California apologized for the decades of state-sponsored discrimination against Chinese Americans, and established December 17 as an official Day of Inclusion. In a two-part series in The Globalist, titled "Equality Is Never Having to Say You Are Sorry", Pfaelzer examines this and other government efforts to atone for the past, and questions whether apologies are enough.

Read Part I and Part II of Jean Pfaelzer's "Equality Is Never Having to Say You Are Sorry" on The Globalist website.

Win this Book

Solve the puzzle, win the book.  Do it now or you'll miss you chance.  Once a day all week long.  Want to be the first to know when the new puzzle goes up?  Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ucpress.

UC Press Podcast Featuring Bryant Simon

We are pleased to announce that Episode 21 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In this episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions interviews Bryant Simon as he talks about the politics and culture behind the Starbucks company in his upcoming book Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks.

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 our podcast page.

Listen to an interview with Bryant Simon, author of Everything but the Coffee.

Interview with Amiri Baraka, author of Digging

On June 4, Sophie Erskine of 3:AM Magazine interviewed Amiri Baraka about music, politics, the origins of his name, and controversial comments he has made in the past. Baraka is known as the Father of the Black Arts Movement and author of many books and essays on music, including most recently, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music (UC Press, May 2009).

Below is an excerpt of the interview. 

3:AM: You said that “poetry is music and nothing but music”. Can you describe the influence of Sun Ra in particular on the evolution of your poetry-music?

AB: On the cover of my latest book, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music (University of California Press), there is a photograph of the front of the Black Arts Repertory Theater School, with me at the bottom of the steps bringing back some refreshments and at the top of the steps, left, is Sun Ra, who used to come up to Harlem, and hang out with us almost every day. He also played a concert weekly there where he introduced his “space organ” which he had outfitted with lights - dark lights for low sounds, brights for high sounds. This was before Bill Graham hooked up the light show for the rockers in San Francisco.

Sun Ra had great influence on us, not only with his music but his philosophy, but I always thought poetry was heightened and intensified by music, which is the influence of the black church…

To read the interview in its entirety, please visit Art is a Weapon in the Struggle for Ideas: Amiri Baraka.

The Unmaking of the Middle East Shortlisted for Arthur Ross Award

Jeremy Salt's The Unmaking of the Middle East is shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The CFR describes the Arthur Ross Award as honoring foreign-affairs books, published in the past two years, that offer new perspectives on international issues and change the way we see conflicts or events. In the book, Salt analyzes the effects of Western policy in the Middle East since the nineteenth century, from the French in Algeria and the British in Egypt to the current war in Iraq, offering background and insights necessary to understand the Middle East and inform future Western presence in the region.

There are five other finalists for the Arthur Ross Book Award, and winners will be announced in late May. Read the news release and the complete list of finalists here.

Christian Youth Culture and Music

On April 30th, Brittany Shoot of Religion Dispatches, interviewed Eileen Luhr, author of Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture (UC Press, January 2009). Below, are a couple of questions Luhr answered. Please read the rest of the interview entitled, "Christian Punk Meets American Pop; Evangelicals in the ’Burbs."

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In Witnessing Suburbia, you briefly explain the roots of your academic interest in the convergence of popular culture, music, and evangelism. Can you say more about how you came to write the book?

My interest in Christian conservatism began when I was home from college and watching the 1992 Republican National Convention. The convention took place at a bad time for Republicans—the Cold War had ended and George H.W. Bush had raised taxes despite a pledge not to. As a result, he didn’t have much to run on other than the concept of “family values,” which the Republicans invoked following the riots in Los Angeles (this was when Dan Quayle condemned the TV character “Murphy Brown” for having a child out of wedlock in a speech to the Commonwealth Club).

In Houston, Pat Buchanan gave a primetime speech in which he declared a “cultural war” for the “soul of America.” I was appalled by the speech, but I had siblings who thought it was great. So my initial interest in the topic was that “family values” could provoke vastly different reactions—I found it exclusive, but others found it inclusive. A few years later, I went to graduate school to write about the culture of “family values,” and I found that not much had been written about the music and popular culture of Christians.

What was your favorite part of your research?

My favorite research was for the chapter about Christian metal bands. I was never a fan of “mainstream” metal music, so I felt that I could treat both Christian and “secular” bands fairly. Still, I found the claims and the stunts to be pretty outrageous.

Christian bands had some really strange ideas and some interesting justifications for wearing makeup and having long hair. I had a database of hundreds of Christian metal bands, and I poured through all kinds of fan magazines to follow them. My favorite anecdote is the one about an obscure band from Texas called Stryken. They attended a Motley Crue concert wearing futuristic suits of armor. They somehow managed to get a 14’ x 8’ wooden cross into the arena (who knows what people bring to these shows?) and took it to the area in front of the stage. They were eventually kicked out of the concert for proselytizing.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered?

In researching chapter two, which looks at Christian youth subcultures, I found a really interesting punk zine called “Thieves and Prostitutes” that had intricate artwork (I believe one of the editors is now a tattoo artist) and articles that tried to claim Jesus as the original punk. A student in Florida was suspended from school for distributing the zine, in part because the principal misunderstood what the art signified—he was afraid it was blasphemous. The 700 Club featured the suspended student because they felt his religious rights were violated by the school. This was one of the moments where political and cultural activism intersected.

* To read the rest of the interview, please visit the Religion Dispatches website.

* Special thanks to Religion Dispatches for letting us post an excerpt of the article.