Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West

Sponsored by The Book Club of California An archive survives to be revived. The archive as a limit, a thing in a box, is always also an opening. It opens on losses sustained, harms inflicted, the tenacity of survival, and on the persistence of lineages both proud and shameful. But what is it to approach […]

Jean Pfaelzer: California, A Slave State

Sponsored by The Book Club of California California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaska Natives—the first slaves transported into California—and launched a Pacific slave triangle to China. Plantation slaves were marched across the plains for the […]