At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults. The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect—in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less than in the earthquakes of the twentieth—and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from far and near to coalesce as California. McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of Arizona and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported into continental settings, as it has in California. Global in scope and a delight to read, Assembling California is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands.

Thaddeus S. Kenderdine made his way from Philadelphia to Michigan in 1858, staying only a month before he determined to head to California. He remained for only a year, returning to New York in 1859. A California tramp (1888) describes Kenderdine's adventures in 1858-1859: his trip west as a driver on a California wagon train, visits to San Francisco and life as tramp and ranch hand in Sonoma County. His memoir closes with his return via Panama in 1859. The last quarter of the book is a miscellany of Kenderdine's prose and poetry. Kenderdine's association with California was renewed almost forty years later when he made a second trip west; see his California revisited (1898).

Job Mercer has lived a life few would envy. After enduring the ravages of war in Vietnam, he made his way home to a better life. He had weathered quite a few hardships by the time I found him. Job had spent some time in prison and found just as much grief outside as he did inside. Somehow, through it all, he survived, but it has not been easy. With nothing left to lose, Job makes a bold move, vowing to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in search of something more. If he is lucky, he'll find what he is looking for out there. If he fails, he'll carry on just like he always has, even if it breaks him.

THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER "Bill Press has done it all. He was the Chair of the California Democratic Party, he has been involved in numerous campaigns, he has been a prolific writer, and has worked as a host and commentator on radio and TV. In other words, he knows politics inside and out. This is the tale of an engaged and often outraged citizen who loves his country and wants to see it move forward in a progressive direction." —Senator Bernie Sanders A memoir of talk radio host and political commentator Bill Press. The name Bill Press is synonymous with honest journalism, intelligent commentary, and progressive politics. But based on where he came from, it's a wonder he didn't end up a Trump voter. He grew up in a blue-collar family in a small town in Delaware south of the Mason-Dixon line, where segregation was the rule. As a Catholic, he was taught that abortion, divorce, sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality were morally wrong: beliefs later reinforced in ten years of seminary studies for the priesthood. He was on his way to be a rock-ribbed conservative. So what went right for him that he swerved so far to the left? In From the Left, Press shows this gradual transformation, starting with two years of studies in Europe and a providential escape to California. From Sacramento he made his way to Southern California television and talk radio as a political commentator and liberal talk show host. Jumping to Washington and national cable TV, Press hosted Crossfire and The Spin Room on CNN, and Buchanan and Press on MSNBC. A member of the White House Press Corps and columnist for Tribune Media Services and The Hill, Press was an early supporter of Bernie Sanders and hosted two of the Senator's first presidential strategy sessions in his living room. If you're already on the left, you'll cheer a fellow traveler. If not yet there, you soon will be.