In 2015, Adam Z. Levy and Ashley Nelson Levy founded Transit Books in the East Bay. In their decade of existence, they have released almost a hundred titles, ranging from beautiful translations of award-winning titles to adorably illustrated children’s picture books. The two came together when attending a graduate program in Columbia University. The two discovered a mutual interest in translation and, after work in translation and writing themselves, moved to California and founded the press. Under the banner of not-for-profit Transit Books, the two publishers started releasing stunning translations of fictional literature from around the world. Recently, they’ve added English fiction as well as non-fiction/essays as a series of “Undelivered Lectures.”[1]
The press has been highly successful, allowing the move from a home office to a space in the Strawberry Creek Design Center. They are now able to hold events even as they release more than a dozen books a year. Readers can follow Transit Books’ events through their social media accounts including Instagram and following their books on their webpage.
I, as someone who adores illustrations, am excited to read Jaque Jours’ children’s book The Muéganos (available in both English and Spanish) at the end of July.
Tebot Bach, the little teapot publisher of Orange County (located in Huntington Beach), came into existence in 1993, publishing Spillway Magazine. In 1999, founding members Mifanwy Kaiser and Mark Bergendahl chose to incorporate as a not-for-profit publisher in 1999. For almost three decades, the press published lovely books of poetry and fiction as well as organized local events, including poetry readings. Those events were held throughout their local area, in cafes and theaters as well as homeless shelters and nursing homes. Like their little Welsh teapot (tebot) namesake, they wanted to promote a spirit of community.
While little news has been published about their current status and the press is currently in “good standing” as a Nonprofit Corporation – CA – Public Benefit, evidence suggests that Tebot Bach has been winding down since 2021. They do not currently have any calls for proposals, their Facebook page is rather quiet, and their appearance in most bookstores is limited to older publications. To add to the impression, this Library appreciated Moon Tide Press (in Whittier, CA) picking up the excellent Spillway Magazine in 2023.
If the impression is accurate, we at Doe Library thank the members of and writers for Tebot Bach and wish them the best in their future endeavors.
Michael M. May in October 1965 upon becoming Director of the University of California – Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (UC – LRL), today called the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
At the age of 100, Michael M. May, PhD, passed away on May 17, 2026.
Dr. May was a UC Berkeley-trained physicist who, from 1965 to 1971, became the fifth director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and later co-directed the Center for International Security and Cooperation as a professor at Stanford University. For four months in 2024, during multiple interview sessions, Dr. May and I recorded nineteen hours of his oral history, which explored in detail his fascinating, century-long life, from his youth in France and Vietnam to his career as a physicist who shaped US nuclear deterrence strategy and international arms control policies. In 2025, the Oral History Center published his 341-page transcript as Michael M. May: A Career in Physics, Nuclear Weapons Design, and Arms Control.
When recording his oral history at age 98, Dr. May recounted remarkable details from his youth and early education, including recitation of French poetry he heard as a boy from his grandfather in Paris. May also recounted family histories of his maternal great-grandfather Ludovic Trarieux, a renowned French senator and human-rights pioneer, as well as memories of his siblings and his parents. May’s strong and adventurous mother, Juliette Meyer-May (née Trarieux), raised her children on three continents and discovered a new kind of freedom after settling eventually in the United States. His peripatetic father, Jacques Meyer May, MD, honed his medical skills in France amid the carnage of the World War I before commencing a fascinating career that took him around the planet as a professor and medical geographer.
Left to right: Michael May, his father Jacques May, his brother Francis May at Dalai mountain resort in August 1938, soon after their arrival to what they then called French Indochina.
Michael M. May, their eldest son, was born just before Christmas in December 1925 in Marseille, France. The young May spent much of his childhood near or in Paris, where he leapt ahead in school despite spending more than a year recovering at home from complications of Polio. At age 12, in 1938, May moved with his family to Hanoi, Vietnam, in what he knew then as French Indochina. May again shared cogent details of his travels from the south of France through the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia. Upon arrival, May also recalled family trips and holidays throughout in the late 1930s, including at Ha Long Bay, Lang Son, and in Cambodia where he visited Angkor and Phnom Penh. Back in Hanoi, where May’s father trained Vietnamese doctors in the city hospital, young Michael rose to the top of his class at Lycée Albert Sarrault in Hanoi.
