University Of California Press

Anthropologists generally agree that before the arrival of Europeans, California, as now, was the most heavily populated area of America north of the Rio Grande. There was no single dominant Native American nation--no League of the Iroquois or Huron Confederacy--but rather a mosaic of distinct and coexistent small cultures, each with its own language and tradition, religion and cosmology. From the Yurok in the north, whose social and economic systems were intricately entwined, to the tiny bands of kin-based bands in the south, indigenous California societies were as diverse as they were numerous, as creatively adaptive to their particular environments as they were artistically and philosophically experimental.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar Stories of Food During Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents Edited by Matt McAllester University of California Press: 214 pp., $27.50

BLACK LIVES, WHITE LIVES Three Decades of Race Relations by Bob Blauner (University of California Press: $25; 350 pp.) "A sociological study with a vivid face and a warm heart. Blauner was clearly won over by the men and women who shared their lives with him and his readers--and so was I."

Los Angeles in the 1930s The WPA Guide to the City of Angels With an Introduction by David Kipen University of California Press: 504 pp., $24.95.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar Stories of Food During Wartime by the World's Leading Correspondents Edited by Matt McAllester University of California Press: 214 pp., $27.50

Los Angeles in the 1930s The WPA Guide to the City of Angels With an Introduction by David Kipen University of California Press: 504 pp., $24.95.

It's good to see that Don Heckman mentions books that deal with jazz on Central Avenue ("Echoes of Central Avenue," July 30). However, he did not mention "California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West," a book recently published by the University of California Press. Co-edited by myself and Eddie Meadows, it contains several articles on Los Angeles jazz, popular music and gospel. J.C. DJEDJE, Los Angeles Allow me to add two items to Heckman's Central Avenue study guide: Harvey Kubernik has produced two spoken-word CDs that document the music and careers of saxophonist Buddy Collette ("A Jazz Audio Biography," on Issues Records)

Jon Weiner's column, "Chutzpah and Free Speech" (Opinion, July 11), omits important facts. My letter to the University of California Press was precipitated by an e-mail from Norman Finkelstein to the dean of Harvard Law School claiming Finkelstein was writing a book that "will demonstrate that he [Dershowitz] almost certainly didn't write the book ['The Case for Israel'], and perhaps didn't even read it prior to publication." This defamatory claim was followed by Finkelstein comparing me to Adolf Eichmann and asserting that my books are churned out for me "like a Hallmark line for Nazis."

"The seeming complexities of the financial world, which are exaggerated by insider's jargon, have a lot to do with the public's--and Congress'--boredom with the subject. But as Ned Eichler points out in "The Thrift Debacle," it behooves the taxpayer to pay attention because billions of dollars in tax money are being thrown down a black hole to pay for the ongoing follies of greedy gamblers and inept bank regulators."

THE Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, who lived his short life in the tumultuous last years of the Roman republic, wrote some of the loveliest lyric poetry in the Latin language. Some of it was sweet and joyful, the rest moving and sad, singing to us of the poet's ancestral homeland; the love of a mistress; the death of a dear brother; the goddess Diana, revered by the Romans as the embodiment of hunting and healing.

The 736-page "Autobiography of Mark Twain," published a full 100 years after its author's death, was a surprise bestseller when it came out earlier this month. That's terrific news for the University of California Press, the book's publisher, which says "Autobiography of Mark Twain" is the biggest seller it's ever had. Original plans called for a printing of 7,500, which was increased to 50,000 by the time the book actually went to press. It's since gone back again and again, bringing the total number of printed copies to 275,000.

THERE was a time when the zeitgeist used to get bashed about pretty thoroughly by classical music. New operas, ballets and symphonies would actually alter the cultural climate, chasing away old modes of thought and introducing new realities -- as in 1913, when Igor Stravinsky dropped his "Rite of Spring" on an ill-prepared Parisian public, or in 1952, when David Tudor sat down and closed his keyboard lid for the first live performance of John Cage's "4' 33"."

It's been a long time since Jesse M. "Big Daddy" Unruh was a household name in California politics. Unruh was, as the cliche goes, "the powerful speaker" of the state Assembly from 1961 to 1969, candidate for governor in 1970 -- he lost to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan by 500,000 votes -- and state treasurer from 1975 until his death in 1987. So why would anyone want to write Unruh's biography now?

Margaret Leslie Davis' ongoing examination of Los Angeles through the lives of its civic and cultural leaders is a grand project, deserving of generous praise. More than any writer of our time, she is methodically supplying this city with an understanding of itself. Davis' devotion to the task is evident in her choice of subjects -- previous biographies were on William Mulholland and Edward Doheny, of water and oil fame and infamy -- and in the rigorous research that is her signature.

Ladies and gentlemen! Behold the Human Fly (ludzka mucha in Polish) as he scales the cornerstones of Layzer Mandelbaum's house, then performs three handstands! Take pity on lovely Malkele Drek, who acquired her unfortunate name after falling into a military latrine! Learn how to inflate a goose bladder, stuff a chicken neck and whip up a tasty sauce out of herring sperm! All these wonders (and more!

ONE of the wry passages in "Weimar on the Pacific" by Ehrhard Bahr is an entry in the journal that Thomas Mann kept while living in Los Angeles in the 1940s and early 1950s. The great man of German letters, a Nobel laureate who served as the public conscience of German civilization in the face of Nazi barbarism, was somehow moved to preserve the following observation: "Nach Westwood zum Haarschneiden" ("Gone to Westwood for a haircut").

In the brief but moving introduction to his "Selected Poems," Robert Creeley notes that poet-critic Robert Graves once characterized him as a "domestic poet." This cheerful condescension of Graves' hit an unwitting backhanded critical bull's eye. As Creeley says, "With Robert Duncan I am committed to the hearth and love the echoes of that word. The fire is the center." Fire is indeed the center of this collection of poems, and the conflagrations are domestic and wild.

On the evening of March 16, 1914, an elegant Parisian walked into the offices of Le Figaro. "Do you know why I have come?" she asked the editor. "Not at all, Madame," he replied politely. Those were Gaston Calmette's last words. From her furs the visitor produced a Browning automatic pistol and fired six times. As office workers closed in, she warned them not to touch her. " Je suis une dame! " she declared. "I am a lady!" Alors , that explained it all.

These are the words of a garden dreamer -- joyful, hopeful, yet down to earth and brimming with horticultural smarts. The author, a Marin County seed proprietor and landscape consultant, is restoring a 1 1/4 -acre garden and 80 acres of third-growth forest. Her book, also due out next month, shares what she sees and how she listens. "Let our gardens school us," she says. Because the short chapters were written as separate essays, there's some redundancy.

THE best stories always seem to come at us sideways, while we are looking for something else. Thus, Daniel Hurewitz writes in his introduction to "Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics," "I did not set out to find Julian Eltinge. Instead, I stumbled across him while on a search for another man.... Harry Hay." In the early 1950s, Hay was a founder of the Mattachine Society, the first significant gay-rights organization in the United States.