New York: Hearst Books / William Morrow Cookbooks, (1995) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Recipes and cooking tips by this noted Sacramento restaurant owner and cook, and based on her popular cooking show 'Biba's Italian Kitchen'. "After a childhood in Bologna, and an adulthood with an Italian family in New York, Biba Caggiano found herself in Sacramento, California, in 1968, unable to find the food that was familiar to her palate - and essential to her heritage. Working from memory, Biba recalled her roots and recreated authentic Italian flavor, and quickly became a local legend for her cooking classes and, ultimately for her highly praised restaurant, Biba. Her simple dishes represent what the Italians call 'la buona cucina casalinga' or 'good home cooking.' Illustrated with photographs in full color. INSCRIBED on the title page. A book which went into multiple printings, this is uncommon signed in the first printing. Large octavo. Index. xii, 260 pp. ISBN: 0-688138659.

Mammoth Lakes, CA: Genny Smith Books, (1990). First edition - "Gold high on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada had brought prospectors racing to Mammoth City, California. General Dodge and other moneyed men from San Francisco rushed to the new strike, bought up claims, and formed the Mammoth Mining Company. The company drove several tunnels into Mineral Hill, built a 40-stamp mill, a tramway, and a flume from Twin Lakes. Yet barely two years later the mill shut down forever and the following year all the company's property was sold at a sheriff's sale. What went wrong? Was it just bad luck? Or mismanagement? Fraud? Highgrading?. . [An account which] combines an historian's obsession for accuracy with a writer's love for the people who lived, worked, and died in Lake District. Illustrated with photographs, maps, charts, including two fold out schematics. List of mining terms, works cited, index. xvii, 169 pp. ISBN: 0-931378125.

By the artist, 1987. SIGNED first edition - A complete set of six original two-color silkscreen prints, each approximately 18" by 14" with an image size of 13 3/4" 10 1/2". All are signed in the plate and dated 1987. all are additionally HAND SIGNED by the artist The Watsonville strike was a successful strike of Mexican American frozen food workers in Watsonville, California, in 1985-1987, one of the few successful strikes of the 1980s. With no initial support from the Teamsters Union, it was unique in being led primarily by the mostly Chicana workers who were facing significant wage cuts. "Over a period of 18 months, not one of the 1,000 Watsonville Canning strikers returned to work. This incredible unity was the key to the strikers' ultimate victory. Several hundred maintained the picket line and fifty to several hundred people attended strategy meetings where they argued over the direction of the strike." It is appropriate that these prints are very empathetic portraits of some of these women and their children or families, with their own words about why they are striking and how they are managing to continue for so long. The artist Andrea Kantrowitz commented that this is set of "six silk-screen prints [was] based on countless sketches done on the picket line during 1985 and 1986. I spent weeks with the workers, on the picket lines, in the union hall, listening to and transcribing their stories. When I first went to Watsonville, I planned to take photos and work with them in my studio. I soon found that working directly, on site, brought me much closer to the strikers and allowed me much deeper insight into the reality of their lives." Ironically while the strikers might have won this battle (although the final resolution was, in reality, a compromise), the continuing changes to the frozen food packing industry, including relocating to Mexico after NAFTA, meant that by the year 2000 only one plant remained open in the former "frozen food capital of the world."

New York: Dutton, (2021) dj. Hardcover first edition - Set in the then Bohemian Carmel-by-the-Sea in the years just before and after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, this chronicles both the early years of the development of the town as a center of the arts (a real estate driven image to encourage sales), gives glimpses into the lives of many of the prominent writers of the time, including Jack London and Mary Austin, but focuses on the affair between the talented poet Nora May French and the charismatic but philandering George Sterling, much to the distress of his wife, Carrie. This scandalous romance unravels amidst artistic ambition and societal constraints, ending in the suicides of all three figures. As Prendergast pieces together fragmented records, revealing how women's lives were deliberately obscured in archives, the research itself becomes a compelling part of the story - and it reveals the harsh realities faced by women seeking independence. Illustrated with photographs. Bibliography, notes, index. vii, 340 pp. ISBN: 978-0593182925.

Raleigh, NC: Pact Press, (2021). First edition - "The unsentimental, moving, and surprisingly humorous account of a girl and her ten siblings who grew up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. MaryÕs mother was a fierce matriarch, a single mom who raised eleven children with the help of welfare checks and a fire arm hidden in her bra. Drugs, guns, and pregnancies were everyday occurrences, but Mary and her siblings took it all in stride. . This is the story of Mary, but, even more so, itÕs the story of her mother, a strong and extraordinary woman who was able to survive moments of pain and disappointment by laughing at the comedy of human missteps, miscalculations, and downright stupidity. This is also a story about race and of poverty and how, over time, it can wear you down and destroy you, because, although Mary got out okay, her sisters and brothers were not so lucky." Poet Nikki Giovanni called this a "warm wonderful memoir." 196 pp. ISBN: 978-1646030781.

