Notable UC books of 2024

Saving the world is not just a preoccupation of superheroes — it was also an obsession of Margaret Mead, the famous 20th-century anthropologist. In the mid-50s, she was particularly fascinated by psychedelics as a possible path to utopia particularly LSD. That fact prompted the guiding question that animates UC Santa Cruz historian Breen’s book: what would our world look like if the study of psychedelics had been embraced instead of suppressed? Funded instead of federally criminalized? With books like UC Berkeley author Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” topping New York Times bestseller lists, interest in psychedelics has never been more mainstream. Breen’s book, praised as “One of the Best Books of 2024 So Far” by the New Yorker, is an intriguing look at what might have been.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/benjamin-breen/tripping-on-utopia/9781538722374/

“Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question” by Jade S. Sasser (UC Riverside)

Climate anxiety and anxiety about having children have increasingly begun to dovetail, but the conflict is often framed as an existential crisis of the privileged separate from other environmental and social justice issues. Jade S. Sasser, a professor of gender and sexuality studies, decided to write about climate anxiety and “the kid question” after seeing her own students, many of whom are from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, express anxiety about jobs, social mobility and health. Sasser reframes the phenomenon, producing the first book-length examination of how present-day anxiety about having children is affected by historical legacies of race and concerns about climate justice. Offering a fresh approach to an emerging issue, Sasser’s book has sparked conversation across the media landscape about how deeply concerns about climate are enmeshed in people’s lives.

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/climate-anxiety-and-the-kid-question/paper

“Asian American Fiction After 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility” by Christopher T. Fan (UC Irvine)

Fans of Ted Chiang, Ruth Ozeki, Charles Yu (a UC Berkeley alum and National Book Award winner!) and other contemporary Asian American writers will enjoy diving into UC Irvine professor and Hyphen magazine cofounder Christopher T. Fan’s new book, a study of how Asian American fiction explores tensions of class and race across regions, intergenerational conflict, and the push and pull between the arts and technology. A groundbreaking book about what makes texts and authors Asian American.

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/asian-american-fiction-after-1965/9780231213233

Poetry

“Tripas” by Brandon Som (UC San Diego)