Authors on Their Books

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.

Long before recipes were shared on the Internet, they were passed among friends and compiled into community cookbooks published as charity fundraisers. Drawing on The Huntington’s Anne M. Cranston American Regional and Charitable Cookbook Collection, food writer Patric Kuh discusses what these shared recipes can tell us, not just about food and community but about the changes that shaped the way Americans cook. Kuh is the author of Finding the Flavors We Lost: From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food.

Recorded Mar. 29, 2017.

Landscape architect Edmund Hollander, author of “The Good Garden,” discusses how the design process for a residential landscape is informed by the interaction of natural site ecology, architectural ecology, and human ecology.

Recorded Oct. 2, 2016.

Landscape architect Kelly Comras, author of the biography Ruth Shellhorn, examines Shellhorn’s legacy in a lecture and short film screening.

Peter Blodgett,discusses his book, Motoring West: Automobile Pioneers, 1900–1909. Travel back in time to the the turn of the 20th century when Americans were hitting the road to explore the West by automobile. Blodgett is the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts at The Huntington.

Peter Westwick discusses his new book, “The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” (2013, Random House), co-authored with Peter Neushul. His Dibner Lecture covers the high-tech aspects of the history of surfing, including how surfboards and wetsuits derive from military technology and how coastlines and even waves are increasingly engineered. In 2013–14 Westwick was the Searle Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Caltech and The Huntington. He is an assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California.

Judith Freeman talks about her latest book “The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved” (2007). Chandler drew on many real events and people to create his iconic Los Angeles mystery novels. Freeman discusses Chandler’s real-life sources, including a 1922 celebrity murder case that became the inspiration for much of Chandler’s work.

Philip Connors discusses his book Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout with William Deverell, professor of history at USC and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. The event was part of AxS Festival 2011—Fire and Water, organized by the Pasadena Arts Council.