Héctor Tobar Wins the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize
Our Migrant Souls Is an Essential Exploration of ‘Latino’ Identity
Héctor Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls …
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Melanie Almeder Wins the 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize
‘Coyote Hour’ Tracks a Summer in Southern Maine
Melanie Almeder is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize for “Coyote Hour” …
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The Unsung Heroes of the Boxing World
Mismatched Fighters Help Up-and-Coming Champs Bolster Their Records in a Winner-Takes-All Industry
In the name of beer sales and taco Tuesday nights, Cinco de Mayo has morphed from a symbol of …
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Will the Supreme Court Give the President More Immunity Than a Roman Emperor?
Two Centuries of Ancient Legal Scholarship Applied the Same Laws to Leaders as Everyone Else
I have been studying and writing about Roman emperors for more than 30 years. I never imagined …
Could My Chilean Childhood Combat Plastic Waste?
In the 1980s, We Recycled Our Bottles in Big Red Crates. Returning to Returnables Can Curb Pollution Today
When I was growing up in the ’80s in Santiago, Chile, during the Pinochet dictatorship, air quality was the environmental problem most present in our lives. It determined whether we could drive that day, how overwhelmed hospitals would be, and whether or not we would have physical education at school.
Global warming was unheard of. And plastic was our friend: a cheap, versatile, and durable material that let us play, move about, and simplify our lives. We never anticipated its long-lastingness would become a problem.
During those politically tumultuous years …
Huell Howser Lives!
One Chronicler of Our State Offers His Take on Another
“Do you know Huell Howser?”
I got that question recently while chatting with a counter guy at Erick Schat’s Bakery, which produces Dutch pastries and sheepherder bread in the Eastern Sierra town of Bishop.
It’s a question I get at least a couple times a year, in all different corners of California.
I suppose it’s a natural question. People might wonder if I, a longtime chronicler of California’s places, get asked if I know the public television reporter who took viewers into every little town and restaurant and museum, from Alturas to Zzyzx.
It’s a question that never ceases to amaze me. Or stump me.
Because the truth is that I can’t possibly know …
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A Movie That Might Be Worse Than Civil War
‘Civil War’ Offers A Vision of California Fighting the U.S. That Matches Foreign Propaganda—and Misses the Point
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The Losing A’s Found a Winning City to Host Them
West Sacramento Is on a Hot Streak. Other California Cities Should Watch
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I’m Proud to Be Un-American
A New Poll Shows the Rest of the Country Hates the Golden State—And That’s a Good Thing
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What the Wonkapocalypse Can Teach Us
An Immersive Experience Gone Wrong Shows Us the Perennial Emptiness of Carefully Curated Escapes from Reality
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Cowboy Boots Were Made for Everyone
For Over a Century and Half, the Footwear Has Carried the Story of a Nation
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Why We Hunger for the Holiday Special
Every December, an Age-Old Format Warms the Winter Night
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Why Shouldn't Phillis Wheatley's Poems Show Up at an NFL Game?
At Last Night’s Event—”Can a Football Stadium Be a Black History Museum?”—Panelists Argued to Democratize Culture
On the rarified second level of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, amid premium owner suites and premium beer sales, there’s an Angela Davis quote plastered on a wall.
“Our histories never unfold in isolation,” reads the excerpt from the scholar and activist’s 2015 book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. “We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories …
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Artist Maurice Harris
‘I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing’
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Poet aja monet
The Energy You Bring to a Word Can Heal or Harm
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Agent and Former NFL Player Jacques McClendon
There’s Nothing Like ‘Rocky Top’
