The years around the turn of the century were a dynamic time in American art. Different and seemingly contradictory movements were evolving, and the dominant style that emerged during this period was Impressionism. Based in part on the broken brushwork and high-keyed palette of Claude Monet, it was a form especially suited to the dramatic landscape and shimmering light of California . . . This book celebrates forty Impressionist painters who worked in California from 1900 through the beginning of the Great Depression . . . it includes widely recognized California artists such as Maurice Braun and Guy Rose, less well known artists such as Mary DeNeale Morgan and Donna Schuster, and eastern painters who worked briefly in the region, such as Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase . . . The contributors' essays examine the socioeconomic forces that shaped this art movement, as well as the ways in which the art reflected California's self-cultivated image as a healthful, sun-splashed arcadia.

Color woodblock prints, early maps of Asia and beyond, and gorgeously detailed scrolls are just some of the highlights in the collection of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Imbedded in the descriptions of the works featured is a lucidly sketched history of the countries where the works originated and the ways in which they influenced each other. The library is the second-largest academic collection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean books, maps, manuscripts, and other printed matter in the U.S.