Books on California
Jan 2013
This list includes only those books with Amazon 4.0-star ratings or above. (highest rating and latest listed first)
Southern California: An Island on the Land
Carey McWilliams
(1946)
5.0 stars/8 reviews
4 copies in the library
Originally published in 1946, McWilliams describes the socio-historical and economic formations of
Southern California from the "bottom up" in a way uncharacteristic for his time period. He unveils the
racist, eurocentric, environmentally devastating, materialistic and otherwise ruthless basis for the area's
hegemonic culture, economy, and social relations. Moreover, he adds great insight into the incorporation
of California into the world capitalist system. He covers the use, abuse, and devastation of various
peoples in the area including Native Americans, Californios, Chinese, Japanese, Oklahomans and
Mexicans. He also offers insight into the materialism or 'fake' culture which has emerged from the area
only to exploit the cultures it has destroyed. The book is a bit long winded at times, but overall is a must
read for anyone intersted in the topics I've described. It would be of interest to anyone who appreciates
Almaguer's Racial Faultlines, Pitt's The Californios, or even Montejano's Anglos and Mexicans in the
Making of Texas.
The Anza Trail and the Settling of California]
Vladimir Guerrero
(2006)
5.0 stars/2 reviews
(not in library)
In 1774, as the American colonies were preparing to break away from the powerful British crown, Spain
was trying to strengthen its hold on Alta California. The Spanish viceroy of Mexico sent Juan Bautista de
Anza, captain of the Presidio at Tubac (in what is now Arizona), to lead two expeditions: the first to find a
safe overland route to Monterey, and the second to return Anza to California with 240 men, women, and
children to establish a colony in San Francisco. But where the Mayflower had carried only Anglo
passengers, the Anza expeditions brought together a diverse group, including Spaniards, criollos
(American-born Spaniards), mestizos (mixed-race ''citizens''), and Native Americans. And whereas the
United States'’ policy of manifest destiny had led to the subjugation and extermination of native peoples
on the continent, New Spain's needs demanded a more mixed--even tolerant--society.
The Anza Trail and the Settling of California synthesizes firsthand documents and diaries from the Anza
expeditions to retell the story of the exploration of the Southwest and the settlement of the San Francisco
Bay Area. But it also tells, on a more personal level, the story of four very different characters--Anza, the
criollo commander; his partner, Francisco Garcia, a Spanish priest and explorer; Sebastian Tarabal, a
Native American and accidental guide; and Salvador Palma, chief of the Yuma nation--men who
overcame and in many cases benefited from their differences to ensure the success of the expeditions.
Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of LA's Notorious Mobster
Tere Tereba
(May 2012)
4.9 stars/15 reviews
3 copies in the library
This biography of celebrity gangster Mickey Cohen digs past the sensational headlines to deliver a
remarkable story of a man who captivated, corrupted, and terrorized Los Angeles for a generation.
When Bugsy Siegel was murdered, his henchman Mickey Cohen took over the criminal activity in Los
Angeles. Mickey Cohen attained such power and dominance from the late 1940s until 1976 that he was a
regular above-the-fold newspaper name, accumulating a remarkable count of more than 1,000 front-pages
in Los Angeles papers alone, and was featured in hundreds of articles in national and international
periodicals. His story and the history of mid-century L.A. are inextricably intertwined.
Mickey Cohen is a seductive, premium-octane blend of true crime and Hollywood that spins around a
wildly eccentric mob boss. Author Tere Tereba delivers tales of high life, high drama, and highly placed
politicians, among them RFK and Richard Nixon, as well as revelations about countless icons, including
Shirley Temple, Lana Turner, Frank Sinatra, and the Reverend Billy Graham. Meticulously researched,
this rich tapestry presents a complete look at the Los Angeles underworld.
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State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California
Laura Cunningham
(2010)
4.8 stars/13 reviews
not in the library
Vernal pools, protected lagoons, grassy hills rich in bunchgrasses and, where the San Francisco Bay is
today, ancient bison and mammoths roaming a vast grassland. Through the use of historical ecology,
Laura Cunningham walks through these forgotten landscapes to uncover secrets about the past, explore
what our future will hold, and experience the ever-changing landscape of California. Combining the skill
of an accomplished artist with a passion for landscapes and training as a naturalist, Cunningham has spent
over two decades pouring over historical accounts, paleontology findings, and archaeological data.
