Early Books
Northwest California
Raphael’s first books focused primarily on the history and regional issues of Northern California, where he has lived since the late 1960s. His Everyday History of Somewhere, an earthy treatment based on interviews with old-timers that intermingled natural with human history, won the California Commonwealth Club award for best book on California for 1774. In Edges: Human Ecology of the Backcountry; Tree Talk: The People and Politics of Timber (and its sequel, More Tree Talk: The People, Politics, and Economics of Timber); and Cash Crop: An American Dream?, he explored issues of contemporary local concern (development, timber, marijuana) in a unique journalistic style, interweaving Studs Terkel-style interviews with narrative history and analysis. In 2007, with Freeman House (author of Totem Salmon), Raphael wrote an in-depth exploration of white-Indian conflicts of the mid-19th century in Northwest California, titled Two Peoples, One Place.
Raphael has also written a book on male initiation rites in contemporary American culture (The Men from the Boys), a study of the careers of teachers (The Teachers’ Voice), and with his son Neil, a juvenile mystery (Comic Cops). His play on John and Jessie Freemont played to audiences across Northern California.
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or books:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”
—Bible: New Testament Revelation 20:12.