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California Crackup
Author: Joe Mathews
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 237
ISBN-13: 0520268520
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"California Crackup is brilliant. It cuts through the familiar tangle of diagnoses and quick-fix solutions to provide a comprehensive and persuasive analysis of California's dysfunctional governmental system. Paul and Mathews have coolly laid out a complicated story, made it readable, sometimes even comedic. It is the best discussion of the issue I've seen in over three decades."--Peter Schrag, author of California: America's High-Stakes Experiment "I know of no other work that combines so succinctly and enjoyably a historical summary of California's existing problems with such a sweeping and provocative program of reform."--Ethan Rarick, University of California, Berkeley "Mark Paul and Joe Mathews have produced an indispensable guide to California's crisis of governance--and they have done so with humor, scholarship, fairness and storytelling verve. Every Californian should read this book."--Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars "Mark Paul... has a talent for presenting California Big Think stuff in an easily accessible and always readable way...[offering] clear and creative insights on the subject of California's collapse."--CalBuzz "Joe Mathews has done an artful, fascinating, and convincing job of connecting the California of today's Schwarzenegger era to the long history that made his rise possible.--James Fallows,The Atlantic Monthly on Mathews' book, The People's Machine
Golden Gulag
Author: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2007-01-08
Total Pages: 413
ISBN-13: 0520938038
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.
Rediscovering the Golden State
Author: William A. Selby
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2005-08-29
Total Pages: 496
ISBN-13: 9780471732488
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Take an active role in planning the future of California with the help of this informative book. Selby brings readers on an exploration of this diverse state, examining both its physical and cultural geography. The new second edition reflects the dynamic, stimulating, and thought-provoking environments and landscapes of the Golden State. And it clearly demonstrates how unequaled diversity, powerful connections, and accelerated change continue to shape this land.
Pioneers of California
Author: Donovan Lewis
Publisher:
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 567
ISBN-13: 9780942087062
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Not So Golden After All
Author: Larry N. Gerston
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2012-04-03
Total Pages: 345
ISBN-13: 1466559241
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Quality public education, modern highway systems, and reasonably priced housing—these are just some of the qualities that once made California one of the most desirable places to live. Just a few decades later, the state finds itself with an education system that is failing its citizens, one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and a quickly evaporating dream of home ownership. Illustrating each step of the breakdown that led to its current state of dysfunction, Not So Golden After All: The Rise and Fall of California provides insight into a system gone amuck. It addresses complicated topics in an engaging manner to help the public and leaders alike understand how to make policies that balance expectations with outcomes. Key political themes covered include disconnected institutions, perpetually unbalanced budgets, immigration, voter ignorance, interest group influence, and dysfunctional institutions. Investigating the gridlock that has become all too common within the state’s legislature, the book: Demonstrates the impact of the state’s inability to generate sufficient revenue, particularly for public education and an under-trained workforce Highlights the problems created by poor land use planning —from suburban sprawl and government waste to inefficient use of agricultural land Examines how interest groups have been able to wrest control of the processes that were created to keep them in line Identifies the duplication of efforts and other inefficiencies at the state and local levels Author Larry Gerston leaves no stone unturned in his discussion of California's economy, position on the Pacific Rim, cultural diversity, land and water issues, and its relationship with the federal government. He examines the state’s infrastructure, natural resources, immigration issues, education, finance, healthcare, civil rights, planning and development, security, laws, political parties, and power structures to provide civic leaders and policy makers with the understanding required to restore the sheen to this once glistening paradise. The Contra Costa Times discussed Larry Gerston's recent Commonwealth Club lecture in a May 17, 2012 article. Read an interview with Larry Gerston in The Mercury News.
The Golden Shore
Author: David Helvarg
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2016-09-02
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 1608684407
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From the first human settlements to the latest marine explorations, The Golden Shore tells the tale of the history, culture, and changing nature of California’s coasts and ocean. David Helvarg takes the reader on both a geographic and literary journey along the state’s 1,100-mile Pacific coastline, from the Oregon border to the San Diego–Tijuana international border fence and out into its whale-, seal-, and shark-rich offshore seamounts, rock isles, and kelp forests. Part history, part travelogue, part love letter, The Golden Shore captures the spirit of the California coast and its mythic place in American culture.
Hellacious California!
Author: Gary Noy
Publisher: Heyday.ORIM
Published: 2020-06-02
Total Pages: 255
ISBN-13: 1597145041
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“Teems with bittersweet compounds of 19th-century nefariousness, including . . . gambling, knife fights, the demon drink, con artistry, and prostitution.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California “can and does furnish the best bad things,” including “purer liquors . . . finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]” than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California’s settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments. Hellacious California tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the “Spirit Lover” scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. “Confidently carries the reader into the everyday lives of early Californians. The focus on Californians’ popular pastimes . . . with an eye on vice, decadence, and scandal, makes this book a rowdy tour.” —Dr. Patrick Ettinger, Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento; Former Director of CSUS Public History Program and the Capital Campus Oral History Program
Golden Dreams
Author: Kevin Starr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-09-09
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 0199924309
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
A Golden State
Author: Marlene Smith-Baranzini
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 532
ISBN-13: 9780520217706
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A collection of essays on mining and economic development in California from the Gold Rush through the end of the 19th century. This is the second in a series of four volumes comemmorating the state's sesquicentennial.
