Authors on Their Books

Architect David Martin discusses his book Joy Ride: An Architect’s Journey to Mexico’s Ancient and Colonial Places. A journal of his travels filled with sketches, photographs, and observations, Joy Ride celebrates the timeless sophistication of Mexico’s architecture and offers fresh insights into the country’s history and culture.

Recorded July 27, 2017.

Based on the acclaimed science fiction novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, a new graphic adaptation by Damian Duffy and illustrator John Jennings gives fresh form to Butler’s powerful tale of slavery, time travel, and the inexorable pull of the past. Duffy and Jennings discuss the continuing relevance of Butler’s writings and how it has influenced their own work.

Recorded July 24, 2017.

Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell was described by an eminent historian as “not biographable.” Faced with an intractable puzzle, can a novelist do better? Hilary Mantel, two-time Booker Prize–winning author of “Wolf Hall” and its sequel “Bring Up the Bodies,” describes her 10-year effort to pin her compelling and elusive subject to the page. Mantel is currently working on the third book in the trilogy. Her papers are archived at The Huntington. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Recorded May 11, 2017.

Karl Jacoby, professor of history at Columbia University, uses the story of the remarkable Gilded Age border crosser William Ellis to discuss the shifting relationship between the United States and Mexico in the late 19th century. This talk is part of the Billington Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded Sept. 14, 2016.

Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, discusses his book "Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary". Using a trove of newly discovered documents, Cowan offers a glimpse at the raucous and often mean-spirited political machinations of the 1912 campaign, which changed American politics forever by creating the system of primaries by which presidential nominees are selected today.

Considered the worst civil engineering failure in the history of California and the state’s second-worst disaster in terms of lives lost, the collapse of the St. Francis Dam ended the storied career of William Mulholland, the man who earlier had masterminded construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. To contextualize Mulholland’s responsibility for the dam’s failure, historians Norris Hundley, Jr. and Donald C. Jackson relied extensively on items in The Huntington’s collections for their book titled "Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster." In addition, roughly a third of the book’s illustrations are drawn from The Huntington’s collection.

Author and filmmaker Liz Goldwyn discusses her book "Sporting Guide", a series of interlinked stories that evoke a lost world on the margins of Los Angeles society in the 1890s.

Amina Hassan, biographer and award-winning public radio documentarian discusses her new book, “Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist.” Miller, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys from the 1940s through the early 1960, argued two landmark housing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. This biography—based extensively on research from the Loren Miller Papers at The Huntington—recovers this remarkable figure from the margins of history and reveals how he changed American law forever.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer speaks about the many ways in which American judges, when interpreting American law, must take ever greater account of foreign events, law and practices—the subject of his new book, "The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities."

David Mas Masumoto, organic farmer and acclaimed author of Epitaph for a Peach and Harvest Son, is joined by his wife, Marcy Masumoto, for a lively talk about life on their Central California farm. Through stories that offer a personal perspective on growing organic crops, the Masumotos share their reflections on the vision required of artisan farmers in today’s food world. This talk is part of the Brody Lecture series at The Huntington.

Recorded May 7, 2017.