In 1940, to avoid the spread of World War II across Asia’s Pacific Rim, May immigrated to the United States with his mother and siblings. Just as the Nazi blitzkrieg toppled France back in Europe, May’s mother left his father in Asia to sail with her children on a Canadian passenger ship from Haiphong in Vietnam to Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, to Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama in Japan, across the Pacific Ocean to Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada, then to Seattle, Washington. Due to his father’s connections with a former patient, May and his family settled in Walla Walla, Washington, where May honed his English skills, worked in the farm fields during summer, and completed high school at the age of 16. May remained in town, earning his B.A. in Math and Physics from Whitman College in 1944 before being drafted into the US Army, where he served domestically in weapons testing and trained as a paratrooper. After discharge from the Army, and armed with educational funding from the GI Bill, May briefly attended the University of Washington in Seattle before driving south to California in 1947 to enroll at UC Berkeley where he pursued his PhD in physics.
Mary and Michael May’s wedding in Grayland, Washington, on July 6, 1952.
UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics had earned international renown before and during World War II, with numerous professors returning to campus after their wartime service in the Manhattan Project. As a graduate student, May studied with renowned physics professors including Emilio Segrè, Wolfgang “Pief” Panofsky, Gian-Carlo Wick, Tsung-Dao Lee, Luis Alvarez, and Herbert York. May also experienced collateral damage from the Loyalty Oath controversy, as several of his professors left Berkeley rather than sign the anti-communist and anti-subversion statement then required by the regents of the University of California. May eventually earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1952, the same year he married Mary Cottrell, whom he first met as a teenager in Washington state. They have four children, born between 1953 and 1963, and remained married until Mary’s death in 2007.
In 1952, May’s academic advisor Herb York and Ernest O. Lawrence invited May to join the staff at the newly established Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), then called the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. On his first day of work, May learned their work would focus on nuclear weapons development, which came as a surprise. As part of his work, May described witnessing in 1954 the fifteen-megaton Castle Bravo thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where, among other details, he recalled supplying US General LeMay’s airplane with cases of duty-free whiskey. May spent most of his career at Livermore Laboratory, although he worked briefly in Los Angeles from 1957 to 1960. Back at LLNL, May devoted his significant intellectual abilities to the work, including instrumental efforts on the Navy’s Polaris nuclear warhead, which enabled American submarines with nuclear-missile capabilities. Despite these events occurring more than half-a-century earlier, May was careful throughout his oral history not to discuss details that might divulge nuclear secrecy. Instead, he shared fascinating details about social relations within and outside the laboratory, the organizational evolution of Livermore Laboratories over the years, as well as his own research in astrophysics and his teaching for UC Davis in the Department of Applied Science adjacent to Livermore Labs.
Michael M. May (on far right) next to Captain Wertheim in 1963 during presentation of the Polaris Flag to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for outstanding services to the Polaris program.
May eventually became the associate director for nuclear design before serving as Director of Livermore Laboratories from 1965 to 1971. During his time as director, May recalled the influence of the Vietnam War, the laboratory’s relationships with the US Congress and the University of California, and the radiation effects controversy stemming from the 1970 book “Population Control” through Nuclear Pollution, by journalist Arthur R. Tamplin and UC Berkeley professor John W. Gofman. Near the end of his term as director, the Atomic Energy Commission presented May in 1970 with the Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award for his early and original contributions to the applications of computer techniques and theoretical calculations important to the design of nuclear weapons.
May also worked extensively in nuclear arms control. In 1974, he traveled to Moscow and stayed in the massive Hotel Rossiya on Red Square while serving as the US technical adviser for the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, also called the Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests, which capped underground nuclear tests at a yield of 150 kilotons. From 1974 to 1979, May spent much time in or near Geneva while serving on the US delegation to the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), which aimed to establish equivalence or parity with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear missiles. May replaced Paul Nitze on the US delegation and began negotiations in Geneva with his Soviet counterpart, V. Shchukin, an engineer who shared personal memories of the Bolshevik Revolution and, later, of working on Soviet nuclear weapons under the dangerous gaze of Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the Soviet Secret Service. While neither man spoke the other’s national language well, both knew French, so May conducted much of his work on SALT II in the language of his birth. At various times, May also served as a member of the Defense Science Board; the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission; the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees; and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control. He also published influential articles on US nuclear deterrence strategy.
Michael M. May as co-director of the Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University, circa 1990s
Upon retiring from Livermore Laboratory in 1988, May became a professor in Stanford University’s School of Engineering. There, he co-directed the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) with his friend Bill Perry, who became Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, and with whom he taught a course on Technology Policy in National Defense. In addition to teaching courses and advising graduate students at Stanford, May’s research interests included nuclear weapons policy, nuclear forensics, as well as studies on energy production and its impact on the environment. May recalled his several visits to a rapidly changing China over the years, including to Guangdong and Hubei provinces for research on carbon-dioxide emissions from coal plants.
