Author Description

Part One Of Two Parts The emergence of California as a regional civilization in the late nineteenth century was far more than a dramatic and colorful chapter in American history. Probing the inner experience of California's formative years, Starr blends fact and historical vision with striking metaphor to re-create the nature of the California dream and reveal its significance as a social, psychological and symbolic enterprise. Commemorative in approach, this totally engaging work shows how the land and the people interacted to form a distinct and fascinating culture. While dramatizing the debate over what California was and what it should be, Starr also exposes the fallacies and contradictions inherent in the dream itself. All the ferment of the state's history is presented here as the citizens themselves lived through it.