Publications

14 November 2001 |

The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the
University of California,1949-1967
Vol. 1: Academic Triumphs
By Clark Kerr

One of the last century’s most influential figures in higher education, Clark Kerr was a leading visionary for the University of California. Chancellor of Berkeley from 1952 to 1958 and president of the university from 1958 to 1967, Kerr saw the university through a time of great advancement and great conflict. This memoir is an insider’s account of UC’s rise to high scientific and scholarly stature and its evolution, under Kerr’s leadership, into the institution it is today.

This first of two volumes covers Kerr’s experiences at Berkeley up to his dismissal by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. He discusses the upheavals that the campus underwent during the Loyalty Oath controversy in the early 1950s and again during the Free Speech Movement in 1964, as well as the impact of the GI bill and the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education. Volume 2 will treat the public life of the university and the political context that conditioned its environment.

University of California Press, 2001
540 pages

Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall
By Christopher Nealon

Christopher Nealon, associate professor of English, analyzes lesbian and gay writings in the first half of the 20th century — poems of Hart Crane, novels of Willa Cather, gay male physique magazines, lesbian pulp fiction. According to Nealon, these works share a common relationship to history that he terms “foundling.” Themes pervading foundling texts tend to be of exile from participation in traditional families and simultaneous longing for family, nation and history.

Nealon describes a new model of “queer” sexuality arising from two existing models. The model that was dominant in the first half of the 20th century held that homosexuals are souls of one gender trapped in the body of another. A more recent model finds a distinct, collective culture among gays and lesbians as they build new communities. Nealon’s readings reveal a constant movement between these two poles.

Said Bill Brown, author of “The Material Unconscious: American Amusement, Stephen Crane, and the Economics of Play”: “‘Foundlings’ provides a new paradigm for thinking historically and theoretically about the longing for history within gay and lesbian texts. This is not just a stunning addition to queer historiography but also a challenge to the historicist turn in literary and cultural criticism.”

Duke University Press, 2001
209 pages

Time Series: Data Analysis and Theory
By David Brillinger

This new text by Professor of Statistics David Brillinger uses basic techniques of univariate and multivariate statistics to analyze time series and signals. Useful for both applied and theoretical workers, it provides a broad collection of theorems, placing the techniques on firm theoretical ground. Illustrated by data analyses, the techniques are discussed in both heuristic and formal terms.

This book should be most useful to applied mathematicians, communications engineers, signal processors, statisticians and time-series researchers with some background in complex function theory and matrix algebra.

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2001

540 pages

Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law
By Robert A. Kagan

Viewing the legal systems of western Europe, Japan, and Canada, through a cross-cultural lens, Professor of Law Robert Kagan examines the American system of policy implementation and dispute resolution. He finds it more adversarial, litigious, expensive, and cumbersome than that of other economically advanced countries and questions whether those problems are normal results of trying to compel companies to observe behavioral norms. Drawing on insights from a broad spectrum of legal specialties, Kagan answers this question by examining the origins and consequences of the American system, the deep connections it has with the American political system, and its social costs.

Lawrence Friedman, author of “Crime and Punishment in American History,” writes: “This is a wonderful piece of work, richly detailed and beautifully written. It is the best, sanest, and most comprehensive evaluation and critique of the American way of law that I have seen.”

Harvard University Press, 2001
339 pages

The Language War
By Robin Tolmach Lakoff

In this series of essays, Professor of Linguistics Robin Lakoff analyzes the role of language in popular and political culture and in making and changing public and private meaning. There is a continual battle, she says, among the government, the media and the people for the right to assign meaning to public discourse.

As she charts how the media’s use of language shapes public attitudes and social policies, Lakoff explores many hot topics of the 1990s: public debate about the use of Ebonics in schools, the O. J. Simpson trial, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the making of the Hillary Rodham Clinton narrative, and the Lewinsky/Clinton scandal and subsequent impeachment of President Clinton.

Says linguist Deborah Tannen: “Robin Lakoff is a national treasure. She is one of the most astute and knowledgeable linguists in the country (indeed, in the world), and one of the few who turns her analytic eye to the role of language in popular and political culture. It was she who pioneered the field of gender and language. She is poised to be recognized among the general reading public as she has long been recognized in the field of linguistics.”

University of California Press, 2001
332 pages