Dr. May discussed all of the above and much more throughout his extensive oral history, including reflections on the Strategic Defense Initiative; research in geoscience, nuclear fusion, and climate change; and his longstanding interest and practice in Zen meditation. He also shared fond memories from his personal life, like meeting his future wife Mary, stories of their wedding, and adventures from their fifty-five-year marriage, including their four children. I cherished the many hours I shared with Dr. May while planning, recording, and finalizing his oral history, which includes an appendix of photographs. You can learn more about Dr. May’s incredible life history, as told in his own words, through his oral history:
Dr. May’s family has planned a public memorial service for June 26, 2026 at 10:30am at the Graham-Hitch Mortuary at 4167 1st Street in Pleasanton, California.
Mildred Howard at Magnolia Editions, photo by Don Farnsworth, c. 2013.
In 2021, the Oral History Center teamed up with the Getty Research Institute to co-conduct an in-depth life history with Howard, Mildred Howard: Testimonies on Art, Blackness, and Communityas part of the African American Art History Initiative. She describes in her own words her upbringing and family background, and the context and meaning behind many of her most significant exhibitions and pieces over the decades. I strongly recommend that those who plan to see the current exhibit at OMCA check out the seven hours-worth of transcripts with Mildred Howard, Bridget Cooks, Professor of African American Studies at UC Irvine, and Amanda Tewes, oral historian with the OHC at the time of the interviews.
Some of Howard’s best-known work appears in The Poetics of Memory, including: Crossings from1997/2006, Blackbird in a Red Sky (aka Fall of the Blood House) from 2002, and 024426458 from 1993. She discussed these pieces and others at length in her oral history. Beyond these works, Howard explores a varied and impactful life, from childhood experiences to her training in textile arts and experience as a fashion designer, to her public art such as her bottle houses, to her many installations and multiple exhibitions, international travel and work in Egypt and Morocco, along with her reflections on the art world, collectors, galleries, museums, and the meanings of her life’s work.
Even if you are unable to see the exhibition, exploring Howard’s oral history will deepen your appreciation of her apotheosis in American art over the past half century. Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory runs at OMCA through October 18, 2026.
Lee was almost 102 when she passed away this past May.
I first met Eleanor “Lee” Swent as part of my very first interview as the newly minted historian of science, technology, and medicine at what was then still known as the Regional Oral History Office in the Bancroft Library (now, of course, the Oral History Center). Lee was the project lead and interviewer for ROHO’s Western Mining in the Twentieth Century Oral History Project from the 1980s until the 2000s. Over several decades, she had crisscrossed the globe, attending mining conferences and visiting old colleagues and friends with her husband, Langan Swent, who was also interviewed as part of the collection.
In her oral history interview Eleanor reflected on the origins of the series, the importance of preserving mining history, and her life in various mining communities in Mexico, South Dakota, and California. This interview was conducted in 2013 in order to provide a coda to all of the previous work on the Western Mining in the Twentieth Century project, and to orient new research and interviews in a new project that I was starting, called Global Mining and Materials Science. Lee organized the series together with Willa Baum, Lang Swent, Douglas Fuerstenau and many others in the mid-1980s. By 2013, over 106 interviews had been recorded and made available to the public through this project.
When I interviewed Lee in 2013, I was under the impression that I was interviewing someone who was retired. And indeed she had retired from the Regional Oral History Office some time before. It would be more accurate to say Lee was retired, but active. As with many of the extraordinary but supposedly superannuated I have met since starting at Berkeley, Lee was always pushing forward, sometimes pushing all the way into my office with continued advocacy for ideas new and old about the history of natural resource extraction and processing, and most importantly the communities that sustain them. Lee was interested in the salt of the earth, literally and figuratively, emphasizing the importance of salt mining to California and world history. Then I began to get calls from Lee about a book project, sharing ideas and progress updates. There can be prejudice when people talk about book projects. Many, many people have book projects; a smaller number publish books. I discovered that Lee was in the latter category, publishing One Shot for Gold, which is a history of the Knoxville Mining District, the largest gold mine in twentieth-century California. It was based in part on her eight-volume oral history project with ROHO about the district, chronicling the economic, political, legal, environmental, and community aspects of the history of mining in that area.
But Lee wasn’t done.
Then I started to get calls from her about an autobiographical project. Three years later, in 2024, she published Landing Uphill: Seven Years at San Luis, a memoir of her time at a mining community in the mountains of Mexico. I often marvel at the productivity of friends who are in their 80s. Then I think about Lee publishing two books in her late 90s. Then I’m reminded that of the many reasons people might live to be 101, having a strong sense of purpose has to be near the top of the list.
Lee made an outsized contribution to the history of mining worldwide, and to the local history of ROHO in the Bancroft Library.
Rest in peace, Lee.