Traveling with paintbox in hand, she tracked the remaining vestiges of semi-pristine landscape like a
detective, seeking clues that revealed the California of past centuries. She traveled to other regions as
well, to sketch grizzly bears, wolves, and other magnificent creatures that are gone from California
landscapes. In her studio, Cunningham created paintings of vast landscapes and wildlife from the raw data
she had collected, observations in the wild, and knowledge of ecological laws and processes.
Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L Doheny
Margaret Leslie Davis
(2001)
4.8 stars/8 reviews
8 copies in the library
Dark Side of Fortune contains all the elements of a Hollywood thriller. Filling in one of the most
important gaps in the history of the American West, Margaret Leslie Davis's riveting biography follows
Edward L. Doheny's fascinating story from his days as an itinerant prospector in the dangerous jungles of
Mexico, where he built the $100-million oil empire that ushered in the new era of petroleum. But it was a
tale that ended in tragedy, when--at the peak of his economic power--Doheny was embroiled in the
notorious Teapot Dome scandal and charged with bribing the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
Few captains of industry have matched Doheny's drive to succeed and his far-reaching ambition. Drawn
to the West in search of fortune, he failed at prospecting before finding oil in a smelly, tar-befouled lot in
Los Angeles in 1892. Certain that the substance had commercial value, he envisioned steamships and
locomotives no longer powered by coal, but by oil. After developing massive oil wells in Mexico,
Doheny built an international oil empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. But in
1924 the scandal of Teapot Dome engulfed him. As accusations mounted, he hired America's top legal
talent for his defense. During the ten-year-long litigation, Doheny's only son was mysteriously murdered
by a family confidant. The government's case against Doheny ended in an astounding jury decision: The
cabinet official accused of taking a bribe from Doheny was found guilty and sent to prison, yet Doheny
was fully acquitted. Despite the verdict, the scandal had overshadowed the achievements of a lifetime,
and he died in disgrace in 1935
Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California
Kevin Starr
(1997)
4.8 stars/5 reviews
18 copies in the library
In Endangered Dreams, Starr paints a portrait that is both detailed and panoramic, offering a vivid look at
the personalities and events that shaped a decade of explosive tension. He begins with the rise of
radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the
1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the
San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers;
he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the
Comintern in 1935. The highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the coastwide
maritime strike, and here Starr's narrative talents are at their best, as he brings to life the astonishing
general strike that took control of San Francisco, where workers led by charismatic longshoreman Harry
Bridges mounted the barricades to stand off National Guardsmen. That same year socialist Upton Sinclair
won the Democratic nomination for governor, and he launched his dramatic End Poverty in California
(EPIC) campaign. In the end, however, these challenges galvanized the Right in a corporate, legal, and
vigilante counterattack that crushed both organized labor and Sinclair. And yet, the Depression also
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brought out the finest in Californians: state Democrats fought for a local New Deal; California natives
helped care for more than a million impoverished migrants through public and private programs; artists
movingly documented the impact of the Depression; and an unprecedented program of public works
(capped by the Golden Gate Bridge) made the California we know today possible.
Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s
Kevin Starr
(1991)
4.8 stars/4 reviews
13 copies in the library
Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two
million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles.
In a lively and eminently readable narrative, Starr reveals how Los Angeles arose almost defiantly on a
site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the
Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the
Irrigation Crusade, the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to
Los Angeles), and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush
Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil, the
boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los
Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are
also fascinating sections on the city's architecture the impact of the automobile on city planning, the
Hollywood film community, the L.A. literati, and much more. By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had
tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams, Starr captures
this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating
prose.
Land in California: The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land
Scrip, Homesteads
WW Robinson
(1979)
4.8 stars/4 reviews
4 copies in the library
When W. W. Robinson wrote this history of land titles in California he was employed by Title Insurance
and Trust Company in Los Angeles. He was what was referred to as a Titleman, a person trained to
research and interpret land ownership and land titles. As a fellow Titleman for over 40 years I have
purchased at least 100 copies of this book, which I use as a training aid in the title insurance industry. It is
easily the best introduction to the history of California land ownership and titles and the origins of such
legal rights. As a history book, a training aid, or just as a pleasure to read, this narrative would be an
excellent choice.
City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s
Otto Friedrich
(1997)
4.7 stars/15 reviews
9 copies in the library
The late Otto Friedrich enlivened the pages of many newspapers and magazines with his vigorous prose.
