AMERICAN WHITELASH: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, by Wesley Lowery. (Yale, $35.) A historian explains how California “welcomed, honed and legalized” human bondage for 250 years, from the legalized enslavement of Native Americans to forced labor in today’s prisons. RIVERMOUTH: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration, by Alejandra Oliva. Reflecting on her family’s fluid relationship to the southern U.S. border and her experience working with asylum seekers, Oliva meditates on the seemingly insurmountable barriers migrants face today.

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Persons: Wesley Lowery, Barack Obama, Lowery, Jean Pfaelzer, California “, Itamar Vieira Junior, Johnny Lorenz, Alejandra Oliva, Oliva meditates Organizations: Yale, Astra House Locations: CALIFORNIA, California, Brazil, U.S