Kirjahaku

Examining California's formative years, this innovative study seeks to discover the origins of the California dream and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on Californians but also on the rest of the country.

Examining California's formative years, this innovative study seeks to discover the origins of the California dream and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on Californians but also on the rest of the country.

This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. "How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place," writes Starr. As he recreates the "lost California," Starr examines the rich variety of elements that figured in the growth of the Southern California way of life: the Spanish/Mexican roots, the fertile land, the Mediterranean-like climate, the special styles in architecture, the rise of Hollywood. He gives us a broad array of engaging (and often eccentric) characters: from Harrision Gray Otis to Helen Hunt Jackson to Cecil B. DeMille. Whether discussing the growth of winemaking or the burgeoning of reform movements, Starr keeps his central theme in sharp focus: how Californians defined their identity to themselves and to the nation.

This is the third volume in Americans and the Californian Dream, Kevin Starr's series of books on the development of California and its meaning for the American experience.

The third of Kevin Starr's monumental studies of the origins and development of the California dream covers the decade, which perhaps glittered the most brightly in the history of the Golden State - the 1920s. This was the era of colourful, larger-than-life individuals - from movie stars to evangelists to grandiose town planners; the era of Valentino, as well as that of William Ellsworth Smyth, tireless crusader for the irrigation of the desert. It was also the period in which the characteristics of Los Angeles' vital culture were established.

What we now call "the good life" first appeared in California during the 1930s. Motels, home trailers, drive-ins, barbecues, beach life and surfing, sports from polo and tennis and golf to mountain climbing and skiing, "sportswear" (a word coined at the time), and sun suits were all a part of the good life--perhaps California's most distinctive influence of the 1930s. In The Dream Endures, Kevin Starr shows how the good life prospered in California--in pursuits such as film, fiction, leisure, and architecture--and helped to define American culture and society then and for years to come.Starr previously chronicled how Californians absorbed the thousand natural shocks of the Great Depression--unemployment, strikes, Communist agitation, reactionary conspiracies--in Endangered Dreams, the fourth volume of his classic history of California. In The Dream Endures, Starr reveals the other side of the picture, examining the newly important places where the good life flourished, like Los Angeles (where Hollywood lived), Palm Springs (where Hollywood vacationed), San Diego (where the Navy went), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (where Einstein went and changed his view of the universe), and college towns like Berkeley. We read about the rich urban life of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in newly important communities like Carmel and San Simeon, the home of William Randolph Hearst, where, each Thursday afternoon, automobiles packed with Hollywood celebrities would arrive from Southern California for the long weekend at Hearst Castle.The 1930s were the heyday of the Hollywood studios, and Starr brilliantly captures Hollywood films and the society that surrounded the studios. Starr offers an astute discussion of the European refugees who arrived in Hollywood during the period: prominent European film actors and artists and the creative refugees who were drawn to Hollywood and Southern California in these years--Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Man Ray, Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and Franz Werfel. Starr gives a fascinating account of how many of them attempted to recreate their European world in California and how others, like Samuel Goldwyn, provided stories and dreams for their adopted nation. Starr reserves his greatest attention and most memorable writing for San Francisco. For Starr, despite the city's beauty and commercial importance, San Francisco's most important achievement was the sense of well-being it conferred on its citizens. It was a city that "magically belonged to everyone."Whether discussing photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, "hard-boiled fiction" writers, or the new breed of female star--Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and the improbable Mae West--The Dream Endures is a brilliant social and cultural history--in many ways the most far-reaching and important of Starr's California books.

Endangered Dreams is the fourth book in a series by Kevin Starr on Californian life and culture under the general title Americans and the California Dream. This book focuses on California during the Great Depression of the 1930s, specifically on its politics, labour disputes, and major building projects.

In Endangered Dreams, Kevin Starr paints a portrait of California during the Great Depression that is both detailed and panoramic, offering a vivid look at the personalities and events that shaped a decade of explosive tension. Out of a shattered decade of economic and social dislocation, he constructs a coherent whole and a mirror for understanding our own time.

