Wallace Stegner's West
Edited with an introduction by Page Stegner

This collection of Wallace Stegner's fiction and essays is as broad as the Great Basin and as dynamic as California's coastline. Considered one of the foremost writers of the West, Stegner ranges with ease from Utah to California, and from...

Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California
JoAnn Levy; Foreword by Kevin Starr

JoAnn Levy has pieced together for the first time the grand story of two of American history's forgotten treasures: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby. Together they made national headlines with their writings and their beliefs, including abolitionism, women's suffrage,...

Unfolding Beauty: Celebrating California's Landscapes
Edited by Terry Beers

California, the Golden State, conjures up visions of mountains, water, vistas, and vast landscapes. The astounding beauty of California is reflected not only in the works of authors like John Muir, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, Robinson Jeffers, Gretel Ehrlich, and...

Unfinished Message: Selected Works of Toshio Mori
Introduction by Lawson Fusao Inada

Born in Oakland, California, in 1910, the young Toshio Mori dreamed of being an artist, a Buddhist missionary, and a baseball player. Instead, he grew flowers in the family nursery business, and—influenced by contemporaries such as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest...

Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California
Edited by Rick Heide; Foreword by Juan Velasco

Under the Fifth Sun collects stories of love, family, work, exploration, politics, history, culture, and survival—fiction, poetry, memoirs, commentary, and drama—covering more than two centuries of Latino presence in California, from missionaries and soldiers to gold miners, farmworkers, and political...

Tales of the Fish Patrol
Jack London; Introduction by Jerry George

Not many folks know about this long-lost gem from Jack London. Now, one hundred years after its initial publication, Santa Clara University and Heyday Books are pleased to bring you this rollicking collection of tales from the San Francisco Bay....

Storm
George R. Stewart; Foreword by Ernest Callenbach

A violent storm sweeps through California, taking on a life of her own. Making her way from the Pacific Coast, she gains momentum as she approaches the Sierra and transforms into a blizzard of great strength, covering mountain ranges and...

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me!: The Seasons of Native California
Edited by Margaret Dubin and Kim Hogeland

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me! offers a literary calendar at once ancient and yet in some ways more relevant than the markers of time we are accustomed to. Combining old-time stories and sacred myths with contemporary poems and short stories,...

The Shirley Letters: From the California Mines, 1851-1852
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe; Introduction by Marlene Smith-Baranzini

The Shirley Letters, written from the mining camps in 1851 and 1852, are something valuable and rare—a portrait by a woman of an era dominated by men. They offer a vivid picture of gold rush life, from accounts of "murders,...

A Separate Star: 
Selected Writings of Helen Hunt Jackson
Edited by Michelle Burnham

Best known for the books A Century of Dishonor and Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson was revered for her depictions of social issues facing the West at the end of the nineteenth century. At a time when women writers struggled to...

One Day on Beetle Rock
Sally Carrighar; Foreword by David Rains Wallace; llustrations by Carl Dennis Buell

An elegant and lively depiction of nine animals spending a spring day on Beetle Rock, a large expanse of granite in Sequoia National Park, One Day on Beetle Rock is a classic of American nature writing. Drawing on seven years...

November Grass
Judy Van der Veer; Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin

In the light of the declining sun, amid the muffled sounds of grazing cattle, a Southern California cowgirl considers her life. The language of November Grass, concise yet evocative, transports readers to the coastal hills of San Diego County, where...

Merton of the Movies
Harry Leon Wilson; Introduction by David Fine

Ever since its debut in the Saturday Evening Post in 1919, Merton of the Movies has delighted book and film lovers alike and is considered one of the first real Hollywood novels. It follows the story of Merton Gill, a...

Mark Twain's San Francisco: Being a Generous and Uninhibited Cornucopia of Reports, Speculations, Satires, Brickbats, Musings, Topical Verse, and Other Observations by Mark Twain on "The Liveliest Heartiest Community on Our Continent"
Edited with a new Introduction by Bernard Taper; Illustrations by Edward Jump

Jumping frogs, high society, beloved San Francisco characters Emperor Norton and the stray dogs Bummer and Lazarus who followed on his heels—nothing escaped Mark Twain's scrutiny or his acerbic wit. Editor Bernard Taper has gathered together a heady selection of...

Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America
Charles Melville Scammon; Foreward by Dick Russell

This volume—reprinted with a new foreword by whale expert Dick Russell—has long been a highly regarded classic of natural history writing. Until this book's publication in 1872, whales, dolphins, and other sea mammals were among the least known of the...

Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846
Edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz

Spanish and Mexican California is generally depicted through the journals of sea captains and other visitors. This groundbreaking collection offers another perspective: early California seen through the eyes of those who explored it, colonized it, and settled it in the...

The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California
Edited by Lauren Coodley

Novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair will forever be associated with The Jungle, however, Sinclair deserves equal accolades for his entertaining critiques of Southern California's oil industry, movie studios, and urban sprawl—most of which still apply today. The Land of Orange...

