Samantha Barbas, M.A. '98, Ph.D. '00, tells the story of Louella Parsons, America's premier movie gossip columnist between 1915 and 1960, against the broader trajectory of Hollywood history in her full-length biography, The First Lady of Hollywood (University of California Press).

Ronald M. Davidson '71, M.A. '80, Ph.D. '85, studies how the translation and spread of esoteric Buddhist texts dramatically shaped Tibetan society and led to its rise as the center of Buddhist culture throughout Asia in Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (Columbia University Press).

Joan Didion'56, renowned journalist and prolific essayist, won the National Book Award for her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she mourns the end of a 40-year marriage and details the stages of grief following the death of her husband, novelist John Gregory Dunne (Knopf).

Jacqueline Goldsby '84, who began studying literary representations of lynching while she was an undergrad at Cal, examines the subject's relegation to the outer margins of the nation's history in A Spectacular Secret: The Cultural Logic of Lynching in American Life and Literature (University of Chicago Press).

Michael J. González, M.A. '90, Ph.D. '93, presents a new interpretation of life in Los Angeles during the years that Mexico governed California, in This Small City Will Be a Mexican Paradise: Exploring the Origins of Mexican Culture in Los Angeles, 1821–1846 (University of New Mexico Press).

James N. Gregory, M.A. '77, Ph.D. '82, shows how the migration of Southerners to the North and West, between 1900 and 1970, reshaped America by "Southernizing" communities and transforming important cultural and political institutions in The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (University of North Carolina Press).

Seventy never-before-published poems, along with selections from June Jordan's ten books of poetry, are gathered in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan. An award-winning poet, professor, and activist, Jordan taught in the departments of English, African-American Studies, and Women's Studies from 1986 until her death in 2002 (Copper Canyon Press).

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