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James D. Houston (1933-2009)
by Brian Kennedy, Customer Service Bibliographer
James D. Houston, the writer whose fiction and non-fiction works explored the people and history of his native California, died on April 16th at his home in Santa Cruz. He was 75.
"When the subject is California," he told The Bloomsbury Review in 2007, ". . . you're not only talking about a physical place with a climate and landscape. You're also talking about a region of the mind, all the dreams that have gathered here, the ones that come true and the ones that unravel . . . . But as a place to call home and identify with, there's really too much of it . . . . The human nervous system wasn't designed to embrace something as unwieldy and various as the entire state of California."
Houston's gift was in finding and expressing those stories emblematic of the region and its culture, teasing a sense of the local from an overwhelming landscape and discovering the face of the individual in the chaos of the crowd. Whether fictionally retelling the pioneer travails of the notorious Donner Party (Snow Mountain Passage), or recounting the true story of his wife's internment as a Japanese-American in World War II (Road to Manzanar), Houston was able to transform our literary sense of California, recreating and repositioning it not as the farthest edge of a continent or a country, but as a starting point, a place of beginnings, a land of encounter.
Below please find a list of books related to James D. Houston. For your convenience, this list is also available in a MS Excel spreadsheet. click here.
BIRD OF ANOTHER HEAVEN: A NOVEL
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: ALFRED A KNOPF
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: PS3558.O87B57 2007
• $25.95 Cloth (337 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9781400042029
• B&T YBP
FAREWELL TO MANZANAR
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: E184.J3 H63
• $16.00 Cloth (208 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9780618216208
• B&T YBP
HAWAIIAN SON: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF EDDIE KAMAE
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: AI POHAKU PRESS
• CONTENT LEVEL:
• LC CLASS: ML419.K337 H68 2004
• $25.00 Cloth (258 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9781883528287
• B&T YBP
IN THE RING OF FIRE: A PACIFIC BASIN JOURNEY
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: MERCURY HOUSE
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: DU23.5.H68 1997
• $14.95 Paper (221 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9781562791001
• B&T YBP
LAST PARADISE: A NOVEL
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D.
• PUBLISHER: UNIV OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: PS3558.087L37 1998
• $22.95 Cloth (364 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9780806130330
• B&T YBP
MEN IN MY LIFE, AND OTHER MORE OR LESS TRUE RECOLLECTIONS OF KINSHIP
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: GRAYWOLF
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: PS3558.087Z469 1994
• $12.00 Paper (161 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9781555972066
• B&T YBP
SNOW MOUNTAIN PASSAGE: A NOVEL
• AUTHOR: HOUSTON, JAMES D
• PUBLISHER: ALFRED A KNOPF
• CONTENT LEVEL: GEN-AC
• LC CLASS: PS3558.O87S65 2001
• $24.00 Cloth (317 P.)
• ISBN-13: 9780375411038
• B&T YBP
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