New York: Viking, (2007) dj. Hardcover first edition - An account of "corporate neglect, petty politics, endless legal wrangling and our love-hate relationship with petroleum centers on Beverly Hills High School and its illustrious alumni, oil derricks and alarming number of cancer victims. Initially skeptical of the idea that the profitable oil pumps adjacent to the school have led to an array of horrible diseases among its graduates, Horowitz quickly found herself pulled into a story that raises fundamental questions about how we assess risk and balance our desire for justice with scientific and legal ambiguities about establishing causes and assigning blame. She is better at raising such questions than answering them, largely because in her case the truth does not come out, no lawsuits have come to trial, let alone been resolved. That doesn't make for very satisfying reading, but it's faithful to a time in which, as Horowitz says, even our will to do right by our communities has been contaminated by competing desires." Currently, the emphasis is on closing existing wells, and protecting the environment from abandoned wells. Notes, cast of characters and list of agencies, index. xxii, 442 pp. ISBN: 978-0670037988.

New York: Broadway Books, (1998) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A powerful novel by an author who worked as a commercial fisherman for 19 years, a story of the sea, of fathers and sons, and those who live on and by it. "Drifting in a life raft off the northern California coast after a horrifying shipwreck, Neil Kruger retreats from his fear by recalling scenes from his childhood as the son of a commercial fisherman out of Half Moon Bay. With his emergency rations fast running out, he finds solace in his vivid memories. As he grows into the fisherman's life we learn the real cost of his father's struggle with the sea. A book which is both an intimate story of a troubled family and an evocative memorial to the fast-disappearing world of commercial fishermen." INSCRIBED on the title page. 293 pp. ISBN: 0-767902440.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, (2001). SIGNED hardcover first edition - A book in which the author combines "a reporter's instinct for a good interview with traditional archaeological training [to bring] the perspectives of the past and the future to the story of Silicon Valley's present material culture. She traveled the area in 2000, a period when people's fortunes could change overnight. She describes a computer's rapid trajectory from useful tool to machine to be junked to collector's item. She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing -- and the effect this has on economic and social values. She tells stories from a place where fruit-pickers now recycle silicon chips and where more money can be made babysitting for post-IPO couples than working in a factory. The ways that people are working and adapting, are becoming wealthy or barely getting by, are visible in the cultural landscape of the fifteen cities that make up the area called 'Silicon Valley.'" Although written almost 20 years ago, the contrasts she mentions have only increased in the interim. SIGNED on the title page. Text is preceded by a 32 page photo essay; illustrated with other photographs throughout. Selected further reading, index. xlix. 244 pp. ISBN: 0-262062240.

Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, (2005.). SIGNED first edition - An anthology of stories and excerpts by those who lived and wrote in California, ranging from John Steinbeck to Khaled Hosseini - SIGNED by SIX authors: Joan Didion at the except from "Where I Was From" by Yxta Maya Murray at an excerpt from "The Conquest" , by Maxine Hong Kingston at an excerpt from 'China Men,' by Paul Beatty at an excerpt from 'White Boy Shuffle' and Luis Rodriguez at "My Ride, My Revolution" and twice by Chitra Divakaruni - at her introduction and at an excerpt from 'The Unknown Errors of our Lives.' Among the other contributors are Greg Sarris, Gary Soto, Richard Rodriguez, James D. Houston, , Robert Haas, David Mas Masumoto, Robinson Jeffers and more. Each story is preceded by a photograph of the author and brief notes. Reading guide and thematic table of contents. Published by the California Council of Humanities. xv, 379 pp. ISBN: 1-89077197X.

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - The dust jacket describes this as "the stirring biography of a Japanese-American family -- and a people - whose bitter struggle ended in a victory for democracy." The family is that of Tosh Mio, a Japanese immigrant who came to America in 1903, settled and prospered in California, until he and his family were exiled to a relocation camp after Pearl Harbor was struck. Although told in the form of a novel, in his brief foreword the author notes the characters are real; the incidents all occurred. SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper. Edmiston was primarily a screen writer in Hollywood, who had trouble finding a publisher for this "documentary novel" - a "tribute to Japanese Americans and his manifesto for democracy. It deserves to be rediscovered as an early, multifaceted dramatization of the wartime experience, created by a white ally at a time when Nisei were unable to find mainstream outlets for their writing. . . Appearing two years before Okada's 'No No Boy' this is the first literary treatment of the draft resisters. One of the leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) (who is quoted in the epigraph), stated 'This is the only book written about us that has guts. It should be in every Japanese American home.' The dramatization of the struggle of the returnees to return to their prewar lives amid terrorism, violence and vandalism by nightriders and exclusion by bigoted locals, is contrasted to the assistance provided by a heroic WRA resettlement officer, based on the author's father, who was himself targeted by ostracism, death threats, and even bullets fired into his house." (Greg Robinson, Discover Nikkei). 306 pp.