Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View of a Trailblazing Architect
Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View of a Trailblazing Architect is a photographic exploration of the work of the first AIA-certified Black architect west of the Mississippi River. Known as “Hollywood’s Architect”, Paul Revere Williams was a Los Angeles native who built a wildly successful and as an architect decades before the Civil Rights Movement. […]
Write Long and Beautiful Letters: The Vallejos’ Californio Correspondence, 1846–1888
The experiences of Mexicans who were living in California when it was annexed by the United States is a crucial element of the history of the American Southwest. These Californios, as they called themselves, made California diverse and multi-cultural from the moment it became part of the United States. The Vallejos of Sonoma were one […]
From Stock Farm to Silicon Valley: Collecting California and beyond in Stanford’s Special Collections
From the founding of the University, Stanford Library has collected rare and unique materials documenting the history and culture of California and beyond. The last thirty years have been transformative for the Library’s Department of Special Collections, as it has expanded and deepened its collecting areas, in the process acquiring and making available signature collections […]
John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law
Legal discrimination against Chinese people in the United States began in 1852, when California passed a tax on foreign gold miners that was explicitly designed to exploit Chinese labor. Over the next seventy years, officials in California, Oregon, Washington, and other western states instituted more than five thousand laws that marginalized and controlled their Chinese […]
Exhibition Opening: Visually Impressive: Exploring American Book Art Color Printing Technologies, 1890-1990
From 1890 to 1990, American book art color reproduction printing went through a series of revolutionary technological changes, not only in how books looked, but who could afford them. Visually Impressive shows these technological changes using examples of American books that reveal the changing artistic aesthetic reflected in the evolving color printing process. Exhibition opening with […]
Our Lady of the Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles
On storefronts, alleyways, and street corners across the city, murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe grace the walls of Los Angeles in a tapestry of faith, identity, and culture. Our Lady of the Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles captures the sacred and everyday presence of Guadalupe murals across the […]
Out of the Gutters: How California Comix Saved Comics
Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression, edited by Jorge J. Santos and Patrick S. Lawrence, explores US comics that have been challenged for their boundary-breaking content. Covering well-known underground figures like R. Crumb and Charles Burns, newcomers such as C. Spike Trotman and Emil Ferris, and mainstream creators including Chris Claremont and Archie […]
California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State
For many people, the concept of landscape is associated with gardens, especially estate gardens. California Eden reaches far beyond the elite circle of private estates; this book highlights a wide range of landscapes from the professional to the vernacular and delves deep into the cultural and historical significance of these landscapes, revealing the untold stories […]
Eugene O’Neill and Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Tao House—a California Story
Few people realize that Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize, was written in California in 1939-41. After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, O’Neill and his third wife, the actress Carlotta Monterey, built Tao House just outside Danville, California. Realizing that his writing career was coming […]
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
Troublemaker tells the wild and unlikely story of Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous Mitford Girls, a British aristocrat-turned-American Communist, famous for exposés like The American Way of Death; this biography brings her astonishing self-transformation to life with a riveting, often hilarious account of trading wealth and status for a life of radical activism. […]