University of California Press Blog » From Our Authors

Notes from the Third General Assembly: A Look Back at Occupy’s Origins

ssilverman — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 22:12:45 +0000

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 [more...]

A Brutal Anniversary

ssilverman — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 23:14:29 +0000

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 [more...]

Jon Christensen on Elon Musk’s Flight of Fancy

ssilverman — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 01:59:27 +0000

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 [more...]

Soccer, Dance, or Chess: How After-School Activities Shape Gender Roles

ssilverman — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 21:19:35 +0000

Today in The Atlantic, Hilary Levey Friedman writes about the gendered notions that influence parents’ choice of after-school activities for their girls. If you’ve ever wondered about how your daughter’s extracurriculars can shape her path later in life, take a look at the study.

The article is adapted from Friedman’s new book, Playing to Win: Raising [more...]

Parallel Universe Authors Highlight Timely Climate Change Issues

ssilverman — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 19:07:47 +0000

Silt washes down the Yellow River. Photo credit: Imaginechina

Traveling the 38th Parallel authors David and Janet Carle highlight some important climate change issues on their blog, Parallel Universe 38°N. First, they point to some amazing photos of 30 million tons of silt washing down the Yellow River in China, a key story in their [more...]

Replenished Ethnicity Author on Immigration Reform in the L.A. Times

ssilverman — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 20:37:59 +0000

Tomás R. Jiménez, author of Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity, recently contributed an op-ed to the L.A. Times on the immigration bill just passed in the Senate whose fate will now be determined by the House of Representatives. Jiménez and co-author Helen B. Marrow argue against claims that Mexicans who immigrate to the U.S. [more...]

New UC Press Author Asks: Who Profits From Poverty?

ssilverman — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:39:13 +0000

Ananya Roy and her colleagues at the #GlobalPOV Project, an initiative of UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, have just released a stunning new illustrated video that explores the business of poverty. Roy is the author of Encountering Poverty (forthcoming from UC Press), a path-breaking book that will consolidate a new field of inquiry: global poverty studies.

Watch the [more...]

Desalinization Issues on the 38th Parallel

ssilverman — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:26:25 +0000

David and Janet Carle, authors of Traveling the 38th Parallel: A Water Line around the World, report on their blog that the desalinization plant in Torrevieja, Spain—a 38th Parallel site they visited in 2010—is nearing completion after 10 years of construction. The Torrevieja plant will be the largest desalinization structure in Europe and the second-largest in the [more...]

Draw a Proof, Win a Book

ssilverman — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:28:46 +0000

Nathan Schneider, author of the forthcoming book God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (June 2013) is running a contest over at his website, The Row Boat, in which he asks readers to draw a proof of what they believe. Read Schneider’s description of the contest below.

What Do You Believe? How [more...]

Why the World Needs Benchwarmers

ssilverman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:54:32 +0000

Harvard sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman, author of the forthcoming book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, is now a featured blogger at Psychology Today. Her first installment, “Qualities of the B (aka Bench-Warming) Player” talks about why it may be more advantageous for a child to be a benchwarmer than a star [more...]