Heritage Shared Book Recommendations and Reviews

Fractal Architecture: Design for Sustainability, 2007. Ken Haggard and Polly Cooper. BookSurge Publishing.  Quote from book:  "The old adage 'architecture is frozen music' would be better stated in the context of fractal geometry as: 'architecture is music at a myriad of time scales.' Certainly architecture is not frozen in time. From the start of construction, the decay of buildings is a slow but inevitable process. The time of day and season bring different aspects of lighting and temperature characteristics to structures. Buildings viewed as objects frozen in space is an industrial era abstraction that is not only false, but so simplistic as to disconnect buildings from a great deal of aesthetic response. "Stravinsky said: 'in music, only the now counts.' We could say that in architecture many nows count--short-term nows, long-term nows--all being counted at once. Architecture as an environmental art is therefore more complex, and often less pure, due to the multiplicity of users and players. However, if orchestrated well, architecture can have the aesthetic impact of music." Contact the San Luis Sustainability Group for more information.

Hard Road West: History and Geology Along the Gold Rush Trail, Keith Heyer Meldahl

Historical Atlas of California: With Original Maps, Derek Hayas. University of California Press, 2007, 256 pages.

This atlas tells the story of California's past from a unique perspective. It is lavishly illustrated with approximately 500 maps and many other illustrations. The illustrations are accompanied by extended captions and concise narrative. The work is unique because only historical maps and other adornments were utilized in contrast to existing atlases that are comprised mainly of new cartographic materials. This is a beautiful atlas that is instructive and a pleasure to view.

Introduction to Fire in California, David Carle (Berkeley: UC Press, 2008) Review by Robert Pavlik, 14 October 2008

David Carle is on fire. Since his retirement from the California Department of Parks and Recreation in 2000, he has authored or co-authored nine books, three in the UC Press Natural History series. His first was on Water in California, the second looks at air, and the most recent is also the most incendiary – Fire in California.

It’s a hot topic right now, following so closely on the heels of some major conflagrations over the past few years. After reading this fine work, its easy to predict that more are on the way.

The Wave readers are familiar with some of them:  in the fall of 2003 devastating fires roared through Silverwood Lake SRA and Cuyamaca Rancho SP.  Last year a 150,000+ acre file burned in the Santa Barbara backcountry for more than a month, and this year, fires have raged across California, from Goleta to Big Sur to Mendocino to Paradise. As I write this, fires once again are encircling the San Fernando Valley.

A small fire in Malibu in January 2007 burned several multimillion dollar homes. The locals blamed State Parks, saying the Department didn’t clear “brush” away from their exotically landscaped mansions. Didn’t anyone ever tell them that when you plunk yourself down into a fire dependent community you might get burned?

Dave Carle’s book comes just in time.  Its compact, concise, and a great read.  It is lavishly illustrated and comprehensive in its treatment of the subject. The author examines the role of fire in ecosystems across California, from the redwood forests to riparian areas, oak savannas, and the deserts. His treatment of fire and wildlife is particularly interesting and informative. I was fascinated to learn about fire beetles that swarm to the site of a fire storm from several miles away to lay their eggs in freshly killed trees. Carle also addresses the physical impact of fire on soils, air, and water, and the complex relationship between climate change and fire.

He concludes this fascinating volume with a chapter on living with fire in the Golden state. Carle details what to do before a fire strikes, during a fire, and after the event. Its must reading for Californians who live in what is known as the wildland-urban interface. The bibliography indicates the author’s careful research, indeed mastery, of the subject. This is a book that belongs in every ranger station across California.

Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island, Robert Eric Barde, Praeger/Greenwood Press, March 2008.

Angel Island is both an important piece of American history and a metaphor for the immigration process on the West Coast. To illuminate the many facets of the Chinese immigration experience in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Barde follows the various threads of one Chinese female immigrants 20-month detention on Angel Island. Her experience was extraordinarynot only in being the longest known detention at the Immigration Station, but in being connected to so many important events and central characters in immigration through the Golden Gate. Her tale is chillingly relevant to todays debates over exclusion and detention.

The author is Deputy Director of the Institute of Business and Economic Research at the University of California, Berkeley. With Susan Carter and Richard Sutch, he is author of the International Migration chapter for the Millennial Edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. His writings on immigration history include articles for Social Science History and the Journal of the History of Medicine. Before working for UC Berkeley, Barde made documentary films on Africa for educational television in Canada, founded a gallery of modern African art, and earned a black belt in karate. He holds a graduate degree in Political Economy from the University of Toronto. His book, Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island, was published by .

Many of his writings on immigration, African art, and karate are available on his webpage http://staff.haas.berkeley.edu/barde/_public/

Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, 2007   Pages: 200

Richard Heinberg has written three books on peak oil and his new work widens the environmental and resource scope of his forecasts. He provides compelling evidence that the limits we all have been hearing about for decades are really upon us. He also hints at the directions we may take to escape or adjust to resource limitations.

Point Piedras Blancas, an Images of America book by Arcadia Publishing, docent Carole Adams.

For thousands of years, Point Piedras Blancas, located along the central coast of California, has attracted people to its rocky, windswept shores. In ancient times, it was used by Native American cultures. Since 1875, it has been the site of a First Order Lighthouse, warning ships to steer clear of its rocky shoals, a duty it continues to fulfill. Although the years have not been kind to this stunning area nor to the lighthouse, new life is being breathed into it by a partnership of enthusiastic community volunteers and government agencies. Their common goal is to restore this magnificent site to its original state while reintroducing the natural environment that was almost obliterated during the past four decades. Authors Carole Adams and John Bogacki are both deeply involved with the efforts to restore Point Piedras Blancas. Adams is a volunteer at the Piedras Blancas Light Station, and Bogacki is a former site manager. They have created a visual representation of the story of Point Piedras Blancas using photographs, illustrations, and architectural drawings that are part of the Bureau of Land Management Piedras Blancas Light Station Collection. The authors proceeds go to the Piedras Blancas Light Station Association for restoration and education.

Paperback: 128 pages, Arcadia Publishing (June 9, 2008)m ISBN-10: 0738558192, $15.59. Available through Amazon.com.  

State Boundaries of America is an original book detailing the formation of each state of the United States.

From the introduction:

"The United States - the What and the Where is well known: watch any network national weather broadcast. Here is explained the Who, When and (as possible) Why from as wide a variety of sources as possible.

An atlas of the USA is useful reference when reading this; adding a historical atlas would be ideal. The USA is a layer cake of interstate boundaries in most cases laid down over many years. The intent here is to provide a cross-referenced dataset showing literally the portions of original text in Royal Charters, Royal Grants, International Treaties, and US Territorial or Federal Statutes spanning 300+ years that laid down the lines as we see them in 2006. "

Testimonios: Early California Through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848. 2006. Translated with introduction and commentary by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert m. Senkewicz. Heyday Books, Berkeley, California.

The book is comprised of thirteen women's firsthand accounts from the time when California was part of Spain and Mexico. Many of these chronicles come from women who lived in San Luis Obispo and nearby lands.

Kevin Starr describes (on the dust jacket) the book this way: "Testimonios is a pioneering work of scholarship and critical interpretation by two of the finest Hispanicists active in early California studies. It is also a deeply moving act of liberation in which thirteen women are called forth from the tomb of neglected history so that they might at long last speak to us of their lives and times and the California they helped bring into being."

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