Reviews

• Subject matter = great, writing style = meh

  I’ll be honest, having read this book I am quite surprised to see how highly rated it was. Don’t get me wrong, I found a lot of the subject matter very interesting (bought the book before visiting San Diego, Palm Springs and Los Angeles), but I couldn’t settle into Starr’s writing style. In my opinion it seemed incredibly unorganized and “tangent-y”. It felt like I would start a sentence about one thing and then suddenly realize I was reading about something completely different. He also seems very drawn to writing in list form - he frequently lists out things with a seemingly never ending pattern of commas. Lists of dates, people, population numbers etc. to a point where it feels very repetitive, unnecessary and frankly boring. I don’t think the author is for me, but I did find parts of the book interesting.

• California Dreaming

  In recent years I have read all eight of Kevin Starr's "Americans and the California dream" histories. Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance is consistent with the previous volumes and has a powerful saliency for me because it focuses on the 1950s. I grew up in Southern California during this era and I suspect that that my Diaspora generation will find this volume to have exceptional meaning. Starr defines the 1950s as 1950-1963, reasoning that that the 1950s continued culturally until the murder of JFK. Starr's chronicle has been a voyage of discovery of my roots, a journey stimulated by advancing age and curiosity about the forces that shaped my life. Starr writes that this period "survives in popular imagination as a stable landscape resting atop tectonic plates that would soon result in earthquakes as fissures." The reviewer for the Economist quibbled that Golden Dreams does not strictly adhere to the 1950-1963 time period. Starr has never made a fetish of strictly adhering to any era that was the focus of his previous volumes. There are instances where understanding an era requires background about an earlier period, and occasionally it makes sense to foreshadow future events or trends whose roots are in the era of immediate focus. A discussion of the importance of Big Sur to California literature in the 1950s demanded more than simply discussing Henry Miller. The prior residences of Robinson Jeffers and Jack London made Big Sur attractive to Miller and much of local resident John Steinbeck's work was written before the 1950s. Starr's approach avoids the lazy stereotypes that have often made the 1950s a convenient scapegoat. Golden Dreams is neither an indictment nor an unqualified celebration of this period. He describes the surface conformity of Californians yet shows the inner rebellions and unfinished business that will eventually be confronted -- whether civil rights or the consequences of a population growth from 10.5 million (1950) to 20 million (1970). The dreams, frustrations and ambiguities of California are mirrored in the nation at large. California has captured the American imagination since the nineteenth century, but perhaps never more so than during this era. As a university student in England in the late 1960s I told friends that I thought of myself as a Californian, not an American. Forty years later and after residences in three other states this notion does not cross my mind. Starr begins with an account of the suburbanization of the San Fernando Valley, which serves as a case study of the growth of suburbs throughout the state that were needed to house the expanding population. I was raised in that valley and Starr's narrative rings true with a wealth of often nostalgic detail -- the opening of the Ventura freeway (1960) within sight of my boyhood home, the uprooting of walnut and orange groves for tract homes, the buffoon of a mayor Sam Yorty, cultural fads such as `coon skin caps. Look Magazine (1962) stated that each day 375 acres of farmland were being converted to suburbs. No wonder the fields near my home where my pals and I did our biological exploring disappeared before our eyes. I had no idea as a youth of the relative affluence of the working and middle-classes there. In 1959 wages in San Fernando Valley were higher than the total wages of 18 states. Part II focuses on life in the major cities. In Los Angeles, Starr focuses on the influences of Cardinal McIntyre (whose expansion of Catholic schools included Crespi High School where some of my neighbors were educated), Chief William Parker's virtual militarization of a police force in order to patrol 450 square miles, and Dorothy Buffum Chandler's work as the wife of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times to revive downtown as a cultural destination. Starr emphasizes the influence of newspaper columnist Herb Caen on the post World War II culture of the San Francisco Bay Area. Caen's Baghdad by the Bay (1949) became a self-fulfilling myth for the cultural identify and full-throated boosterism of many Bay Area residents today, long after Caen's death. Is there another city whose media so frequently and forcefully proclaim it to be the best place in the world to live? Would any self-confident city do that? Part III (Politics and Public Works) focuses on the politicians who laid the infrastructure for an expanding California. Starr recounts the political maneuverings within the centrist Republican Party that was triggered by Eisenhower's appointment of Governor Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lieutenant Governor Goodwin Knight became governor and would likely have been reelected in his own right in 1958 had U.S. Senator Joseph Knowland not decided to run for governor. Knowland, an apparent dim-wit, believed that if he were governor he might become the Republican candidate for president if Eisenhower's health faded. So Knight ran for the Senate and ultimately both Knight and Knowland lost. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown and Claire Engel were elected governor and senator in 1958, no doubt with the quiet approval of Richard Nixon who immediately became the most prominent Republican in California. Pat Brown used his considerable political skills to plan for a Big Future. For better or worse, Brown deserves great credit for the implementation of statewide master plans for freeways, water development (the largest in world history) and higher education (including creating the world's first multiversity). Throughout the series Starr focuses on the influence of arts and culture on the California dream. He acknowledges the work of Ray Bradbury, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, Susan Sontag and an entire(!) chapter on Dave Brubeck. I surmise Starr is a jazz afficionado. One of the delights of Starr's histories is identifying previously over-looked writers and book titles. My short list from Golden Dreams includes D.J. Waldie's Holyland: A Suburban Memoir (1996), Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968), and Gertrude Atherton's Golden Gate Country (1945). The chapter "Largest State in the Nation" captures the unease felt by many when California became the most populous state in 1962. While Governor Brown celebrated the achievement, individuals began forming organizations to resist growth for growth's sake. As Professor Raymond Dassman of Humboldt State University asked, "Is California better for becoming so populous?" It is a question we continue to ask today. I have some quibbles. I wish Starr had included some maps so I would not have put Golden Dreams down so often to search out a location. There are factual errors, almost typo-errors. This is perhaps inevitable in a dense 500 page volume that synthesizes so much disparate information. For those focus on the blemishes, I am reminded of the preface to R. E. Moreau's The Palearctic-African Bird Migration System (1972): "I know it is full of imperfections and inadequacies and that readers will find errors from which I cannot be absolved. They will enjoy spotting them but I know too that in not a few places in the book they will find themselves surprised and stimulated." The surprises and stimulations in Golden Dreams are legion.

