BERKELEY, CALIF. — Second-generation Taiwanese American educator Ellie Yang Camp delves into the complexity and nuances of what it means to be racialized as Asian in the U.S. in her debut book Louder Than the Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love (on sale October 22, 2024). Intended as a guide for Asian Americans seeking clarity and validation, Camp draws on personal experiences, peer insights, historical case studies, and the racial justice struggles of other people of color to examine the inner workings of white supremacy and map an escape route from its system.

“Racial categories are thrust on us as a tool to govern us, not as expressions of how we see ourselves,” writes Camp, “Without a map, sometimes the safest thing to do is go with the flow of where everyone else is moving. And that flow tells us that if we become the whitest version of ourselves, fit into the ideal of the quiet, hardworking model minority, and distance ourselves from Blackness, we will be safe. To have the boldness to define ourselves is an act of radical liberation.”

Divided into three parts, Louder Than the Lies explores white supremacy through three lenses — The System, Living in the System, and Dismantling the System. Across the chapters Camp reveals how the nested ideologies of Eurocentric thinking, settler colonialism, capitalism, and empire have fomented and sustained racism. She explores, among other topics, the roots and impacts of anti-immigrant fervor and the perception of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners”; the curricular erasure of Asian American history and achievement; yellowface and whitesplaining; anti-Blackness within Asian American communities; and the past and present scourges of anti-Asian violence and hate crimes in the United States.

Throughout, readers are encouraged to press into and through moments of discomfort and to draw inspiration through self-reflection and coalition-building solidarity movements. By unlearning prevailing dogmas and cultivating introspection and multiracial allyships, Camp charts a path out of the “dumpster fire” of racist indoctrination and toward self-love and the collaborative, cross-racial pursuit of justice.

BERKELEY, CALIF. — During his decades-long career in publishing, Steve Wasserman has worn nearly every possible hat in the industry—editor, agent, reviewer, literary festival co-founder, publisher—serving as a midwife to the art and ideas of some of the most influential cultural juggernauts of recent decades, from Linda Ronstadt to the late Christopher Hitchens. This fall, this literary tastemaker dons his author’s cap for the first time in book form to publish an engrossing new memoir-in-essays, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie (on sale October 8, 2024).

Lauded by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Héctor Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Vivian Gornick, and Hilton Als (to name just a few), this book encompasses Wasserman’s superbly turned hot takes, ranging from the frontlines of progressive politics to the higher gossip of the literati. The intellectual terrain within his orbit is as capacious as its geography—with deep-dive spannings from the readerly culture of Los Angeles to the art of the Russian avant-garde and featuring cameos from a constellation of extraordinary cultural figures—Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Barbra Streisand, and Gore Vidal among them.

With his trademark wit, Wasserman reflects on the vitality of activism, journalism, and the world of books in this perceptive book. As a man of letters presiding over the twilight of the Age of Print, he interrogates the hegemony of Amazon, the collapse of newspapers, and the consequences of both for our civic discourse. Part archive, part crystal ball, these essays (originally published in the Nation, the American Conservative, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere) afford a view into a life lived on the crest of major cultural turning points for both medium and message. Throughout the tumult—whether of industry or politics—Wasserman’s stalwart conviction of the transformative potential of the written word never wavers, a devotion evident on every page.

“Getting to be an author’s first critic, helping to craft and hone arguments,” writes Wasserman, “to find ways to cut through the noise of the culture and get attention for deserving work, to advance public understanding and deepen civic conversation—all this has been my life’s passion.”

BERKELEY, CALIF. — There may be no greater representation of California’s ecological crisis than its fires. In recent years, they have become larger and deadlier than ever before, forcing us to reckon with how we have failed the land and the incredible cost of that negligence. Obi Kaufmann’s lushly illustrated new book, The State of Fire: Why California Burns (on sale September 17, 2024), explores how we got here and how we may get out.

The story of California fires is surprising and ancient. Fire has always played a vital role in our ecosystem—it fertilizes the soil, creates easier hunting grounds for certain animals, and gives space for plants to root. In short: life flourishes after fires. But the fires of today are different. Centuries of logging, a lack of controlled burns, and the spread of invasive plant species has given rise to the gigafire and its corollary problems: massive smoke covers, erosion, mass death events in animal populations.

In this new book, Obi Kaufmann delves into the history, science, and future of fire ecology. With Kaufmann’s signature artistry and deep research this book looks at some of the most devastating fires of modern history and also the many ways that our ecosystem benefits from fire. It’s an ultimately hopeful book. One that points to the many ways that we may coexist with fire and responsibly steward California into a more balanced future.

“For every point of despair,” Obi says, “I have a counterpoint of hope for the survival and restoration of the natural world. … As long as there is time, there is hope.”