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 UC Press is sad to note the passing of renowned herpetologist, Robert C. Stebbins, who died in his home on Monday at the age of 98. Stebbins was a Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, a curator of the University’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and the author of over a dozen books, including, most recently, Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of California. Stebbins contributed richly detailed color paintings of the species in the book, just as he did for his landmark reference, A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians.
Described by Alan St. John, author of Reptiles of the Northwest, as the “elder herpetological master of the American West,” Stebbins will be remembered for his groundbreaking scholarship in the field of Natural History, his passion for environmental education, his desert conservation efforts, and for the three amphibians and reptiles named after him: Ambystoma tigrinum stebbinsi, Anniella stebbinsi, and Batrachoseps stebbensi.
Harry W. Greene, a colleague of Stebbins’ and his successor at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, remembered him this way:
As a high school student, I first wrote to Bob Stebbins inquiring about careers in herpetology, and thus it was truly an honor, in 1978, to succeed him as a Curator of Herpetology in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Of course Bob didn’t really retire, he just put all of his time and energy thereafter into field work, painting, public education, and conservation. He was wonderfully thoughtful to me, not once over the next 20 years commenting on ways I chose to do my job, yet always generous with advice when I asked for it. He was an understated but brilliant teacher, above all a superb naturalist, and he left a huge mark on the herpetology of western North America.
You can read tributes to Robert C. Stebbins at National Geographic, (bio)accumulation, KPCC, and the Daily Cal.
 Banned Books Week is the celebration of books challenged in libraries and classrooms across the nation. Books are banned for various reasons, but most are banned for content not deemed appropriate for readers. The list of banned books is lengthy, and contains some of the most timeless pieces of literature ever produced. It is the dream of many authors to have a book on the banned books list.
One of the most prominent authors on the list is Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has met consistent resistance since it was first published. Benjamin Griffin–an editor of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2–recently contributed to the BookPage blog on some of the instances of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being banned. The post can be found here.
In The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2, Mark Twain has several passages where he talks about the illicit nature of his books. Reading these passages, it is easy to see where Huck and Tom got their penchants for stirring up trouble and controversy in their own stories. Twain understood that controversy-much like the controversy of banned books nowadays-simply gives more air to the books and characters that censors try to bury.
“When people let ‘Huck Finn’ alone he goes peacefully along, damaging a few children here and there and yonder, but there will be plenty of children in heaven without those, so it is no great matter. It is only when well-meaning people expose him that he gets his real chance to do harm. Temporarily, then, he spreads havoc all around in the nurseries and no doubt does prodigious harm while he has his chance. By and by, let us hope, people that really have the best interests of the rising generation at heart will become wise and not stir Huck up.” –The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2
Think you know Mark Twain?
Think again.
Enter the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 Goodreads galley giveaway between now and October 5th for your chance to win one of five limited edition galleys.
It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and ply your hand for a hundred times what it’s worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to ‘call’, and you roll in the chips.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
 To mark the 2nd anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we’re revisiting the origins of the General Assembly with this excerpt from Nathan Schneider’s Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. The book is an up-close, inside account of OWS’s first year in New York City, written by one of the first reporters to cover the phenomenon. Schneider chronicles the origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising always just beyond their control. Read an excerpt below, then head over to the book’s webpage to read all of Chapter One.
ONE
Some Great Cause
#A99 #Bloombergville #Jan25 #solidarityWI #nycga #OCCUPYWALLSTREET #October2011 #OpESR #OpWallStreet #S17 #SeizeDC #StopTheMach #usdor
Under the tree where the International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966, on the south side of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, sixty or so people are gathered in a circle around a yellow banner that reads, in blue spray paint, “GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NYC.” It is Saturday, August 13, 2011, the third of the General Assembly’s evening meetings.
“No cops or reporters,” someone decrees at the start of the meeting. Others demand a ban on photographs.
From where I’m sitting in the back, my hand inches up, and I stand and explain that I am a writer who covers resistance movements. I promise not to take pictures.
Just then, a heavyset man in a tight T-shirt, with patchy dark hair and a beard, starts snapping photos. He is Bob Arihood, a fixture of the neighborhood known for documenting it with his camera and his blog. People shout at him to stop; he shouts back something about the nature of public space. Soon, a few from the group break off to talk things through with him, and the discussion turns back to me.