• Golden Dreams More isn't Necessarily Better

  Keven Starr's Golden Dreams suffers from the fault any nonfiction historical series seems to have. Mr. Starr forgets he has already told the story before, and we read deja vu all over again. Starr's account of the 60's does not sufficiently describe the counterculture. That can be explained by his academic credentials, which automatically excluded him from hip culture. His research is generally good, though i found a few errors. The main problem seems to be be that by taking Califonia history ten years at time, Starr tries to explain history chronologically instead of phenomonologically. Continuity suffers as a result, and we often are left with snapshots in time which are not easly comparable. Still, for the perswon interested in California History, it's a good read.

• When California was cool

  Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream) Kevin Starr is himself a wondrous California resource. He seems to know all things California and this is the eighth volume in his "Americans and the California Dream" series. Opening it I felt like I was entering one of those latter-day off-beat supermarkets originating in the Golden State, encountering a cornucopia and expecting to be surprised by some of what I might find (or not). I was not disappointed. Starr has a scholar's command of the material and a home-boy's affection for his subject. His great strength is as a compiler, distiller, and packager of the extensive historical literature on the state. This particular volume covers his own formative years (he is a San Francisco native) and it shows, favorably. Golden Dreams is fact-jammed, but Starr renders it palatable by typically telling us just enough to humanize each of hundreds of persons whom he has selected to portray the culture, society, and politics of this period. Fortunately for both the author and his readers, California seems to have long had more than its share of memorable characters. Wisely, he does not adhere strictly to the 1950-1963 time boundaries when it is helpful to have retrospective context or to project toward later consequences. The book includes five major sections covering suburbanization, the major cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego), politics and public works, selected aspects of culture, and what Starr calls dissenting opinions (primarily environmental and civil rights issues). The "Politics and Public Works" section, for example, ably documents how California prosperity was built on public investment, especially in the defense and aerospace industries, highways, water works, and higher education. Certain imperfections are noticeable but tolerable in this expansive survey. Some readers may question the relative emphases Starr (or his editor) gives to certain life and culture topics. For example, there is an entire chapter on San Francisco regional literature, which in this context seems inordinately inclusive of many comparatively minor writers. So too, four pages on Tiki restaurants seem too much. On the other hand, I enjoyed his chapter on jazz (others may not, but I am a fan), and I felt it justified to balance West Coast contributions against those of New York, New Orleans, and Chicago, for instance. As in one of the new-fangled California supermarkets, a few staples are missing. Surprisingly, Starr does not give sufficient attention to certain of the state's major industries. While he discusses the water and migrant labor politics of agriculture, we are mostly left to wonder about its variety, technologies, transformations, environmental impacts, and contribution to the state's economy. And although he identifies particular films and television shows and their stars to support various points throughout, he offers no systematic discussion of these industries as businesses during this period. Nor does he assess at any length how the advent of television viewing altered the lives of not just Californians, but Americans generally. Starr's coverage overwhelmingly focuses on Southern California and the Bay Area, fair enough based on the population distribution. However, the counties north of Marin and Sonoma are left out altogether (except for occasional mention in relation to statewide political issues), the Central Valley receives very little attention, and Sacramento is noted only as a place where politics are done and Joan Didion grew-up. On the whole, however, Golden Dreams is not only highly engaging, it serves as a good reminder of how much certain things changed both during the fifties and since. San Francisco, for example, was still "fundamentally conservative politically," although elements had long been "liberal in matters of private life." I had forgotten that the Republican national conventions in both 1956 and 1964 were in San Francisco (what could be more far-fetched today?). Starr believes that "the national experience and the California experience became, increasingly, a converging phenomenon" in this period. California certainly exercised a major influence on the broader popular culture. Back then this Midwestern youth, and virtually all of my peers as I recall, thought California was the place to be. Surely, however, the state's image was idealized - it was not so golden for many groups, especially the poor. As development has overcome parts of the state and as public investment now unravels the Golden State is less the model for dreams and emulation that it was in the fifties. Nevertheless, most readers are likely to be highly appreciative of Starr's satisfying re-creation of that time and place. I would look forward to his volume to cover the remaining period in this series, 1964 to 1989, if indeed one is forthcoming.

• Clearly Explains The Factors In Mid-20th Century California Development, And A Pleasure To Read

  An very impressive mixture of deep documentation combined with absorbing readability. Mr. Starr combines presentation of facts with historical context and philosophical underpinnings to paint a compelling portrait of California growth and development during the period covered. The quality of the writing and depth of documentation led me to buy the books that cover the 1920's and the 1930's. If you are interested in the history of California and prefer detailed analysis that is not a dry mind-numbing exercise in self-punishment then this series is the place to go. I loved this book and look forward to reading all of the books in the series.

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