Title: Three Mile Island: a nuclear crisis in historical perspective
Author: Walker, J. Samuel
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: History | Technology and Instruments | Environment | Technology and Society | United States History
Publisher's Description: Twenty-five years ago, Hollywood released The China Syndrome, featuring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas as a TVnews crew who witness what appears to be a serious accident at a nuclear power plant. In a spectacular coincidence, on March 28, 1979, less than two weeks after the movie came out, the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States occurred at Three Mile Island. For five days, the citizens of central Pennsylvania and the entire world, amid growing alarm, followed the efforts of authorities to prevent the crippled plant from spewing dangerous quantities of radiation into the environment. This book is the first comprehensive account of the causes, context, and consequences of the Three Mile Island crisis. In gripping prose, J. Samuel Walker captures the high human drama surrounding the accident, sets it in the context of the heated debate over nuclear power in the seventies, and analyzes the social, technical, and political issues it raised. His superb account of those frightening and confusing days will clear up misconceptions held to this day about Three Mile Island. The heart of Walker's suspenseful narrative is a moment-by-moment account of the accident itself, in which he brings to life the players who dealt with the emergency: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the state of Pennsylvania, the White House, and a cast of scientists and reporters. He also looks at the aftermath of the accident on the surrounding area, including studies of its long-term health effects on the population, providing a fascinating window onto the politics of nuclear power and an authoritative account of a critical event in recent American history.   [brief]
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Title: Amphibians and reptiles of Baja California, including its Pacific islands, and the islands in the Sea of Cortés
Author: Grismer, L. Lee 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Organismal Biology | Natural History | California and the West | Herpetology
Publisher's Description: The Baja California peninsula is home to many forms of life found nowhere else on earth. This, combined with the peninsula's rugged and inaccessible terrain, has made the area one of the last true biological frontiers of North America. L. Lee Grismer is not only the foremost authority on the amphibians and reptiles of Baja California, but also an outstanding photographer. He has produced the most comprehensive work on the herpetofauna of the peninsula and its islands ever published. With its stunning color images, detailed accounts of many little-known species, and descriptions of the region's diverse environment, this is the definitive guide to the amphibians and reptiles of a fascinating and remote region. The culmination of Grismer's quarter century of fieldwork on the Baja peninsula and his exploration of more than one hundred of its islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortés, this book gives information on the identification, distribution, natural history, and taxonomy of each species of amphibian and reptile found there. Preliminary accounts of the life history of many of the salamanders, frogs, toads, turtles, lizards, and snakes are reported here for the first time, and several species that were almost unknown to science are illustrated in full color. The book also contains new data on species distribution and on the effect of the isolated landscape of the peninsula and its islands on the evolutionary process. Much of the information gathered here is presented in biogeographical overviews that consider the extremely varied environments of Baja California in both a contemporary and a historical framework. An original and important contribution to science, this book will generate further research for years to come as it becomes a benchmark reference for both professionals and amateurs.   [brief]
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Title: Sources of Western Zhou history: inscribed bronze vessels
Author: Shaughnessy, Edward L 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | China | Archaeology
Publisher's Description: The thousands of ritual bronze vessels discovered by China's archaeologists serve as the major documentary source for the Western Zhou dynasty (1045-771 B.C.). These vessels contain long inscriptions full of detail on subjects as diverse as the military history of the period, the bureaucratic structure of the royal court, and lawsuits among the gentry. Moreover, being cast in bronze, the inscriptions preserve exactly the contemporary script and language.Shaughnessy has written a meticulous and detailed work on the historiography and interpretation of these objects. By demonstrating how the inscriptions are read and interpreted, Shaughnessy makes accessible in English some of the most important evidence about life in ancient China.   [brief]
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Title: Signs of recognition: powers and hazards of representation in an Indonesian society
Author: Keane, Webb 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks endemic in representational practices. An awareness of risk is embedded in the very forms of ritual speech and exchange. The possibilities for failure and slippage reveal people's mutual vulnerabilities and give words and things part of their power. Keane shows how the dilemmas posed by the effort to use and control language and objects are implicated with general problems of power, authority, and agency. He persuades us to look differently at ideas of voice and value. Integrating the analysis of words and things, this book contributes to a wide range of fields, including linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, social theory, and the studies of material culture, art, and political economy.   [brief]
