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BOOKS

Most books available at local Napa book sellers including Napa Bookmine, and worldwide on-line from bookshop.org and amazon.com, unless otherwise noted.

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Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual

Upton Sinclair

By Lauren Coodley

Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Lost Napa Valley

 

By Lauren Coodley

Napa Valley, once known for its cattle and silver mines, has grown into an international wine destination. On the way, many buildings and institutions have vanished…

Frankie’s Journey: The Silk Road to Napa

 

Frankie's Journey Cover Image

By Stephanie Farrell Grohs and Lauren Coodley, with an afterword by Rue Ziegler. The Mousetail Press, 2014

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Frankie’s Journey traces the 1908 trek of an imaginary San Francisco boy from his home at the Youth’s Directory, a Catholic charity in San Francisco, to St. Joseph’s Institute, an experimental farm in Napa County.

Napa Valley Chronicles

Napa Valley Chronicles Cover Image

By Lauren Coodley

In 1905, Napa’s mayor, J.A. Fuller, announced, “Napa for half a century has been slumbering in a Rip Van Winkle sleep but she has awakened at last.” Back then, fifteen cents bought coffee and a donut at the Depot and Sawyer’s Tannery made soft leather baseball gloves. In this collection, local author Lauren Coodley reimagines the unvarnished country life of historic Napa Valley

Napa Valley Farming

 

Napa Valley Farming cover image

By Paula Amen Judah and Lauren Coodley with the Napa County Historical Society

Napans tend more than grapevines. The area’s diverse soil and mild climate make possible a generous yield of agricultural products. This book traces the cultivation of these products through a chronology of Napa’s farming history, from indigenous food plants to the orchard that were planted to feed gold miners– orchards that would soon function as both therapy and sustenance for the patients in the newly created Asylum. Immigrants from Italy and Germany and Japan and China joined newly emancipated slaves and Mexican citizens who had settled here before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Together they cultivated the land.

Napa: The Transformation of an American Town

Napa: The Transformation of an American Town cover image

The book is part of The Making of America Series presented by Arcadia Publishing. The revised 2007 edition was written with Paula Amen Schmitt and it includes a foreword by Carol Kammen.

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With roots set deep in California history, Napa’s story reaches back to the Bear Flag Rebellion and earlier, to the first contact between Spanish explorers and the Wappo Indians. Through the founding of Spanish missions and the grants of ranchos by the Mexican government, Napa flourished under the various cultures that helped it become one of the west coast’s most dynamic cities. As it bloomed into one of the most recognizable names on the American landscape, Napa’s residents confronted issues of war and peace, of open space and sprawl.

California, A Multicultural Documentary History

California: A Multicultural History cover image

By Lauren Coodley

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A primary source reader that focuses on the diverse experiences of all groups included in the histories of California: Filipino Americans, farm workers, Japanese farmers, African-Americans, civil rights activists, and more. Blending documents from both public and private sources, this collection will not only successfully hold the attention of students, but also construct a more complete understanding of the people and events that created and shaped California.

House of Four Doors

By Lauren Coodley

Lauren Coodley has written a quartet of innovative histories of Napa and published several books about Upton Sinclair, who spent most of his astonishing life in California. In this volume, she includes previously unpublished essays about Napa and Sinclair, along with her reflections on teaching inside and about the State Hospital, while developing the first classes in the History of American Women. The book maps the “four doors” of her writing life.

The Same River Twice

Poems by Lauren Coodley

Lauren Coodley’s The Same River Twice honors the people and places that have shaped her life. This book is her first collection of poetry–a memoir in verse that begins with her earliest recollections and moves all the way into the present.

Napa State Hospital

By Patricia Prestinary with Lauren Coodley

Napa, because of its natural beauty and optimal conditions for “moral treatment,” was chosen as the second site for a state hospital to ease overcrowding in Stockton Asylum. When the fully self-sustaining Napa State Hospital (Originally called Napa Asylum) opened in 1875, it quickly filled to capacity and became home to many people suffering from mental illness, alcoholism, grief, and depression. Covering the first 100 years of the hospital’s history, this unique book tells the story of the institution and the people for whom it served as employer.

Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California

This book will be available as an e-book January 2025.

This book spans fifty years of Sinclair’s funny and fiery writings, showing how his personal life inspired his political activism.