His journalistic ability to convey complex material in a vivid, accessible manner is evident in City of Nets,
a mordant portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s. (Originally published in 1986, it's the middle volume in a
trilogy of superb urban histories that also includes Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s
and Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet.) Friedrich drew on his voluminous reading of everything from
celebrity bios to trade-union history to create a unique synthesis that, for a change, depicts Tinseltown not
as a dreamland floating above American reality, but as a city subject, like any other, to economic and
political forces. Friedrich mingles enjoyable gossip with hardheaded analysis of Hollywood's often
unsavory industrial underpinnings, including studio heads' willingness to rely on gun-wielding gangsters
to solve their labor problems. There's no other movie book quite like it; Rita Hayworth's divorce
proceedings against Orson Welles follow hard on the heels of a gruesomely detailed description of Bugsy
Siegel's execution. The '40s were the decade of Hollywood's decline: a blacklist prompted by
anticommunist hysteria shut out some of its best talent, while a 1948 antitrust consent decree ended many
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of the business practices that made the studio system so profitable. Friedrich's brilliantly selective use of
colorful anecdotes and revealing details perfectly captures a decaying, but still glamorous, culture.
Americans and the California Dream
Kevin Starr
(1986)
4.7 stars/6 reviews
1 copy in the library
In the late nineteenth century, California became "the cutting edge of the American dream, " the final
frontier both geographically and in the minds of the many men and women who went there to pursue their
destinies. In this fascinating volume Keven Starr examines California's formative years to discover the
orgins of the California dreams and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on
Californians but on the rest of the country.
Elusive Eden: A New History of California
Richard B Rice and William A Bullough
(Dec 2001)
4.6 stars/5 reviews
not in the library
The Elusive Eden charts the historical development of California, beginning with the evolution of the
landscape and climate and the arrival of the first inhabitants, the Indians, through social, political, and
environmental controversies of the present and the future. The book portrays a land of remarkable
richness and complexity, settled by waves of people from diverse cultures. The text is organized
chronologically into 10 parts, each developing a major theme or issue for a particular period in
California's history. The first chapter of each part is a narrative that spotlights and dramatizes the personal
responses of significant individuals at critical moments of historical change. The authors stress issues of
current importance such as: ethnic groups, women, environmental history and social and cultural history.
Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family
Yoshiko Uchida
(1982)
4.6 stars/16 reviews
6 copies in the library
In the spring of 1942, shortly after the United States entered into war with Japan, the federal government
initiated a policy whereby 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and herded into camps.
They were incarcerated without indictment, trial, or counsel - not because they had committed a crime,
but simply because they resembled the enemy. There was never any evidence of disloyalty or sabotage
among them, and the majority were American citizens. The government's explanation for this massive
injustice was military necessity. Desert Exile tells the story of one family who lived through these sad
years. It is a moving personal account by a woman who grew up in Berkeley and was attending the
University of California when the war began.
Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance (1950-1963)
Kevin Starr
(2011)
4.5 stars/14 reviews
7 copies in the library
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.
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Fools' Paradise
Carey McWilliams
(2001)
4.5 stars/2 reviews
11 copies in the library
Fool's Paradise" is an excellent introduction to the work of an amazing writer and astonishingly versatile
public intellectual, now largely forgotten. Before editing "The Nation" for two decades, McWilliams
wrote a dozen first-rate books and hundreds of penetrating articles on the exploitation of farm labor, racial
and ethnic prejudice, the Japanese-American internment, California politics and culture, and the Red
scare. He also served in state government and played a role in several high-profile court cases. His 1946
book, "Southern California: An Island on the Land," inspired the Oscar-winning screenplay for
"Chinatown," and he is still widely regarded as the finest nonfiction writer on California--ever. Later, he
published many talented young journalists in the pages of "The Nation," including Ralph Nader, Hunter
S. Thompson, and Howard Zinn. Along with samples of McWilliams's own lucid writing, "Fool's
Paradise" includes superb essays by his son, political theorist Wilson Carey McWilliams, and by Gray
Brechin, author of "Imperial San Francisco."
Testimonios: Early California Through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848
Rose Marie Beebe
(2006)
4.4 stars/5 reviews
not in the library
When famed historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent Thomas Savage, Henry Cerruti, and Vicente Perfecto
Gómez out to gather the oral histories of the pre-American gentry of the new state of California, he didn’t
count on one thing: the women. When the men weren’t available, Savage, Cerruti, and Gómez collected
the stories of the women of the household, almost as an afterthought: these were archived at the
University of California; some were never even translated into English…until now. From the editors of
the highly influential Lands of Promise and Despair, here are thirteen women’s first-hand accounts from
when California was part of Spain and Mexico. They lived through the gold rush and saw their country
change so drastically, they understood the need to tell the full story of their people and the place that was
California.
Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era
Kevin Starr
(1986)
4.4 stars/5 reviews
13 copies in the library
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.
