Includes Part 1, Books, Group 1, Nos. 1-12 (1945)

Includes index.

“The first history of seismic engineering in San Francisco . . . spiced with survivor and eyewitness accounts. ”—Midwest Book Review For the past one hundred and fifty years, architects and engineers have quietly been learning from each quake and designing newer earthquake-resistant building techniques and applying them in an ongoing effort to save San Francisco. Bracing for Disaster is a fresh appraisal of a city responding to repeated devastation. In the language of a skilled teacher, Tobriner examines what really happened during the city’s earthquakes—which buildings were damaged, which survived, and who were the unsung heroes. Filled with more than two hundred photographs, diagrams, and illustrations, this is a revealing look at the history of buildings by a true expert, and it offers lessons not just for San Francisco but for any city beset by natural disasters. “The real saga is how a fast-growing city grapples with the reality that it has more to worry about than fires and fog. The core of the story is fairly technical, rooted in the crude intuitive ways in which builders reacted to a seismic threat they could neither measure nor define. But Tobriner crafts the story well.”—SFGate

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2017 This volume collects interdisciplinary essays that examine the crucial intersection between whiteness as a privileged racial category and the various material practices (social, cultural, political, and economic) that undergird white ideological influence in America. In truth, the need to examine whiteness as a problem has rarely been grasped outside academic circles. The ubiquity of whiteness--its pervasive quality as an ideal that is at once omnipresent and invisible--makes it the very epitome of the mainstream in America. And yet the undeniable relationship between whiteness and inequality in this country necessitates a thorough interrogation of its formation, its representation, and its reproduction. Essays here seek to do just that work. Editors and contributors interrogate whiteness as a social construct, revealing the underpinnings of narratives that foster white skin as an ideal of beauty, intelligence, and power. Contributors examine whiteness from several disciplinary perspectives, including history, communication, law, sociology, and literature. Its breadth and depth makes The Construction of Whiteness a refined introduction to the critical study of race for a new generation of scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students. Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach of the collection will appeal to scholars in African and African American studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, legal studies, and more. This collection delivers an important contribution to the field of whiteness studies in its multifaceted impact on American history and culture.