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Title: A critical cinema 3: interviews with independent filmmakers
Author: MacDonald, Scott 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Cinema and Performance Arts | Film
Publisher's Description: A Critical Cinema 3 continues Scott MacDonald's compilation of personal interviews and public discussions with major contributors to independent filmmaking and film awareness. An informative exchange with Amos Vogel, whose Cinema 16 Society drew American filmgoers into a broader sense of film history, is followed by interviews reflecting a wide range of approaches to filmmaking. Sally Potter discusses her popular feature, Orlando , in relation to the experimental work that preceded it, and Canadian independent John Porter argues compellingly for small-gauge, Super-8mm filmmaking. Ken Jacobs discusses the "Nervous System" apparatus with which he transforms old film footage into new forms of motion picture art; Jordan Belson describes his Vortex Concerts, ancestors of modern laser light shows; and Elias Merhige talks about going beneath the "rational structure of meaning" in Begotten . A Critical Cinema 3 presents independent cinema as an international and multiethnic phenomenon. MacDonald interviews filmmakers from Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Armenia, India, the Philippines, and Japan and examines the work of African Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. He provides an introductory overview of each interviewee, as well as detailed film/videographies and selected bibliographies. With its predecessors, A Critical Cinema (California, 1988) and A Critical Cinema 2 (California, 1992), this is the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English.   [brief]
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Title: The forgotten hermitage of Skellig Michael 
Author: Horn, Walter William 1908-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Architecture | Art | Architectural History | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: This book is a dramatically told and visually stunning account of a ninth-century hermitage discovered on the South Peak of Skellig Michael, an island off the west coast of Ireland. It is the story, pieced together from fragmentary remains, study, and conjecture, of a man's attempt to live on a tiny ledge some 700 feet above the Atlantic on the outer edge of the European land mass, alone, as close to God as possible, in what is perhaps the ne plus ultra of ecstatic monastic solitude.Richly illustrated with maps, plans, and photographs that capture both the astonishing beauty and isolation of the hermitage, the text also includes reconstruction drawings of the site that combine a surveyor's accuracy with an artist's imaginative response to the hermit who found spiritual refuge on a pinnacle.   [brief]
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Title: Between two islands: Dominican international migration
Author: Grasmuck, Sherri
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Sociology | Latino Studies | Latin American Studies | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Popular notions about migration to the United States from Latin America and the Caribbean are too often distorted by memories of earlier European migrations and by a tendency to generalize from the more familiar cases of Mexico and Puerto Rico. Between Two Islands is an interdisciplinary study of Dominican migration, challenging many widespread, yet erroneous, views concerning the socio-economic background of new immigrants and the causes and consequences of their move to the United States.Eschewing monocausal treatments of migration, the authors insist that migration is a multifaceted process involving economic, political, and socio-cultural factors. To this end, they introduce an innovative analytical framework which includes such determinants as the international division of labor; state policy in the sending and receiving societies; class relations; transnational migrant households; social networks; and gender and generational hierarchies.By adopting this multidimensional approach, Grasmuck and Pessar are able to account for many intriguing paradoxes of Dominican migration and development of the Dominican population in the U.S. For example, why is it that the peak in migration coincided with a boom in Dominican economic growth? Why did most of the immigrants settle in New York City at the precise moment the metropolitan economy was experiencing stagnation and severe unemployment? And why do most immigrants claim to have achieved social mobility and middle-class standing despite employment in menial blue-collar jobs?Until quite recently, studies of international migration have emphasized the male migrant, while neglecting the role of women and their experiences. Grasmuck and Pessar's attempt to remedy this uneven perspective results in a better overall understanding of Dominican migration. For instance, they find that with regard to wages and working conditions, it is a greater liability to be female than to be without legal status. They also show that gender influences attitudes toward settlement, return, and workplace struggle.Finally, the authors explore some of the paradoxes created by Dominican migration. The material success achieved by individual migrant households contrasts starkly with increased socio-economic inequality in the Dominican Republic and polarized class relations in the United States.This is an exciting and important work that will appeal to scholars and policymakers interested in immigration, ethnic studies, and the continual reshaping of urban America.   [brief]
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Title: The Hellenistic settlements in Europe, the islands, and Asia Minor
Author: Cohen, Getzel M