A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and LA's Scandalous Coming of Age
Richard Rayner
(2009)
4.3 stars/23 reviews
7 copies in the library
In the roaring twenties Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, mad with oil fever, getrich-quick schemes, celebrity scandals, and religious fervor. It was also rife with organized crime, with a
mayor in the pocket of the syndicates and a DA taking bribes to throw trials. In "A Bright and Guilty
Place", Richard Rayner narrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and Leslie White, who were
caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom
times shaded into the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White would inspire pulp fiction and
replace L.A.'s reckless optimism with a new cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city of
sunshine got noir. When A Bright and Guilty Place begins, Leslie White is a naive young photographer
who lands a job as a crime-scene investigator in the L.A. district attorney's office. There he meets Dave
Clark, a young, movie-star handsome lawyer and a rising star prosecutor with big ambitions. The cases
they tried were some of the first 'trials of the century', starring dark-hearted oil barons, sexually perverse
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starlets, and hookers with hearts of gold. Los Angeles was in the grip of organized crime, and White was
dismayed to see that only the innocent paid while the powerful walked free. But Clark was entranced by
L.A.'s dangerous lures and lived the high life, marrying a beautiful woman, wearing custom-made suits,
yachting with the rich and powerful, and jaunting off to Mexico for gambling and girls. In a shocking
twist, when Charlie Crawford, the Al Capone of L.A., was found dead, the chief suspect was none other
than golden boy Dave Clark. "A Bright and Guilty Place" is narrative non-fiction at its most gripping.
Richard Rayner portrays an L.A. controlled by organized crime, where brutal murders, spectacular trials,
political misdeeds, and the sexual perversities of Hollywood starlets are chronicled in graphic detail in the
tabloids; where writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett transformed a dark reality into
gripping fiction; and whose events would inspire the shadowy L.A. of film noir.
Coast of Dreams
Kevin Starr
(2006)
4.3 stars/7 reviews
11 copies in the library
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.
History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California
Antinion Maria Osio
(1996)
4.3 stars/3 reviews
6 copies in the library
Antonio María Osio’s La Historia de Alta California was the first written history of upper California
during the era of Mexican rule, and this is its first complete English translation. A Mexican-Californian,
government official, and the landowner of Angel Island and Point Reyes, Osio writes colorfully of life in
old Monterey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and gives a first-hand account of the political intrigues of
the 1830s that led to the appointment of Juan Bautista Alvarado as governor. Osio wrote his History in
1851, conveying with immediacy and detail the years of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the
social upheaval that followed. As he witnesses California’s territorial transition from Mexico to the
United States, he recalls with pride the achievements of Mexican California in earlier decades and writes
critically of the onset of U.S. influence and imperialism. Unable to endure life as foreigners in their home
of twenty-seven years, Osio and his family left Alta California for Mexico in 1852. Osio’s account
predates by a quarter century the better-known reminiscences of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Juan
Bautista Alvarado and the memoirs of Californios dictated to Hubert Howe Bancroft’s staff in the 1870s.
Editors Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz have provided an accurate, complete translation of
Osio’s original manuscript, and their helpful introduction and notes offer further details of Osio’s life and
of society in Alta California.
LA Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City
John Buntin
(2010)
4.1 stars/72 reviews
5 copies in the library
Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America," a land of sunshine and
orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world’s most
famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure
girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the
make. Into this underworld came two men–one L.A.’s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous
police chief–each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city. Former street thug turned
featherweight boxer Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin "Bugsy"
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Siegel’s enforcer, then as his protégé. A fastidious dresser and unrepentant killer, the diminutive Cohen
was Hollywood’s favorite gangster–and L.A.’s preeminent underworld boss. Frank Sinatra, Robert
Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories;
evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul. William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering lawenforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring
Twenties, he discovered that L.A. was ruled by a shadowy "Combination"–a triumvirate of tycoons,
politicians, and underworld figures where alliances were shifting, loyalties uncertain, and politics were
practiced with shotguns and dynamite. Parker’s life mission became to topple it–and to create a police
force that would never answer to elected officials again.
A fascinating examination of Los Angeles’s underbelly, the Mob, and America’s most admired–and
reviled–police department, L.A. Noir is an enlightening, entertaining, and richly detailed narrative about
the city originally known as El Pueblo de Nuestra Se–ora la Reina de los Angeles, "The Town of Our
Lady the Queen of the Angels."