The Journey of the Flame
Walter Nordhoff; Foreword by Rebecca Solnit

On the night of his 104th birthday, Don Juan Obrigón—tall and straight, with hair still flaming red—prepares to tell his life story to assembled relatives and guests. The story he will tell describes his travels as a boy of twelve...

Inlandia: A Literary Journey through California's Inland Empire
Edited by Gayle Wattawa; Introduction by Susan Straight

Showcasing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and other literature by such luminaries as Joan Didion, Raymond Chandler, M.F.K. Fisher, and others, Inlandia puts a new literary region on the map. A land of dramatic landscapes and increasingly dynamic human developments, the...

Indian Tales
Jaime de Angulo; Introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson

Jaime de Angulo was a man of legendary vices and pure brilliance. He was a linguist of California Indian languages and is still vividly remembered and talked about fifty years after his death, as much a myth as a scholar...

Gunfight at Mussel Slough: Evolution of a Western Myth
Edited by Terry Beers

"On May 11, 1880—at Henry Brewer's homestead in the southern San Joaquin Valley district of Mussel Slough—seven men lost their lives during one of the deadliest shootouts in the history of the American West." With this statement of fact begins...

Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader
Introduction by Gray Brechin;
 Preface by Wilson Carey McWilliams

"It suddenly occurred to me that, in all the world, there neither was nor would ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here, indeed, was the...

Essential Saroyan
Edited by William E. Justice

His name was on the lips of two generations, and countries around the world clamored for his work. An Armenian who grew up in the fields of Fresno, California, he traveled the globe, living in Paris, London, New York, and...

Essential Muir
Edited by Fred White

Preservationist. Inventor. Lobbyist. John Muir was many things at once, and he is California's best-known icon-so much so that his image was chosen to appear on the new state quarter. But the best way to know the man who founded...

Essential Mary Austin
Edited and with an introduction by Kevin Hearle

Opinionated and widely regarded as a genius, Mary Austin was a member of the literary elite, counting presidents and famous writers as friends, and yet her writings are most often down to earth. Whether chronicling the unforgiving, yet inspiring desert...

Essential Bierce
Edited and with an Introduction by John R. Dunlap

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American satirist, critic, poet, short story writer, editor, and journalist. He eventually became the literary despot of the West Coast, so admired and feared that his review could make or break an aspiring author's career....

Eldorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire
Bayard Taylor; Foreword by James D. Houston; Afterword by Roger Kahn

Bayard Taylor was among the thousands of young men who spilled into California in the tumultuous year 1849. Dispatched by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, Taylor was to report on the madness, exuberance, and upheaval of the California...

Death Valley in '49
William Lewis Manly; Edited by LeRoy and Jean Johnson; Introduction by Patricia Nelson Limerick

In the winter of 1849, William Lewis Manly, a pioneer immigrant to California, and his companions blundered into Death Valley as they turned south from the Rockies in search of a quicker route to the gold fields. The group was...

Califauna: A Literary Field Guide
Edited by Terry Beers and Emily Elrod

From Native American tales and explorers' accounts to fiction and poetry by established and emerging writers, this new anthology is a playful exploration of how animals excite our imagination and compassion. Each piece in the anthology is a snapshot of...

Dawson's Avian Kingdom: Selected Writings by William Leon Dawson
Edited by Anna Neher

A literary feast for any bird lover, this selection of writings from William Leon Dawson's legendary book The Birds of California is an illumination and a joy. From predators to songsters, birds swooping over ocean cliffs, and birds nesting in...

Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader
Edited with an Introduction by Albert Gelpi

William Everson (1912-1994), aka Brother Antoninus, was a poet, monk, letterpress printer, and a quintessential Californian. Originally from the San Joaquin Valley, Everson was part of the Beat poet movement in San Francisco during the 1950s. Charismatic, Everson was a...

California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present
Edited by Dana Gioia, Chryss Yost, and Jack Hicks

California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present is a groundbreaking new book presenting the work of 101 writers, the first historical anthology to provide a comprehensive survey of California poetry. An authoritative yet accessible collection, it brings together...

California: A Study of American Character
Josiah Royce; Introduction by Ronald A. Wells

California has recently been blessed with a number of careful and colorful works by authors who do not hesitate at—and perhaps even enjoy—shattering the state's historic icons in order to present an honest view of the state's formative events and...

The Autobiography of 
Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens; Introduction by Thomas C. Leonard

Here, in what The Nation publisher Victor Navasky says "ought to be assigned reading," is the autobiography of one of the world's first celebrity journalists: Lincoln Steffens, a man whose writing was so notorious that President Theodore Roosevelt coined a...

The Anza Trail and the Settling of California
Vladimir Guerrero

In 1774, the Spanish viceroy of Mexico sent Juan Bautista de Anza, captain of the Presidio at Tubac (in what is now Arizona), to lead two expeditions: the first to find a safe overland route to Monterey, and the second...

920 O'Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco
Harriet Lane Levy; Introduction by Charlene Akers

Originally published in 1937 in the later years of her extraordinary life, Harriet Lane Levy's memoirs of her childhood in San Francisco during the late 1800s give us a rare view into the traditional life and manners of an upper-middle-class...