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Classics | History | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: This compendium provides historical narratives, detailed references, citations, and commentaries on all the cities founded or refounded in Europe, The Islands, and Asia Minor during the Hellenistic period. Organized coherently in more than 180 entries, it is one of the most significant reference wor . . . [more]
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Title: Athens and Macedon: Attic letter-cutters of 300 to 229 B.C
Author: Tracy, Stephen V 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Archaeology | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Little of the historiography of third-century Athens survives, and much of what we know - or might know - about the period has come down to us in inscriptions carved by Attic stonemasons of the time. In this book Stephen Tracy, the world's preeminent expert in this area, provides new insight into an . . . [more]
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Title: Athenian democracy in transition: Attic letter-cutters of 340 to 290 B.C 
Author: Tracy, Stephen V 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | Ancient History | Archaeology
Publisher's Description: Furthering his masterful new approach to classifying and interpreting epigraphical data presented in Attic Letter-Cutters of 229 to 86 B.C. , Stephen V. Tracy has produced a masterful study of the inscriptions from the time of King Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Demosthenes, and Demetrios. Detailed study of the hands in this largest group of primary documents has enabled him to offer a number of new insights, such as reassessing the career of Demetrios of Phaleron and taking issue with the commonly accepted view that Athenian democracy ended in 322 B.C. with the defeat by the Macedonians at Krannon.Tracy pieces together stone documents and shows that the "handwriting" of individual stonecutters can be identified by the way particular letters are cut into the stone. He offers new readings, redatings, joins and associations, as well as initial publication of some fragments from the excavations in the Athenian agora.   [brief]
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Title: Wage, trade, and exchange in Melanesia: a Manus society in the modern state 
Author: Carrier, James G
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Ponam Island, a small community in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, is the subject of this innovative study. The authors extend the criticism within anthropology of ethnographies that attempt to analyze village communities without reference to the nations of which they are a part, and that equate the traditional and the exotic with the untouched. They do so by describing the links between a peripheral village society and Papua New Guinea's national economy and institutions, in a way that will interest all those concerned with development and underdevelopment.The analysis focuses on major socioeconomic areas of village life: education, migration, wage employment, and remittance; trade, commerce, and exchange; subsistence fishing; ceremonial exchange. The authors' findings challenge the idea that colonial and Western-oriented encroachment leads to the decay of village societies or to their adopting Western values and practices. Ponam has been under significant Western influence for almost a century, yet the society has not decayed. It remains flourishing and generative, uniquely itself and neither blindly traditional nor mindlessly Western.   [brief]
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Title: The Myth of the Independent voter 
Author: Keith, Bruce E
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Politics | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Few events in American politics over the past two decades have generated more attention than the increasing number of voters calling themselves Independent. By the early 1970s Independents outnumbered Republicans, according to many eminent experts on voting behavior. Yet the authors of this incisive new commentary on American politics claim that most of this widespread speculation on declining party affiliation is simply wrong. They contend that most so-called Independents lean strongly toward one of the two parties and resemble - in all important respects - either Democrats or Republicans. Contrary to expert opinion, only a small segment of voters are truly "independent" of either major party.Based on the most up-to-date 1990 data, The Myth of the Independent Voter provides a roadmap of the political arena for the general reader and scholar alike. Debunking conventional wisdom about voting patterns and allaying recent concerns about electoral stability and possible third party movements, the authors uncover faulty polling practices that have resulted in a skewed sense of the American voting population.Demonstrating that most of what has been written about Independents for more than thirty years is myth, this challenging book offers a trenchant new understanding of the party system, voting behavior, and public opinion.   [brief]
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Title: The rice economies: technology and development in Asian societies
Author: Bray, Francesca
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Asian Studies | European History | Social Theory | Political Theory | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: The contrast in the rate of growth between Western and Eastern societies since 1800 has caused Asian societies to be characterized as backward and resistant to change, though until 1600 or so certain Asian states were technologically far in advance of Europe. The Rice Economies , drawing on original . . . [more]
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Title: The other economy: pastoral husbandry on a medieval estate 
Author: Biddick, Kathleen