The interrogation and harrowing debate that follow are less about me, really, than about them. Are they holding a public meeting or a private one? Is a journalist to be regarded as an agent of the state or a potential ally? Can they expect to maintain their anonymity?
After half an hour, at last, I witness an act of consensus: hands rise above heads, fingers wiggle. I can stay. A little later, I see that Arihood and the people who’d gone to confront him are laughing together.
Those present were mainly, but not exclusively, young, and when they spoke, they introduced themselves as students, artists, organizers, teachers. There were a lot of beards and hand-rolled cigarettes, though neither seemed obligatory. On the side of the circle nearest the tree were the facilitators-David Graeber, a noted anthropologist, and Marisa Holmes, a brown-haired, brown-eyed filmmaker in her midtwenties who had spent the summer interviewing revolutionaries in Egypt. Elders, such as a Vietnam vet from Staten Island, were listened to with particular care. It was a common rhetorical tic to address the group as “You beautiful people,” which happened to be not just encouraging but also empirically true.
Several had accents from revolutionary places-Spain, Greece, Latin America-or had been working to create ties among pro-democracy movements in other countries. Vlad Teichberg, leaning against the Hare Krishna Tree and pecking at the keys of a pink laptop, was one of the architects of the Internet video channel Global Revolution. With his Spanish wife, Nikky Schiller, he had been in Madrid during the May 15 movement’s occupation at Puerta del Sol. Alexa O’Brien, a slender woman with blond hair and black-rimmed glasses, covered the Arab Spring for the website WikiLeaks Central and had been collaborating with organizers of the subsequent uprisings in Europe; now, she was trying to foment a movement called US Day of Rage, named after the big days of protest in the Middle East.
That meeting would last five hours, followed by working groups convening in huddles and in nearby bars. I’d never heard young people talking politics quite like this, with so much seriousness, and revelry, and determination. But their unease was also visible when a police car passed, and conversation slowed; a member of the Tactics Committee had pointed out that, since any group of twenty or more in a New York City park needs a permit, we were already breaking the law. [...]
Want to read more? We’re holding a book giveaway for Thank You, Anarchy over at Goodreads. Enter now to win one of 5 copies!
Guest post by Mary Helen Spooner
 Salvador Allende’s presidential palace burning.
Photo credit: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile via Wikimedia Commons It has been four decades since Chile’s Salvador Allende, a socialist, was overthrown in a military coup whose violence shocked the world and ushered in sixteen and a half years of dictatorship. Chile had been one of Latin America’s oldest democracies, and while there had been several failed coup plots during the second half of the 20th century, the country had enjoyed an orderly succession of elected presidents since 1946. Allende and his supporters might have believed that any attempt at a military takeover would spark such widespread protests and resistance that the armed forces would be forced to retreat. But Chileans did not turn out en masse to support the beleaguered Allende government, and the sight of the presidential palace in flames became one of the most enduring images of that period. Firefighters arriving on the scene were later photographed carrying Allende’s body out of the building.
 And there is the jarring photograph of a seated General Augusto Pinochet, arms crossed and wearing dark glasses, as seen on the cover of Soldiers in a Narrow Land. Pinochet had become army commander only three weeks earlier and was the last of the four military junta members to join the uprising. But in less than a year he would maneuver his way from junta member to Supreme Leader of the Nation, with the help of a feared secret police agency that answered only to him. His victims included not just leftists and political dissidents but Chileans who had opposed the Allende government as well.
There are no public monuments to Pinochet, whose ashes are hidden away in a chapel on an estate his family owns outside of Santiago. A small museum housed in a foundation which bears his name contains his uniform and medals and a desk he once used. But there are dozens of memorials to those killed during the Pinochet regime, including a large monument in Santiago’s Cementerio General bearing the names of his victims. A former detention and torture center, Villa Grimaldi, has been turned into a peace park and cultural center. And early in 2010 a museum dedicated to human rights, the Museo de la Memoria opened in Santiago.
Recently Chile’s national judiciary association issued a public apology for the failure of so many judges to protect human rights during the Pinochet regime. In a statement the group said the judiciary had failed in its role to protect basic rights and said that “the time has come to ask for the forgiveness of the victims…and of Chilean society.”
