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The Journal of Alta California merges William R. Hearst III’s love for publishing and the arts into a fresh magazine that celebrates California and the Western spirit. Alta is an energetic publication available both in print and online, and it will also host a variety of events that connect leading minds to discuss California and contemporary topics.

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Why Cy Twombly’s Scribbles Still Dazzle

5 days ago | altaonline.com | Dean Rader

Once, at the Menil Collection in Houston, a French woman took off her clothes and danced naked in front of Cy Twombly’s epic Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor). Such a performance is unlikely to await you or me, but art can affect people in unexpected ways. And as it happens, Twombly is experiencing an unexpected annus mirabilis. Gallerists: Beware!This article appears in Issue 32 of Alta Journal.
Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (June 20, 2025)

1 week ago | altaonline.com | Elizabeth Casillas

AltaWith reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending June 15, 2025. Start your summer with a little magic. The classic 1988 novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is back on the list this week.
Manny Pacquiao’s Comeback-and His Son’s Debut

1 week ago | altaonline.com | Geoffrey Gray

Manny Pacquiao, the former boxing champion and Filipino politician, leans deep into the back booth of Nat Thai Food, a steamy little restaurant near his gym in Hollywood, and yawns. It’s the first day of training camp. He’s been up all night, having just flown in from Manila—and having just announced that after four years in retirement, and a failed bid to return to the Filipino Senate, he’s coming back to the ring on July 19, in Las Vegas. He’s a heavy underdog.
Event Recap: Manjula Martin

1 week ago | altaonline.com | Anita Felicelli

View full post on YoutubeOne of the biggest problems that we face going forward in life, as the way that we imagine our place in the world, is to try to imagine that we are part of landscape, that we are not separate from landscape, that landscape is inside us.
Announcing the Special Guest for Manjula Martin

1 week ago | altaonline.com | Anita Felicelli

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes,” reads the epigraph (by filmmaker Agnès Varda) to Manjula Martin’s The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, the California Book Club’s June selection. The book is organized into chapters titled after elements of landscape: storm, hawk, sky, oak, and dirt, among others.
Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (June 12, 2025)

2 weeks ago | altaonline.com | Elizabeth Casillas

AltaWith reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending June 8, 2025. Dive into two exciting adventures with selections from this week’s bestseller list. First up is Atmosphere, a new novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Allensworth and Black Resilience on Juneteenth

2 weeks ago | altaonline.com | Keenan Norris

Trains are majestic creatures, strong, slender, long-bodied beings that carry our cargo and us, fears, dreams, and all, forever toward some destination, some elsewhere of the imagination. When I boarded Amtrak’s 9 a.m. San Joaquins out of Oakland on June 8, 2024, I was thinking about W.E.B. Du Bois’s version of the California dream.
Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (June 5, 2025)

3 weeks ago | altaonline.com | Elizabeth Casillas

AltaWith reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending June 1, 2025. This weekend, immerse yourself in the work of two California authors. First up is Cultish by Amanda Montell. In this gripping piece of nonfiction, Montell explores how groups—from Heaven’s Gate to Scientologists—use words to wield power.
Sitting with Ambiguity

3 weeks ago | altaonline.com | Rebecca Solnit

Is it possible to make peace with uncertainty? Rebecca Solnit hopes so, and she’s pleading with us to embrace it. In her latest bouquet of essays from Haymarket Books, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, the author elegantly argues that human yearning for assurance is what gets in the way of true progress. Belief in absolutes—whether those absolutes be optimism or an assurance that we’re doomed—is an obstacle to humanistic growth and community.
15 New Books for June

4 weeks ago | altaonline.com | Elizabeth Casillas |Maisie Hurwitz |John Birdsall

1WHAT IS QUEER FOOD? HOW WE SERVED A REVOLUTION, BY JOHN BIRDSALLW.W. Norton and CompanyCritic Birdsall’s most recent endeavor into food culture enlivens the history of dishes like quiche, potlucks, and rainbow icebox cake with narratives about the people who created them and the culture that they were liberating themselves from in the process.