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | European History | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: While the cereal agriculture of medieval Europe has been studied exhaustively, the pastoral resources and livestock husbandry of medieval estates have been seriously neglected. Kathleen Biddick's examination of one estate, Peterborough Abbey, during several decades before and after 1100 and the first decade after 1300, brings a new balance to the subject of the medieval economy. Her pioneering methodology and the conclusions she reaches will interest archaeologists and agricultural historians as well as anthropologists, economists, and historians of early European development.Drawing on the archival records of the abbey, an estate that straddled the "classic" open-field agriculture of the English Midlands and the more pastorally-oriented farming of the English peat fens, Biddick describes in great detail how these farmers managed their herds and consumed and marketed livestock products such as meat, wool, hides, milk, and cheese. Commitment to conserving consumption strategies did not mean that the Abbey resisted market involvement and technological innovation. Large numbers of work and cart horses indicate the estate's economic interest in speedy haulage. Cereal yields, where they are calculable, compare favorably to the high-yielding demesnes of parts of Norfolk, the most agriculturally advanced region of medieval England. By showing how the Abbey coordinated its resources to enhance diversity and flexibility, The Other Economy enlarges our understanding of agrarian lordship and political control over resources in the medieval economy.   [brief]
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Title: Rich democracies: political economy, public policy, and performance
Author: Wilensky, Harold L
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | Social Theory | Public Policy | Economics and Business | Sociology
Publisher's Description: In this landmark work, the culmination of 30 years of systematic, comprehensive comparison of 19 rich democracies, Wilensky answers two basic questions: (1) What is distinctly modern about modern societies--in what ways are they becoming alike? (2) How do variations in types of political economy shape system performance? He specifies similarities and differences in the structure and interplay of government, political parties, the mass media, industry, labor, professions, agriculture, churches, and voluntary associations. He then demonstrates how differences in bargaining arrangements among these groups lead to contrasting policy profiles and patterns of taxing and spending, which in turn explain a large number of outcomes: economic performance, political legitimacy, equality, job security, safety and risk, real health, the reduction of poverty and environmental threats, and the effectiveness and fairness of regulatory regimes. Drawing on quantitative data and case studies covering the last 50 years and more than 400 interviews he conducted with top decision-makers and advisors, Wilensky provides a richly detailed account of the common social, economic, and labor problems modern governments confront and their contrasting styles of conflict resolution. The result is new light on the likely paths of development of rich democracies as they become richer. Assessing alternative theories, Wilensky offers a powerful critique of such images of modern society as "post-industrial" or "high-tech," "the information age" or the alleged dominance of "globalization." Because he systematically compares all of the rich democracies with at least three million population, Wilensky can specify what is truly exceptional about the United States, what it shares with Britain and Britain abroad (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and what it shares with all or almost all of the West European democracies, Israel, and Japan. He gives careful attention to which successful social and labor policies are transferable across nations and which are not. Rich Democracies will interest both scholars and practitioners. It combines the perspectives of political economy (the interplay of markets and politics) and political sociology (the social bases of politics). It will be especially useful in courses on comparative political economy, comparative politics, European politics, public policy, political sociology, the welfare state, American government, advanced industrial societies, and industrial relations.   [brief]
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Title: Changing the rules: the politics of liberalization and the urban informal economy in Tanzania 
Author: Tripp, Aili Mari
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Politics | Anthropology | African Studies | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: How are people in one of Africa's largest cities, Dar es Salaam, capable of surviving day to day when the downward decline of Tanzania's economy has become so pronounced that even high-ranking state employees receive among the lowest incomes in the country? In this impressively researched and highly original study, Aili Mari Tripp shows how the people of Dar es Salaam, through creativity and considerable ingenuity, supply for themselves the various goods and services that the government can no longer provide. With the growth of an informal economy, they have demonstrated resistance to state control, resulting in broad political, economic and social transformations within Tanzania. Moreover, the unprecedented participation of women in informal economic activities has had a profound effect on gender relations.Tripp incorporates in-depth interviews and a field survey conducted at the household and micro-enterprise level in examining the influence and impact of the urban informal economy on Tanzanian society. This informal sector encompasses the enterprises of masons, cooks, cobblers, and tailors; a dizzying myriad of market vendors; even educators and doctors. Tripp shows how the urban informal economy challenges state-defined bases of social justice with alternative notions of economic equity. Her work is an essential contribution to the study of African politics and state-society relations.   [brief]
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Title: Muslim rulers and rebels: everyday politics and armed separatism in the southern Philippines 