While a significant minority of Chileans still respect Pinochet and feel the coup was justified, their numbers have diminished over the years A poll by a Chilean think tank, CERC, revealed that 16 percent of respondents believe the military were right to launch the coup, down from 36 percent in 2003.
Mary Helen Spooner is a journalist who began working in Latin America in 1977, including nine years as a foreign correspondent in Chile. She has reported for ABC News, The Economist, The Financial Times of London, and Newsweek. She is the author of Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile, Updated Edition and The General’s Slow Retreat: Chile after Pinochet (UC Press).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 12, 2013
VETERAN JOURNALIST AND HISTORIAN JON CHRISTENSEN TAKES EDITORIAL HELM, REBOOTS BOOM: A JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA WITH LIVELY FALL ISSUE
BOOM’S INFORMAL MISSION OF HOSTING ONE OF “LIVELIEST DINNER CONVERSATIONS IN CALIFORNIA” TO BE MADE REAL AT DINNER PARTIES AROUND THE STATE
Berkeley, CA—Veteran journalist and UCLA historian Jon Christensen has taken over the editorial helm of Boom: A Journal of California, an innovative quarterly from the University of California Press. The journal has moved from UC Davis to the English Department at UCLA, and the fall issue, Christensen’s first, was mailed to subscribers today.
Christensen plans to build on the early success of this award-winning publication, which the Library Journal said “finds a sweet spot by combining the best… of scholarly journals and popular magazines” in a lavishly illustrated format. “Our goal is to host one of the smartest, liveliest, most passionate and fun dinner conversations in California each quarter,” Christensen said, “by bringing writers, photographers, artists, policymakers, advocates, entrepreneurs, and others together with the best researchers and scholars to talk not just about California, but about California in the world.”
The dinner party is not just a metaphor, Christensen said. He and some of the authors in his first issue, including book critic David L. Ulin and historian William Deverell, will host dinner party conversations around the Los Angeles area with readers to talk about the subject of Boom’s fall special issue on the Los Angeles Aqueduct’s 100th anniversary. By looking at the past, present, and future of the city’s water supply, this special issue reveals the myriad ways that water connects LA to California, the American West, and the world.
Columbia Journalism Review [see link below] recently wrote that Boom “is breaking ground, in terms of the character of its content and its business model.” The review continued: “The best academics and smartest journalists should be natural allies in the effort to bring new ideas to the public square. Boom has made a nice start toward fostering such an alliance.”
“Christensen’s journalistic and scholarly bona fides include a long career as an in-depth environmental and science writer and a stint as the executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary effort located at Stanford University that attempts to meld scholarly research and smart journalism,” wrote the review.
Now at UCLA, Christensen “brings unparalleled energy to Boom,” said UC Press Publisher Kim Robinson. “He is already at the center of many conversations about the current state and future of California. And we couldn’t be more thrilled that Jon is sharing with Boom his enormous creativity as a writer, thinker, and switchboard for people and ideas.”
While centered on the core print and digital publication, Boom extends its reach well beyond. “Our mission is to start, inspire, and sustain conversations,” Christensen said, “with a beautifully illustrated, elegantly written quarterly journal, a fresh, interactive web site and social media, partnerships with other media, and lively, stimulating events with partners around the state.”
In addition to dinner parties around Los Angeles, which readers will be able to join, Boom will also host an open public party to celebrate its reboot on October 24th from 7 to 9 p.m. at 830 Traction Avenue in Los Angeles (RSVP for the dinner parties and public party at BoomCalifornia.com). Future issues in the works—on visions of California’s future in the world and California in world literature, music, art, and culture—will be accompanied by other innovative conversations with readers and public events around the state.
For more information, see Boom’s web site at BoomCalifornia.com. Follow Boom on Twitter @boomcalifornia. For more on Christensen’s vision for Boom, see the Columbia Journalism Review’s story on Boom.
For a preview of the fall issue, see the cover below and click here for a preview of the table of contents.
Jon Christensen
Jon Christensen is an adjunct assistant professor and Pritzker Fellow in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, Jon was executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching, new media and journalism at Stanford University. He has been an environmental journalist and science writer for 30 years and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Nature, High Country News, and many other newspapers, magazines, journals, and radio and television shows. He was Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 2002-2003 and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University in 2003-2004, before returning to Stanford to work on a Ph.D. in History. Jon’s passion for California, his cross-disciplinary approach to research and writing, and his new home within the UC make him an excellent fit for taking up the journal at this critical point in its development.
