A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging
scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed
multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an
unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr
covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the
California we know today first burst into prominence.
Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social,
and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In
a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities,
and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the
overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the
rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence
of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and
the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent
Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and
the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen
Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the
rise of the University of California and the emergence of
California itself as a utopia of higher education, the
cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of
heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the
environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how
California not only became the most populous state in the
Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to
becoming the global commonwealth it is today. Golden
Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely
recognized for its signal contribution to the history of
American culture in California. It is a book that transcends
its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the
growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic
transformation of America itself in these pivotal years
following the Second World War.
Acclaim for
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM series
"[T]aken
together, these books constitute as comprehensive a social,
political, ethnographic, cultural and philosophical history
as any state is ever likely to achieve. It was conceived in
dazzling ambition and masterfully executed. The author's
scholarship and erudition animate each volume without once
falling into the trap of self-regard. It is, in sum, an
achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that it is
wonderfully readable." --Los Angeles Times
"Starr bids fair to become the foremost chronicler of that
often fabulous region, imposing upon the dramatic elements
of California history a novelist's imagination and a
cosmopolitan and sophisticated intelligence."
--Philadelphia Inquirer
"An impressive book...The
grasp is sure, the learning awesome. The prose...has a drive
that carries cities and industries and people and decades
headlong toward their manifest destiny." --The New York
Times
"A delightful and extremely thorough
chronicle of a state that is almost a mythical kingdom.
Nobody who is interested in any of the intellectual currents
of American history, or of the roots of twentieth (perhaps
even twenty-first) century thought, can fail to enjoy
this." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"For ambition,
narrative drive and breadth of research across the
disciplines from culture through politics and demography to
agronomy and water management, no recent project of American
historical writing comes close to Kevin Starr's mammoth,
multi-volume 'Americans and the California Dream'.... It is
a magnificent accomplishment." --David Rieff, Los
Angeles Times Book Review
"This is ebullient,
nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind,
drawing parallels and distinctions where perhaps no one ever
thought to see them before. Starr's a born storyteller as
well, mining a rich seam of anecdotal coal to animate the
complex, enigmatic figures of California history.... Starr
is an undervalued and irreplaceable public treasure."
--David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle
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