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. This is the seventh volume in Kevin Starr's widely acclaimed and monumental history of California-Americans and the California Dream. It covers the crucial postwar period-1950 to 1963-when much of what has become California as we know it today was brought into existence. As in previous volumes, Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these years. Among the topics discussed are the suburbanization of California, with emphasis on the San Fernando Valley, Orange County, the San Francisco Peninsula, and Marin County; life style and the novels that reflected it; the rise of San Diego; the "Golden Age of San Francisco," with its cultural roots and influential minorities; Los Angeles, the Chandlers, the Music Center, the Dodgers, and its special lifestyle; defense industries; Cold War "think tanks," Palo Alto and the creation of the transistor and later the computer industry; the new California "Multiversity" and its director, Clark Kerr; public works, with special emphasis on the burgeoning of freeways; and cultural events and happenings, including jazz, the "Beats," the Hollywood "rat pack" (Sinatra and friends) and the flowering of Palm Springs, youth culture, and "Zen California."

The fifth volume in Starr's classic history of California, The Dream Endures shows how Californians rebounded from the Great Depression to emerge in the 1930s into what is now known as "the good life." Starr illustrates the ways the good life prospered in California--in film, fiction, leisure, and architecture. Starr looks at the newly important places where Californians lived out this sunny lifestyle: areas like Los Angeles (where Hollywood lived), Palm Springs (where Hollywood vacationed), San Diego (where the Navy went), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (where Einstein changed his view of the universe), and college towns like Berkeley. "In this, more than any other of Starr's monumental California histories, we see the stirrings of uniqueness in the social and cultural evolution of California. Starr's theme is relevant to all of America and the national destiny."--Neil Morgan, San Diego Union-Tribune "Enormously sensitive and moving. Social and cultural history doesn't get any better."--San Francisco Chronicle "In his monumental continuing study of California, Kevin Starr belongs in the company of the best."--Herbert Gold, Los Angeles Times Book Review

The sixth volume in one of the great ongoing works of American cultural history--Kevin Starr's monumental Americans and the California Dream--Embattled Dreams is a peerless work of cultural history following California in the years surrounding World War II. During the 1940s California ascended to a new, more powerful role in the nation. Starr describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as the "arsenal of democracy" (especially the significant part women played in the aviation industry). He examines the politics of the state: Earl Warren as the dominant political figure, the anti-Communist movement and "red baiting," and the early career of Richard Nixon. He also looks at culture, ranging from Hollywood to the counterculture, to film noir and detective stories. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks. In Embattled Dreams, Starr again provides a spellbinding account of the Golden State, narrating California's transformation from a regional power to a dominant economic, social, and cultural force. "With a novelist's eye for the telling detail, and a historian's grasp of the sweep of grand events.... [Starr's] got it all down.... I read the book with absorbed admiration."--Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War "The scope of Starr's scholarship is breathtaking."--Atlantic Monthly "A magnificent accomplishment."--Los Angeles Times Book Review "Brilliant and epic social and cultural history."--Business Week "Ebullient, nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind."--San Francisco Chronicle

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 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. Praise for Americans and the California Dream: "Monumental." --The Atlantic "Conceived in dazzling ambition and masterfully executed. It is, in sum, an achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that it is wonderfully readable." -- Los Angeles Times "An engaging, dazzling account of the emerging American Century." --San Francisco Chronicle

From O.J. to Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes to rolling blackouts, silicon valley to riots in the street, California state historian Kevin Starr has assembled the history of the Golden Gate State since 1990 to create a vivid snapshot of a state constantly on the edge of tomorrow. Coast of Dreams captures an extraordinary place, from its rich and exceptionally diverse palette of people, cultures and values; to its economy that is larger than most nations and mirrors the economic state of the country; to a political landscape so roiled that a Governor can be recalled scant months after his re-election and replaced by a Hollywood action star. This is a book that is sweeping in scope, intimate in detail and altogether fascinated with the splendor of California.

A definitive, single-volume history of the Golden State ranges from the earliest Native American cultures, through the Spanish and Mexican eras, the Gold Rush, and rise of Hollywood, to the twenty-first century, chronicling the events, places, and personalities that have shaped California. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.