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BOOM Magazine

Boom: A Journal of California is a new, cross-disciplinary publication that explores the history, culture, arts, politics, and society of California. Published quarterly by University of California Press, this magazine-format, highly visual journal features scholars, independent writers, and community and civic activists engaging the most pressing issues of the day.

Boom embrace answers in unusual formats, including photos, essays, documents, artwork, first-person accounts, and engaged scholarly essays.

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When a man dies hanging from a tree, is that tree an accessory to the act or a witness? The multiple second lives of the frontier "hang tree" reveal something unsettling about the Golden State.
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California has a rich -- though often underappreciated -- literary heritage.
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Michel Dear traces the evolution of the space between Mexico and the United States, a "third nation" with a shared identity, common history, and joint traditions.
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The word "California" was tracked through millions of books published across nine languages and several centuries to decipher its representation in world literature.
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The printwork on view in the traveling exhibition "Serigrafía" demonstrates the fluidity of Chicana/o identity since the initial Chicano manifesto of 1969.
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After his father's death, a belt buckle became the most significant object linking Romeo Guzmán to his father's past as a rodeo rider and Mexican migrant.
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Collected experiences of the liminal space that defines the boundary between the United States and Mexico are represented in the form of snow globes.
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Writers and filmmakers have been exploring the future of California for decades, approaching Northern and Southern California in utopian/dystopian contexts.
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In 1915, just two years after the L.A. Aqueduct opened, Julius Goodwin Oliver and William Henry Frick packed up their Ford Model T and drove north from Hollywood to see where their water came from.
Water scarcity presents a profound challenge and opportunity for designers of the built environment. "Where is it? Let's reuse it" recognizes that maximizing recovery and reuse of rain and stormwater will be central for any city seeking to buffer the e...
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Nothing is as it seems in many images of the L.A. Aqueduct and its landscape. Take a look at a photographic history of the L.A. Aqueduct.
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Excerpts from a summer journal in the Eastern Sierras, featuring the watercolors of Valerie P. Cohen.
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