Celebrating People’s History
The Celebrate People’s History poster series has organized and curated by Josh MacPhee since 1998. The over 200 posters in the ongoing series are rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda, but detourned to embody principles of democracy, inclusion, and group participation in the writing and interpretation of history. Over more […]
Print Your Own Broadside Affair
Join Book Club members and invited guests for fine wine, delicious hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and a signature cocktail as you letterpress print your own broadside on the Book Club’s Columbian hand press with Li Jiang, Lemoncheese Press. This year the broadside will celebrate the 150th anniversary of American novelist, journalist, adventurer, and activist Jack London’s birth. This is an in-person event. Space is limited and […]
2026 Oscar Lewis Awards
The Oscar Lewis Awards were established by the Book Club of California in 1994 in honor of Oscar Lewis (1893-1992), author, historian, and club secretary. Join us as we recognize this year’s honorees for their contributions to the Book Arts and Western History. This is an in-person and virtual event. Space is limited and a […]
Black Urban Landscapes of the Second Great Migration
Building on themes from her forthcoming book, Chasing the Sun: Staging Life, Belonging, and Displacement in the Black Bay Area (University of Washington Press), Oakland-born-and-raised historian and poet Wendy M. Thompson explores the ways that the Bay Area’s built environment has played a core role in the formation of race, belonging, and black California identity. […]
Hollywood Signs: The Golden Age of Glittering Graphics and Glowing Neon
Hollywood Signs demonstrates that signage is more than functional; it’s a work of art in its own right. Vintage and contemporary color images of world-famous signs, such as the enormous neon dragons of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the neon Brown Derby hat, demonstrate the incredible craftsmanship and artistry of each and every design. Hollywood Signs […]
Tomorrow is Another Day: Bestselling Novels of the Great Depression Era
As a counterpart to research on the 1930s that has focused on liberal and radical writers calling for social revolution, David Welky offers this eloquent study of how mainstream print culture shaped and disseminated a message affirming conservative middle-class values and assuring its readers that holding to these values would get them through hard times. […]
Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community
In 1938, China City opened near downtown Los Angeles. Featuring a recreation of the House of Wang set from MGM’s The Good Earth, this new Chinatown employed many of the same Chinese Americans who performed as background extras in the 1937 film. Chinatown and Hollywood represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial […]
Larry McMurtry’s Runaways: The Story of Larry McMurtry’s Collection of Books by Women Travelers
In 1960 the aspiring Texas writer Larry McMurtry enrolled in Stanford University with a fellowship in the Stegner creative writing program. Along with his studies, McMurtry became immersed in the world of antiquarian and used bookshops that flourished during that time in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it became an infatuation that, along with […]
In Case You Missed It: Counterculture Photography of the 1960s and 1970s
In Case You Missed It: Counterculture Photography of the 1960s and 1970s presents a stunning portrait of an era that lit up briefly but brightly—Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Capturing the imagination of modern filmmakers and cultural tastemakers, this period of iconic imagery, changing social landscape, and free love in Los […]
The Sunday Paper: A Media History
The American Sunday paper of the 1890s transformed the daily edition with inserts and supplements of all shapes and sizes. Each asked readers to do more than read, but to interact with the materiality of the paper as a form of leisure. The Sunday paper became so large and voluminous it needed to be organized: […]