Irene Bloemraad, assistant professor of sociology, critically examines how societies create civic cohesion and political community out of ethnic and racial diversity in Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada (University of California Press).

Experienced boatman Michael Burke ’77 weaves together lyrical contemplations as an adult rafting in perilous waters in his memoir, The Same River Twice: A Boatman’s Journey Home (University of Arizona Press).

Gerald Horne, JD ’73, chronicles the dramatic life of Hollywood intellectual and screenwriter John Howard Lawson in the biography The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten (University of California Press).

For parents, players and coaches of youth base­ball, Jeffrey J. Kirst ’70 provides an in-depth guide for an optimized youth baseball experience in Screw­balls, Curves and Knuckleheads (Sierra Features Inc.).

Inspired by a visit to the tiny island, Claire Rudolph Murphy ’74 imagines what a childhood on Alcatraz looked like through personal anecdotes, revealing interviews, historical documents and archival photographs in Children of Alcatraz: Growing up on the Rock (Walker Books for Young Readers).

Head of access services at the Bancroft Library Susan Snyder mined the library’s archive for invaluable historic photographs for her book Past Tents: The Way We Camped (Heyday Books).

Truckee photographer Elizabeth Carmel ’87 created sensual, painterly portraits of Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, and the High Sierra for Brilliant Waters (Hawks Peak Publishing). Robert Redford contributed the foreward.

Berkeley Guitar is a collection of new recordings by three of the Bay Area’s finest young acoustic guitarists, including alum Adam Snider ’06 and current student Matt Baldwin. The acoustic guitar has had a long history in Berkeley, particularly during the sixties, when Berkeley-based Takoma Records released landmark recordings by John Fahey, Robbie Bashko, Leo Kottke, and many others.

Send your own Book Reports submission, with press release and info, to californiamag@alumni.berkeley.edu with "Books" in the subject line or mail to: California, CAA, 1 Alumni House, Berkeley, CA 94720-7520.