University of California Press—Bold, Progressive Publishing
UC Press publishes works that illuminate the convergence of history, culture, science and technology in order to change how we think, plan and govern. As the non-profit publishing arm of the University of California we share the progressive mission and values of the UC. Our bold, forward-thinking publishing initiatives integrate and distribute knowledge in exciting new ways for researchers, leaders and public audiences worldwide.
For More Information
Media contact: Meg Sullivan
UCLA Newsroom
msullivan@support.ucla.edu
(310) 825-1046
UC Press contact: Jeff Hester
University of California Press
jhester@ucpress.edu
(510) 642-8883
 From Martin Berger’s Freedom Now!. Unidentified photographer, Woman Resisting Arrest, Birmingham, Alabama, April 14, 1963. Courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. It’s been 50 years since the March on Washington, and the issues of racial equality and economic justice are just as vital as ever.
UC Press is proud to contribute to the preservation of Martin Luther King’s legacy by publishing The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., a project of The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. King’s most important correspondence, sermons, publications, speeches, unpublished manuscripts, and other material are reproduced chronologically in these six volumes. The series’ Editor, Clayborne Carson, was interviewed this morning on KQED about his memories of of the march and the gulf between ideals and reality expressed in Dr. King’s speech.
Lucy G. Barber’s Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition explains how using the nation’s capital for public protest went from being outside the political order to a new American political norm. Barber shows how highly visible events like the March on Washington contributed to the development of a broader and more inclusive view of citizenship and transformed the capital from the exclusive domain of politicians and officials into a national stage for Americans to participate directly in national politics.
Photographers shot millions of pictures of the black civil rights struggle between the close of World War II and the early 1970s, yet most Americans today can recall just a handful of images that look remarkably similar. Martin Berger’s Freedom Now! presents a collection of forgotten photographs that illustrate the action, heroism, and strength of black activists in driving social and legislative change.
These are just a few texts in UC Press’s extensive catalog of books on African American History and Race and Class. Dive in for an array of groundbreaking works that will inspire, challenge, and perhaps even galvanize you to work for change.
Due out in October, Volume 2 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain recently hit the presses at book manufacturer Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
While the initial printing is 100,000 copies, the first run numbered 65,000. Take a look at what that means…
It means 250,000 lbs. of paper
Which is six truckloads worth.
It means 50 million printed pages
That takes six days on the press.
That’s 8.5 million pages printed per day
Which comes out to 11,000 books printed per day
That takes two days to bind.
Number of books bound per day: 32,500
It means 9,500 books per truckload
For a total of seven trucks filled with 65,000 finished copies of:
 A Federal Appeals Court ruled earlier this month that President Obama must make a decision about whether to use Yucca Mountain to dump nuclear waste. The Nevada site was designated by the George W. Bush administration as the nation’s only dumping ground for radioactive waste. The project has been halted since 2010, but the recent court ruling stated that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must proceed with conducting a licensing review of the project.
J. Samuel Walker’s The Road to Yucca Mountain gives a thorough account of the complex issues surrounding the site, and the problem of nuclear waste disposal in general. Walker is one of the most knowledgable people out there on the subject—he was the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s historian until recently. Tracing the U.S. government’s tangled efforts to solve the technical and political problems associated with radioactive waste, the book is an essential guide for understanding the continuing controversy over an illusive and emotional topic.
 Illustration by Elon Musk/Tesla Motors. Is Elon Musk’s Hyperloop like a 21st century version of the transcontinental railroad? Jon Christensen, the Editor of Boom: A Journal of California, draws some interesting parallels between the two in the New Yorker’s Elements blog. Both seemed impossibly fast for their day and age, and both have the power to shape and destroy people, cities, and economies.
Christensen recalls the uncannily relevant words John Muir wrote about the railroad in 1872: “Last year tourists were whizzed over plain and mountain from San Francisco to Yosemite in two days; and I learn that arrangements are being made for next season whereby the velocity of the shot will be increased to one day. Thus is modern travel spiritualized. Thus are time and space—and travellers—annihilated.” Is annihilation—metaphorical or literal—a real concern if the Hyperloop is built? Read the article to hear Christensen’s case.
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