Your Reading List for This Month
Editors’ picks of recent works by Berkeley authors
Online Exclusives
The Poetry of Impurity
By Geoff KochA conversation with John Shoptaw and Jenny Odell
Lessons in Humility and Persistence
By Andrea LamprosFilmmaker Toby McLeod has spent four decades amplifying Indigenous voices—while wrestling with how to tell stories not his own.
Recent Works by Berkeley Authors and Artists
By Editorial StaffEditors’ picks for books, documentaries, and exhibits to check this month
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a … Conlang?
By Alexander RonyDavid J. Peterson created languages for Superman, Dune, and Game of Thrones. It all started with courses at Berkeley.
Please Don’t Call Me a Liberal
By Leah WorthingtonQ&A with historian Kevin Schultz, author of Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals)
Kim Ricardo
Kim D. Ricardo ‘99, was awarded Inaugural Lucy Sprague Professorship In Public Interest last month. Ricardo’s personal and professional commitment to deepening society’s collective understanding of how group-based differences such as race, gender, and class impact the unequal distribution of resources, paralleled with her mission to advance social justice causes and uplift the voices of […]
Erwin Chemerinsky on Testing the Limits of Presidential Power
By Nathalia AlcantaraThe UC Berkeley Law dean breaks down the Supreme Court's game-changing ruling on birthright citizenship.
The Other Fraternity House
By Ian A. StewartFor nearly 50 years, the Freemasons had an outsized presence on campus. Today, a new group is trying to revive that fraternal legacy.
10 Books to Read This Summer
Deep Cuts Holly Brickley ’02 This debut novel from Cal alum Holly Brickley opens at a Berkeley bar, just “blocks from campus” (Triple Rock? Kip’s? Larry Blake’s? It’s fun to guess) sometime in the early aughts. Protagonist Percy Marks and fellow student Joey Murrow bond over beers and banter about the fine points of whatever’s […]
Clayton Cone
Clay Cone ’82 writes: Ode to Ned and Jack Against Stanford University, even the Guanos (Cal’s third and fourth rugby teams) had an important part to play: to begin a three-game same-day Big Game sweep with a victory in the first game of the day . . . in 1982, played at the old California […]
Jose Hernandez Diaz
Jose Hernandez Diaz ’11 has published a new poetry book, Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award, with Red Hen Press.
Nadia Shihab
Filmmaker Nadia Shihab, MCP ’09, MFA ’21, was awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts (Film/Video).
My Old Guy Master’s Piece
By Robert Strauss“A lot of my people at home have had good retirements, but none of them got to spend it with 25-year-olds.”
Steven Hendlin
Steven J. Hendlin ’71 has been practicing psychotherapy as a licensed clinical psychologist in Newport Beach, California, for the last 50 years. He continues seeing patients both in his office and online at age 76. At Berkeley, he was distracted by but immersed in the political, counter-cultural, and social activities taking place, including sitting in […]
Q&A: Saving Democracy
By Tom KertscherProfessor of Democracy Lucan Way says the U.S. has entered a period of competitive authoritarianism.
Berkeley’s Music Boom
By Emma SilversA curriculum overhaul and a post-pandemic need to reconnect have made music Cal’s fastest-growing major.
Books to Check Out This Month
By Editorial StaffThe punk photography of Murray Bowles, Joan Didion’s psychotherapy notes, and more.
5 Questions for Enrique Martínez Celaya, M.S. ’88
By Emily WilsonThe artist reflects on science, exile, and the messiness of life.
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