Table of Contents

Preface: California on the Edge

PART I: Coast of Dreams
Surf’s Up!
Zen California
Mind Games
Bon Appétit
Dumbing Down
Ocean Park
Frank’s Kids

PART II: Catastrophe
Earthquake, Fire, and Flood
Scene of the Crime
Reefer Madness
Killing Time
Homeboys
Gangbusters
Doing Time
A Lost Generation
Send In the Marines

PART III: Diversity
Viva Mexico!
Asian Attitudes
Multiple Identities

PART IV: Wedge Issues
Backlash
Illegals
Rising Tensions
Wedge Issues
Affirmative Action
Hasta la Vista!
Accommodations

PART V: Turnaround
For the Good Times
Free Fall
Turnaround
Immigrants to the Rescue
Swords into Ploughshares
The Comeback Kid
Valley Talk
Genes to Work
Foreign Trade
The Rim
NAFTA

PART VI: Cities, Suburbs, and Other Places
How Should We Live?
Holy Land or Plains of Id? Southern California and Metro Sacramento
Staying Time: Santa Barbara and Palm Springs
The Upper Left: Berkeley, Santa Monica,
West Hollywood
Booming Places: Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties
Tough Love: Jerry Brown’s Oakland
Downtown: The Reurbanization of San Jose
Play Ball!: San Diego in the Major Leagues

PART VII: A Tale of Two Cities: Los Angeles and San Francisco
People
Payday
Poor
Politics
Place
Talk of the Town

PART VIII: Growth and the Environment
Heartland
Waterworld
Endangered Species
North Coast Redwoods and Other Trees
Going Green
Open Space
Fixed Rail

PART IX: Back on the Edge
Bill and Barbra
Dot-Com Debacle
Report Card
The Boys from Texas
9/11

Epilogue Déjà Vu All Over Again

Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index

About the Author

Kevin Starr is University Professor of History at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. From 1994 to 2004, he served as the state librarian for California. His writing has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and gold and silver medals from the Commonwealth Club of California. He divides his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Reviews

“Vivid, precise, and astute. . . . Starr's cultural range has always been broad and his grasp sure. Most important, he's able to put tastes and ways of life in historical context.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Kevin Starr is nothing short of the John Muir of our times. . . . [He] is utterly fascinated by California and how it has evolved.” –Los Angeles Times

“Starr brings his magnificent, multivolume series Americans and the California Dream, the product of a quarter-century of work up to the present. An unfailingly interesting, highly readable contribution to Starr's grand series.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Extraordinary. . . . Sweeping, deeply personal and insightful”–Tucson Gazette

In this latest installment of his series on California's history, Starr (history, Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles) looks at the decade he considers a watershed. During the Nineties, California seemed to be the point of origin of many social, economic, and political trends that swept the nation. Starr chronicles these trends in great detail yet never loses sight of the larger national picture. Running through this book is the question whether the California dream, and by implication the American dream, is dead. Trends such as gang shootings, unchecked urban growth, state budget crises, and the dot-com boom and bust seem to say so, but trends such as ethnic diversity and the strength of the small-business growth point suggest otherwise. Starr, who organizes his book topically, devoting a chapter to each issue, admits that this is a premature report, but future historians will use it as a starting point. Essential for all collections on California and the West and highly recommended for all academic and public libraries. Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

"Vivid, precise, and astute. . . . Starr's cultural range has always been broad and his grasp sure. Most important, he's able to put tastes and ways of life in historical context."-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Kevin Starr is nothing short of the John Muir of our times. . . . [He] is utterly fascinated by California and how it has evolved." -Los Angeles Times

"Starr brings his magnificent, multivolume series Americans and the California Dream, the product of a quarter-century of work up to the present. An unfailingly interesting, highly readable contribution to Starr's grand series." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Extraordinary. . . . Sweeping, deeply personal and insightful"-Tucson Gazette