Posted October 13, 1999

Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible" By Linda Williams
Professor of Film Studies
In this expanded edition of a now-classic study (first published a decade ago), Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does -- as a genre with a history, as a unique cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality.

"Williams urges that we take pornography seriously, which does not mean that we like it, or that we believe it is art," wrote Alan Wolfe in The New Republic.

For the 1999 edition, Williams has added a supplementary bibliography, a new preface and a new epilogue, illustrated with 25 photographs.

University of California Press
398 pages

Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California
By J.S. Holliday
Former Assistant Director, Bancroft Library
J.S. Holliday frames California's gold rush years within the larger story of the state's transformation from the quietude of Mexican hinterland in the 1840s to the forefront of entrpreneurial capitalism 40 years later.

Said Stephen Ives, director of the PBS series "The West": "J.S. Holliday has given us that rare gift, a meticulously researched chronicle of the West that reads like a sweeping historical novel."

An eminent historian, Holliday describes how, after decades of careless freedom, the miners were finally reained in by the farmers, and how their once mutallly dependent relationship soured into hostility. The narrative is accompanied by 250 illustrations.

University of California Press
355 pages

October 13 - 19, 1999 (Volume 28, Number 10)
Copyright 1999, The Regents of the University of California.
Produced and maintained by the Office of Public Affairs at UC Berkeley.
Comments? E-mail berkeleyan@pa.urel.berkeley.edu.