Author: McKenna, Thomas M 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Anthropology | Politics | Islam | Southeast Asia | Asian History
Publisher's Description: In this first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion in the Philippines, Thomas McKenna challenges prevailing anthropological analyses of nationalism as well as their underlying assumptions about the interplay of culture and power. He examines Muslim separatism against a background of more than four hundred years of political relations among indigenous Muslim rulers, their subjects, and external powers seeking the subjugation of Philippine Muslims. He also explores the motivations of the ordinary men and women who fight in armed separatist struggles and investigates the formation of nationalist identities. A skillful meld of historical detail and ethnographic research, Muslim Rulers and Rebels makes a compelling contribution to the study of protest, rebellion, and revolution worldwide.   [brief]
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Title: Space in the tropics: from convicts to rockets in French Guiana 
Author: Redfield, Peter 1965-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Geography | French Studies | European Studies | Technology
Publisher's Description: Rockets roar into space - bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites - from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. What makes Space in the Tropics enthralling is anthropologist Peter Redfield's ability to draw from these two disparate European projects in French Guiana a gleaming web of ideas about the intersections of nature and culture. In comparing the Franco-European Ariane rocket program with the earlier penal experiment, Redfield connects the myth of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, postwar exploration of outer space, satellite technology, development, and ecotourism with a focus on place, and the incorporation of this particular place into greater extended systems. Examining the wider context of the Ariane program, he argues that technology and nature must be understood within a greater ecology of displacement and makes a case for the importance of margins in understanding the trajectories of modern life.   [brief]
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Title: Horace and the gift economy of patronage 
Author: Bowditch, Phebe Lowell 1961-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Poetry | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: This innovative study explores selected odes and epistles by the late-first-century poet Horace in light of modern anthropological and literary theory. Phebe Lowell Bowditch looks in particular at how the relationship between Horace and his patron Maecenas is reflected in these poems' themes and rhetorical figures. Using anthropological studies on gift exchange, she uncovers an implicit economic dynamic in these poems and skillfully challenges standard views on literary patronage in this period. Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage provides a striking new understanding of Horace's poems and the Roman system of patronage, and also demonstrates the relevance of New Historicist and Marxist critical paradigms for Roman studies. In addition to incorporating anthropological and sociological perspectives, Bowditch's theoretical approach makes use of concepts drawn from linguistics, deconstruction, and the work of Michel Foucault. She weaves together these ideas in an original approach to Horace's use of golden age imagery, his language concerning public gifts or munera, his metaphors of sacrifice, and the rhetoric of class and status found in these poems. Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage represents an original approach to central issues and questions in the study of Latin literature, and sheds new light on our understanding of Roman society in general.   [brief]
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Title: A voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands & around the world in the years, 1826-1829
Author: Duhaut-Cilly, Auguste Bernard 1790-1849
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: California and the West | Californian and Western History | United States History | Literature in Translation | Travel
Publisher's Description: While French sea captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly may not have become wealthy from his around-the-world travels between 1826 and 1829, his trip has enriched historians interested in early nineteenth-century California. Because of a poor choice in goods to trade he found it necessary to spend nearly two years on the Alta and Baja California coasts before disposing of his cargo and returning to France. What was bad luck for Duhaut-Cilly was good luck for us, however, because he recorded his impressions of the region's natural history and human populations in a diary. This translation of Duhaut-Cilly's writing offers today's readers a rare eyewitness account of the pastoral society that was Mexican California, including the missions at the height of their power.A veteran of the Napoleonic wars, Duhaut-Cilly was an educated man conversant in Spanish and English. He was also Catholic, which gave him special access to the California missions. Thus his diary allows the reader an insider's view of the padres' lives, including their dealings with the military. Through his eyes we see the region's indigenous people and how they were treated, and we're privy to his commentary on the behavior of the Californios.This translation also contains Duhaut-Cilly's account of the Sandwich Islands portion of his voyage and provides an authentic rendering of life at sea during the early nineteenth century. In the spirit of Richard Henry Dana's Two Years before the Mast , Duhaut-Cilly's reflections are a historical gem for anyone with a love of personal narratives and original accounts of the past.   [brief]
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