Four Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California
Richard Rayner
(2007)
4.1 stars/15 reviews
5 copies in the libraryh
One hundred forty years ago, four men rose from their position as middle-class merchants in Sacramento,
California, to become the force behind the transcontinental railroad. In the course of doing so, they
became wealthy beyond any measure––and to sustain their power, they lied, bribed, wheedled, and, when
necessary, arranged for obstacles, both human and legal, to disappear. Their names were Collis
Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, and they were known as “The Big
Four” or “The Associates.” Their drive for money––nothing more, nothing less––was epic. Their legacy
is a university, public gardens, museums, mansions, banks, and libraries––and to a large degree California
itself, a state that even today owes its aura of “can-do” and limitless possibilities to The Associates.
Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence
Virginia M Bouvier
(2004)
4.0 stars/1 review
5 copies in the library
Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters
in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by
reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology
was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior
toward the conquerors. This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California.
It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontier—and how race, religion, age, and
ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural
resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions,
the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams. Virginia Bouvier has combed a
vast array of sources— including mission records, journals of explorers and missionaries, novels of
chivalry, and oral histories— and has discovered that female participation in the colonization of
California was greater and earlier than most historians have recognized. Viewing the conquest through the
prism of gender, Bouvier gives new meaning to the settling of new lands and attempts to convert
indigenous peoples. By analyzing the participation of women— both Hispanic and Indian— in the
maintenance of or resistance to the mission system, Bouvier restores them to the narrative of the conquest,
colonization, and evangelization of California. And by bringing these voices into the chorus of history,
she creates new harmonies and dissonances that alter and enhance our understanding of both the
experience and meaning of conquest.
William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles
Catherine Mulholland
(2002)
3.8 stars/6 reviews
7 copies in the library
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William Mulholland presided over the creation of a water system that forever changed the course of
southern California's history. Mulholland, a self-taught engineer, was the chief architect of the Owens
Valley Aqueduct--a project ranking in magnitude and daring with the Panama Canal--that brought water
to semi-arid Los Angeles from the lush Owens Valley. The story of Los Angeles's quest for water is both
famous and notorious: it has been the subject of the classic yet historically distorted movie Chinatown, as
well as many other accounts. This first full-length biography of Mulholland challenges many of the
prevailing versions of his life story and sheds new light on the history of Los Angeles and its relationship
with its most prized resource: water. Catherine Mulholland, the engineer's granddaughter, provides
insights into this story that family familiarity affords, and adds to our historical understanding with
extensive primary research in sources such as Mulholland's recently uncovered office files, newspapers,
and Department of Water and Power archives. She scrutinizes Mulholland's life--from his childhood in
Ireland to his triumphant completion of the Owens Valley Aqueduct to the tragedy that ended his career.
California: An Interpretive History
James Rawls
(Feb 2011, 10th edition)
3.6 stars/9 reviews
5 copies in the library
Now in its tenth edition, this best-selling text continues to provide an up-to-date survey of California
history and offers original interpretations of the major challenges faced by the nation’s most populous and
economically powerful state.
California: A History
Kevin Starr
(May 2007)
3.4 stars/41 reviews
12 copies in the library
In 2004, California had a population of 36 million and the fifth-largest economy in the world. Starr, USC
professor and former California state librarian, has justification for referring to his state as "this nation
state, this world commonwealth." His distillation of his previously written seven-volume series,
California and the American Dream, is a single-volume tour de force that is superbly researched and
beautifully written. This straight, chronological history opens with a fascinating survey of the geology,
climate, flora, and fauna of the region, and then the author provides interesting insights into the
achievements and failings of Spanish and Mexican governance, while he pays particular attention to the
sad fate of California's indigenous peoples. Most of the book covers the period of American supremacy,
and Starr's treatment of topics such as the gold rush, the growth of high-tech industries, and the
emergence of California as the center of the motion-picture industry is handled with great aplomb. For
both general readers and those with a particular interest in regional history, this is an informative and
enjoyable reading experience.
Negative review: Starr needs a better editor. This book is too full of trivial names and details. He pays
way too much attention to writers, who weren't responsible for making the state what it is nowadays. He
pays lip service to business leaders and politicians who built this state. He doesn't explore what shaped
famous Californians like Disney, Earl Warren, or Ronald Reagan. He neglects why the San Joaquin Delta
became one of world's most productive farmlands nor does he explain well how California built its
famous freeways. Why did Los Angeles develop into one of world's busiest ports rather than Bay Area,
Seattle or Portland? Why did California stop at San Diego and not include Baja California? The
differences between the two areas highlight what these two countries are capable of. He even has a
chapter on Governor Schwenegger's performance, which is current politics, not history. And the writing is
bad. I'm still looking for a better book on state's history.
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