Peter Richardson

My first piece for The Nation ran today. It's about Hunter Thompson as media critic. This one is extra special for me, not only becaus...

Three projects I'm involved with came to fruition this week. Though the topics are very different, all three are connected to my teachin...

Today I learned that The Nation podcast, "Start Making Sense," will post their interview with me about Carey McWilliams. I really ...

It's hard to footnote books accurately, but I have no patience for authors who swipe my carefully sourced quotations without attribution...

The University of California Press has published a paperback edition of my Carey McWilliams biography--this time with a fabulous foreword by...

I think Sean Wilentz's review of a new Schlesinger bio is letting its subject off easy when it comes to his 1950s anticommunism. Wile...

I just finished reading Kathryn Olmsted's Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism . I first...

I reviewed H.W. Brands's new biography of Ronald Reagan for Truthdig this weekend. There's a lot to like in this bio, especially i...

We lost another important California writer this week: Theodore Roszak, author of The Making of a Counter Culture . He was 77. As his ob...

Catherine Mullholland passed away this week. Her grandfather, William Mulholland, built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and was the subject of her...

This morning I came upon an adroit piece in the Los Angeles Times on Carey McWilliams's Southern California: An Island on the Land . T...

I just heard from Nancy McWilliams, Carey McWilliams's daughter-in-law. She was kind enough to send me two of Carey's books ( Ill F...

Iris Dornfeld McWilliams , Carey's widow and the author of two young adult novels, died on July 7. She was 97. Steve Cooper, who interv...

Gustavo Arellano appeared on Marketplace yesterday and offered a choice summer reading recommendation: Carey McWilliams's Southern Cali...

Yep, that's me in a necktie, carrying on. Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation asked me to participate in a discussion about Cali...

I missed Alice McGrath's memorial party in Ventura, but my daughter Ashley, who met Alice last year, said it was very inspiring. The t...

I've been talking a lot about Ramparts and its CIA saga, but I'm glad Richard Lingeman has returned our attention to an earlier row...

I enjoyed Lewis MacAdams's piece on Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk's stroll through downtown Los Angeles. Evidently, Pam...

Carey McWilliams has many fans, but few are more ardent--and productive--than Gustavo Arellano. Gustavo's latest contribution to Gunki...

It's a double serving of McWilliams today in the Los Angeles Times . I touch on him in my review of the Mary Austin bio, and an article...