In the gallery below, see additional books by Professor Murray and Professor Selmi.
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God Went Like That
Yxta Maya Murray
In award-winning legal scholar and novelist Yxta Maya Murray’s new novel, federal agent Reyna Rodriguez reports on a real-life nuclear reactor meltdown and accidents that occurred in 1959, 1964, and 1968 at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. An infamous research and development complex in California’s Simi Valley, the lab was eventually dismantled by the US government—but not before it created a toxic legacy of contamination and numerous cancer clusters. Toxins and nuclear residue may have been further released by the 2018 Woolsey Fire and 2019 floods in the area.
God Went Like That takes the form of an EPA report in which Reyna presents riveting interviews with individuals affected by the disasters. With imagination and artistry, Murray brings to life an actual 2011 Department of Energy dossier that detailed the catastrophes and the ensuing public health fallout and highlights the high costs of governmental malfeasance and environmental racism. -
Dawn at Mineral King Valley: The Sierra Club, the Disney Company, and the Rise of Environmental Law
Daniel P. Selmi
The story behind the historic Mineral King Valley case, which reveals how the Sierra Club battled Disney’s ski resort development and launched a new environmental era in America.
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Art Is Everything
Yxta Maya Murray
In her funny, idiosyncratic, and propulsive new novel, Art Is Everything, Yxta Maya Murray offers us a portrait of a Chicana artist as a woman on the margins. L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, a wealthy and pragmatic actuary named Xōchitl. Everything seems under control: Amanda’s grumpy father is living peacefully in Koreatown; Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and, once she gets her NEA, she’s going to film a groundbreaking autocritical documentary in Mexico.
But then everything starts to fall apart when Xōchitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and she endures a sexual assault. What happens to an artist when her emotional support vanishes along with her feelings of safety and her finances? Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat freakouts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and SmugMug streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything shows us the painful but joyous development of a mid-career artist whose world implodes just as she has a breakthrough.
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Principles of Appellate Advocacy
Daniel P. Selmi and Rebecca A. Delfino
Appellate Advocacy books can overwhelm students with a disparate mixture of appellate rules, arcane procedural requirements, multiple writing instructions, practice tips, etc. This book avoids that problem by focusing on the most important aspect of appellate advocacy: how to write a persuasive appellate brief. It sets forth very specific, well-defined rules--adapted from the recommendations of experienced appellate practitioners and judges--for students to learn and follow.
Principles of Appellate Advocacy stresses three overreaching principles that students need to understand: (1) The perspective principle: putting the brief writer in the shoes of the judge; (2) The structural principle: building the brief around issues; and (3) The organizational principle: separating the thought process from the writing process.
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The Work Doesn't Work That Way, but It Could: Stories
Yxta Maya Murray
The gripping, thought-provoking stories in Yxta Maya Murray’s latest collection find their inspiration in the headlines. Here, ordinary people negotiate tentative paths through wildfire, mass shootings, bureaucratic incompetence, and heedless government policies with vicious impacts on the innocent and helpless. A nurse volunteers to serve in catastrophe-stricken Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and discovers that her skill and compassion are useless in the face of stubborn governmental inertia. An Environmental Protection Agency employee, whose agricultural-worker parents died after long exposure to a deadly pesticide, finds herself forced to find justifications for reversing regulations that had earlier banned the chemical. A Department of Education employee in a dystopic future America visits a highly praised charter school and discovers the horrific consequences of academic failure. A transgender trainer of beauty pageant contestants takes on a beautiful Latina for the Miss USA pageant and brings her to perfection and the brink of victory, only to discover that she has a fatal secret.
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Land Use Regulation: Cases and Materials, 5th Edition
Daniel Selmi, James Kushner, and Edward Ziegler
Land Use Regulation: Cases and Materials, Fifth Edition is a dynamic, scholarly, yet practical teaching approach that focuses on the role of the lawyer in land use regulatory matters and the factors that influence land development decisions. Offering more comprehensive changes than in any edition since the book was first published, the 5th Edition offers a new chapter addressing emerging issues in the field, including regulation of medical marijuana and fracking, responses to problems posed by vulnerable populations such as the homeless, continuing developments in “smart growth,” and changes in redevelopment law. It also features a thorough reorganization of takings materials, combining all of them in one chapter and addressing emerging issues.
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The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Kidnapped
Yxta Maya Murray
Kiki and Mish are best friends, but what Kiki doesn't know is that Michelle Pena was born a gang princess. Princess P grew up destined to inherit leadership of the Snakes: a future filled with crime and fear.
Michelle, on the other hand, is a nationally ranked athlete and academic superstar. This is her new life, and she's finally put her past - and her childhood love for Silver - to rest.
Then Silver helps kidnap both girls, and Michelle has to figure out how to free them both and reconnect with a future that might now be beyond her reach.