My heart breaks a little when I think about how many people we’ve lost in the orbit of the ROHO/ the Oral History Center. More communications from the OHC are to follow to remember the stories and the people that surround this work.
Christine Svendsen founded Sapphire Books Publishing in 2010 in Salinas, California as a one-person press. Her goal was to provide a lesbian-run publishing house for lesbian writers to tell their own stories. Over the years, the house has grown.
Today, 16 years later, the press has released dozens of titles in literary fiction, memoirs, genres including mystery, and non-fiction. In particular, they highlight their romances. Titles range from deeply personal to light, fluffy comfort reads.
Readers can follow Sapphire Books developments on their Facebook page or on their website.
Inlandia Institute became an independent, not-for-profit organization in 2009 with Inlandia Books “founded circa 2011.” It has existed, however, since 2007, when it was spun into existence as a collaboration between Heyday Books and the Riverside Public Library. It grew out of Heyday’s wonderful, 2006 anthology, Inlandia: a Literary Journey Through California’s Inland Empire (link to UC Search record). Since then, (and continuing since incorporation), the Institute has embraced its mission of “deepen[ing] people’s awareness” of the Inland Empire and expanding knowledge of the area’s “unique, complex[,] and creativ[e]” vibrancy.[1]
Inlandia Books releases a variety of material, ranging from yearly anthologies, to poetry, novels, memoirs, essays, children’s books, and more. With uniformly attractive covers, the books build a beautiful picture of the Inland Empire the House has set out to capture.
Inlandia is an incredibly active Institute. Readers can follow their activities through their social media presence on Instagram and other platforms. Their website is one of the best places to follow their book releases.
“A revelatory look at modernism in India, exploring art’s role in decolonization and aesthetic discourse across the Global South
Modernism’s peak in the interwar and postwar decades coincided with the eruption of antifascist and decolonization movements globally, including the League against Imperialism, the Bandung Asian-African Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Viewing artistic practices through the lens of the radical intellectual possibilities that these epoch-making events prompted, Atreyee Gupta uncovers a modernist internationalism incongruous with Westernist cultural hegemonies. Modernism, she shows, cannot be separated from concepts of freedom and autonomy generated by Third World political struggles. Gupta mobilizes concepts including liberation, anti-imperialism, development, and modernization as essential analytic categories for art history, reorienting our understanding of both global modernism and Indian art.
Intertwining stories of art and liberation, aesthetics and decolonization, and intellectual practices and political revolution in the Third World, or what is now known as the Global South, Non-Aligned follows the far-flung interwar and postwar networks in which Indian artists and intellectuals such as Mulk Raj Anand, Dhanraj Bhagat, Francis N. Souza, Jagdish Swaminathan, and Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore participated alongside interlocutors like W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Octavio Paz, André Malraux, and Le Corbusier in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This riveting account is beautifully illustrated with rarely published artworks.”
Tyson Cornell founded Rare Bird Books in 2010 in Los Angeles. While starting life in the Midwest, Cornell attended UCLA. In Los Angeles, they ended up working at the legendary, independent bookstore Book Soup. Interested in ethnography, Cornell initially worked in the newsstand, but increasingly supported events and worked with authors and publishers.[1]
Those experiences led Cornell to found Rare Bird in 2010 and have influenced the press’ focus since. The publisher’s more than 100 titles often serve as partial ethnographies, with heavy emphasis on lived experience through memoirs and “operat[ing] from a shadowy locus between Northeast LA and epistemological collapse.”[2]
Readers can follow Rare Bird and their website or through their Instagram page.
[1] Joey Claudio, “Founder of Rare Bird Books Tyson Cornell Provides Insight Into His Sources of Inspiration and How He Maintains a Permanent Sense of Creativity,” Thrive Global, September 29, 2021, https://community.thriveglobal.com/founder-of-rare-bird-books-tyson-cornell-provides-insight-into-his-sources-of-inspiration-and-how-he-maintains-a-permanent-sense-of-creativity/.
[2] “About Rare Bird,” Rare Bird: Publisher of the Great & Infamous, accessed May 26, 2026, https://rarebirdlit.com/about-rare-bird/.
J.C. Gabel and Brian Roettinger founded Hat & Beard in Los Angeles in 2016.[1] This publisher and print production house focuses on nonfiction literary and artistic output. They are heavily interested in the visual arts and, alongside poetry and essays, publish artist monographs in collaboration with artists and museums. Their stated goal is to produce works of “pop-culture and historical significance” [2].
This House produces beautiful material objects as well as fascinating works of poetry. Interested in design, these books are works of art in and of themselves. Frequently hardback with high-quality materials, these volumes are as much about the object as about the content.
For more information about their titles and their activities, check out their website or Instagram page.
