Leon Patterson: A California Story
by Gerald W. Haslam with Janice E. Haslam

Leon Patterson was a Southwestern migrant to California who, despite being raised in poverty, became a world-class athlete. Throwing the discus and putting the shot, he left indelible memories at both Taft Union High School and at the University of Southern California. He managed to accomplish remarkable things despite being terminally ill and knowing it. His inner strength was nurtured by a girl named Dixie Kenney, who loved him, by a coach named Tom O'Brien, who all but adopted him, and by the community that sustained them all.

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Coming of Age in California
by Gerald W. Haslam

Coming of Age in California was selected one of the 20th century’s top nonfiction books from the West by a San Francisco readers’ poll. These intense personal essays, dealing with everything from dogs to cancer, follow a fifth-generation Californian from a blue-collar boyhood to a white-collar manhood, revealing several regions of the state and even more regions of the soul.

“...a touching and honest book by a great California writer and thinker."
– Dale Walker, The Rocky Mountain News

“Haslam celebrates his California heritage...with affection and understanding."
– Wayne Saroyan, San Francisco Chronicle

“In revealing himself, the author also inevitably unfolds his backdrop, the terrain for these essays—California itself.”
– Holly Johnson, The Sacramento Union

“His lucid, crisp prose punctuates the struggle to find something special about his state—and his own experience in it.”
– Len Fulton, Small Press Review

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The Great Tejon Club Jubilee
by Gerald W. Haslam

Short stories in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, though these are set in the “Other California.” Here, Gerald Haslam’s redoubtable Tejon-Club Gang returns tall-tales and bumpkin-humor to their proper places in American letters...wherever that is!

The gang manages to poke holes in social trends and elitist assumptions—and in their own prejudices—while bumbling from one beer-fueled misadventure to the next.

Thirteen short stories—plus a disclaimer by the narrator—introduce readers to these Good Ol’ Boys who live and work in California’s Great Central Valley.

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Compost College: Life on a Counter-culture Commune
by Richard B. Seymour

Founded in the early 1970s in the rugged back country of California’s north coast, Compost College was a unique intentional community where diverse organic elements came together to make things grow.

These “elements,” a motley bunch of college students, teachers, administrators and drifters, dreamed about a better way of life. Their experience on the road to community, living through hazardous times under primitive conditions, was painful but filled with moments of joy and beauty.

Rick Seymour, one of the commune’s original members, tells the story of these counter-culture visionaries, providing a prologue and epilogue to put the Compost experiment in perspective.

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Haslam’s Valley
by Gerald W. Haslam

Gerald Haslam picks up where Mark Twain left off in this career-spanning collection of stories and essays brimming with life and humor -- but this is Kern County instead of Calaveras, Oildale instead of Nevada City, a great alligator hunt instead of a celebrated jumping frog.

While Haslam’s stories entertain, his essays gesture at the sweeping diversity of the Central Valley and the richness of community to be found there. Here too is a darker side of California’s heartland, where a Japanese family bids good-bye to an America they thought they knew, and where Okies are shunned as second-class citizens. Haslam tackles problems of racism, social class, and environmental issues that are plaguing the Valley, as well as crafting whimsical tales full of local color.

With an ear for dialect and his feet firmly planted in his native soil, Haslam delivers vibrant stories that have secured him a place in the pantheon of great American writers and have earned Oildale a spot on the literary map.

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Snapshots: Glimpses of the Other California
by Gerald W. Haslam

Everyone knows California, bleached blonde and surfer country. In fact, what most people “know” is the media image of a narrow coastal strip that runs roughly from San Diego to Marin County. However, the Golden State is not a single, homogenous region. Instead, it is a group of diverse places, other places, gathered within arbitrary boundaries under a single name.

This short-story collection chronicles the lives of characters who live in the Other California, where the author was born and raised. Although he now lives in Sonoma County, his stories illustrate that he has never forgotten what it was like to roughneck on a drilling rig or to chop cotton.

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Voices of a Place
by Gerald W. Haslam

What is life like in the Other California, the regions of the Golden State where toil not tennis characterizes each day? This collection of ten essays explores blue-collar existence in out-of-the-way places and suggests unique textures in California’s life, its savor and sorrow.

Mexican-American farm workers struggle to escape the cycle of agricultural peonage in King City, the progeny of migrant Okies edge into the middle class in Bakersfield, and self-appointed “sheriffs” patrol Petaluma. Meanwhile, elitist rich and desperate poor, white and nonwhite, urban and rural, Californians all, learn to live together, or don’t. This is Gerald Haslam’s world.

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The Kochi Maru Affair
by Daniel C. Helix

A fast-paced military spy novel that involves treachery, deception, and the cover-up of a botched CIA scheme.

From his earliest days on the tough streets of West Berkeley, California, Ken Grainger found himself battling from the underdog position. Hard-earned physical skills enabled him to overcome most obstacles and learn the values of loyalty, respect and honor.

These values are challenged when he leaves Korea as a highly decorated combat veteran and is assigned to Army Intelligence in Japan. He becomes involved in the cover-up of a botched CIA scheme to smuggle spies into China aboard the Kochi Maru and questions the validity and morality of an operation that kills a number of innocent people.

Grainger finds himself in direct conflict with his supervisor, a bureaucratic empire builder and, more threatening, the notorious, amoral Colonel Sukow Kim of the South Korean CIA. Kim is determined to eliminate Grainger in any way possible.

Grainger enlists the support of some Army friends and finds a surprising ally in the person of Arcady Petrovsky, a Soviet Intelligence general who has his own reasons for a payback against the malevolent Colonel Kim. Together, they craft a plan to neutralize Kim and also avert a major international incident that threatens a crisis in American Intelligence.

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Dr. Dave: A Profile of David E. Smith, M.D., Founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics
by Clark S. Sturges

When David Smith opened the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic on June 7, 1967, he didn’t know whether it would last the month let alone the summer. As it turned out, the clinic -- along with satellite locations -- continued for decades to serve those in need. This is Dave Smith’s story, an intense personal history with revelations that will probably surprise even those who know him.

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