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Ray Raphael, local author and historian
Friday, November 7
7 pm
Lakeview Room, Eureka Campus
(Please note that Ray Raphael will also be giving a reading at the Mendocino Campus in Ft. Bragg on Thursday, November 6 in the Library at 7:30 pm.)
Ray Raphael, author of eleven books, has been a “people’s historian” for the past thirty years. In addition to works of history, he has published books on subjects as diverse as male initiation rites, education, and timber politics, for both trade and academic presses. An Everyday History of Somewhere, published by Alfred A. Knopf, won the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California. In 2001 Raphael culminated a decade of scholarly research with the publication of his monumental People’s History of the American Revolution, praised widely in both the popular press and academic journals.
Raphael, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Reed College, holds two masters degrees (MA, UC Berkeley, 1967; MAT, Reed College, 1969). For 17 years he taught all subjects (except foreign language) in the one-room public high school serving his remote community in Northern California, 3 1/2 hours from his school district office. He is well positioned to write about the rural roots of American democracy. Raphael has taught at Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods and now works as a full-time researcher and writer.
Raphael will be reading selections from his latest book The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. As always, copies of the author's books (at least the more popular and current ones) will be available for purchase at the campus bookstore prior to the event or may be purchased the evening of the reading. The author will be happy to sign copies. Free refreshments will be available.
Published Books
An Everyday History of Somewhere (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974; Island Press, 1981; Real Books, 1992). Winner of the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California.
Edges: Human Ecology of the Backcountry (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976; University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
Tree Talk: The People and Politics of Timber (Island Press, 1981).
Cash Crop: An American Dream? (Ridge-Times Press, 1985).
The Teacher's Voice (Heinemann Educational Books, 1985).
The Men from the Boys: Rites-of-Passage in Male America (University of Nebraska Press, 1988). Published in German as Vom Mannwerden, 1993.
Comic Cops (Real Books, 1992). A juvenile mystery with Neil Raphael.
Little White Father: Redick McKee on the California Frontier (Humboldt County Historical Society, 1993).
More Tree Talk: The People, Politics, and Economics of Timber (Island Press, 1994).
A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence (New Press, 2001; HarperCollins, 2002). Published in the UK by Profile Books.
The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord
(New Press, 2002).