Benjamin T. Jenkins
Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California
University of La Verne Archivist and Professor Benjamin T. Jenkins presents a complex and refreshing perspective on the impact railroad companies and citrus agriculturalists had on the social and economic transformation of Southern California in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Southern California recovered from the collapse of the cattle industry in the 1860s, the arrival of railroads—attacked by newspapers as the greedy “octopus”—and the expansion of citrus agriculture transformed the struggling region into a vast, idealized, and prosperous garden.
Pardis Mahdavi
Book of Queens: The True Story of The Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror
University of La Verne President Pardis Mahdavi recounts the true and poignant tale of the Middle Eastern women who fought for freedom, liberation, and preservation of the Caspian horse. Drawing on decades of research, newly found diaries and exclusive military sources, Mahdavi pulls together the intersecting and untold stories of generations of freedom-fighters who wielded their communal knowledge as the genesis of their own liberation.