It is a rare for a book to raise new questions about such diverse subjects as technology, ambition, progress, the impact of the dot-com boom, urban development, and the true agenda of Bill Gates. Even rarer is the book that
Read More »

In his thoughtful, often fierce critique of California’s three strikes law, “Cruel Injustice,” Joe Domanick repeatedly refers to the law as “Kafkaesque.” It’s an apt description of a law borne out of panic and the illusion that crime and gangbanging
Read More »

“Adoption Politics” is a lucid and detailed account of the successful 1998 Oregon ballot initiative campaign and subsequent court battles that allowed adult adoptees access to their own original and unaltered birth certificates. Reread that statement and think about it
Read More »

Chris Rhomberg’s No There There begins with an astonishing scene from local history: two thousand hooded Ku Klux Klan members marching through the Oakland hills, under a burning cross. Rhomberg goes on to describe two equally dramatic Oakland uprisings. In
Read More »

After graduating college, Larry Tramutola began volunteering on the lettuce boycott called by the emerging United Farmworkers Union. Tramutola spent hours each day in front of supermarkets signing up volunteers, but soon found that most of the signers failed to
Read More »