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Americans and the California Dream #7
Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963
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.
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.
564 pages, Hardcover
First published June 9, 2009
43 people are currently reading
608 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Starr
78 books68 followersKevin Starr was an American historian, best-known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "America and the California Dream".
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 4, 2012
Being a native of California (Los Angeles) this book was of particular interest to me. Growing up in a Left Coast version of Mad Men of this time made it even more appealing. A trip down memory lane. Golden Dreams fleshes out post World War Two and it's corresponding impact on California. The huge influx of war veterans that settled in urban Los Angeles post war. The massive subdivisions built to accomodate the new families. The era of Eisenhower bliss. Get married, own your own suburban single family home, a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, two kiddies, jobs. Kevin Starr also addresses other layers of the onion. Politics, the Dodgers, Education, Zen, Jazz, Racism, The Silent Generation etc. Kevin Starr brilliantly fleshes out the essence of these times. I have several of his other California books lined up ready to read.
January 28, 2015
Mid-century California is one of the one of the most important times and places in American history. This all the more so because it wasn't marked by war or economic crisis, but seemingly continuous growth and progress on a scale not only unprecedented but unrepeatable - over the 1950-1963 timeframe the book concentrates on, the state expanded by nearly two-thirds, which meant a net of an astonishing half-million people per year. I was originally drawn to this book because I live in Texas, and here there's an annoying narrative of Texas on the upswing contrasted with California's seeming decline, a partisan argument about governmental philosophies masked as impartial demographic statistics. Not knowing much about California other than that it's huge and that it's the inevitable comparison point for anything Texas does, I was curious what lessons, if any, could be drawn from California's own ascendancy to center stage of the national debate a few decades ago.
It turns out that there's quite a bit to learn. Starr has done a tremendous job synthesizing vast amounts of research on California's transformation into the most American part of America, a position it's never really relinquished. He talks about the booming of the major cities and the blossoming of the minor towns. He analyzes trends in music and its composers, movies and their stars, architecture and its designers, and literary movements and their authors. He notes the vast demographic trends and the ubiquitous cultural innovations. He chronicles the politics of water usage and the struggles over freeway construction. He connects the growth of the super-cities with the solitary wildernesses they encroached on. He profiles the civic leaders and the restive outcasts, the cops and the criminals, the ordinary citizens and the pioneering artists, the religious figures and the radical environmentalists, the trailblazing progressives and the reactionary conservatives. As the legendary lazy grade school book report has it, California emerges as "a land of many contrasts".
Those contrasts are inevitable in a state so large, which left plenty of room for misfits and outcasts. I found the sections discussing Brubeck and the jazz scene, or Robinson Jeffers and the loose assortment of poets scattered around Big Sur, or David Brower and the environmentalist movement riveting. Maybe there is no such thing as a true cultural consensus, or maybe any social process that generates a consensus will automatically generate a backlash. While millions were busy filling up the San Fernando Valley, a few found refuge far from development, or made their own accommodations with the often-messy process of settling down. Texas has its outposts of freethinkers and hippies, but it's difficult to say if we're located at similar points on our respective growth curves.
As much as the state's contrasts, though, I was interested in his portrayal of its consensuses, particularly California's invention of the American middle class and its accompanying postwar cultural and economic characteristics. While obviously Californians as a whole have never agreed on everything, and many individual items like the suburb or the automobile were invented elsewhere, it's not much of an oversimplification to observe that it was in that state that the "American way of life" reached its most complete definition: the decent house with a nice yard, good schools, family-friendly entertainment, the option to have a flashy car, and so on. Starr unearths all kinds of little details about that lifestyle that I'd never thought about before. One example is his discussion of bowling, which as a mass recreational activity was essentially invented in Southern California. That not only explains all the bowling in The Big Lebowski, a quintessentially Southern Californian film, but also sheds new light on pioneering works like Robert Putnam's treatise on social capital Bowling Alone. The tiki craze, for another example, which I vaguely remembered from South Pacific, was a lot more iconic than I had thought.
Of course, the question of what made California so good at embodying American-ness could come down to any one of its many upsides - the weather, the scenery, the variety - but it seems like the main key to its success was pretty simple: cheap land, leading to cheap houses, which not only let normal people raise their families comfortably and affordably, but also built demand for jobs. I reached the end of the book and I came back to my original comparison between California and Texas. To what extent are the denizens of 1950s California a good comparison group for 2010s Texans? Well, there are as many points of analogy as you want there to be - both states grew rapidly because they offered something attractive to people at the time. Texas even at its peak never boomed to the same extent that California did, but we live in different times. To paraphrase Goldwater, Texas offers "an echo, not a choice".
I will say that reading this book reinforced vague notions I'm still pondering about how many bitter contemporary arguments over tax structures and regulatory stances might be distant sideshows in terms of what makes a state successful or not. Make it easy enough to start a family and you're halfway there (counterexamples like nearly free Rust Belt houses notwithstanding), regardless of what other economic development policies a state government tinkers with. I do think that California's philosophy towards infrastructure, both physical like the epochal water and transportation projects, or human infrastructure like its world-class university system, is far more inspiring than Texas' desultory half-privatized muddles. Maybe someday we'll have our own shift in priorities - California's transformation from the homeland of Nixon and Reagan to a Democratic stronghold might come sooner in Texas than we think.
Until then, Starr's work is phenomenal in and of itself, and while I probably won't chase down all seven other volumes he's produced in this series, I've benefited tremendously from his work, just as the US has benefited from the success of its (still) most populous and most emblematic state.
It turns out that there's quite a bit to learn. Starr has done a tremendous job synthesizing vast amounts of research on California's transformation into the most American part of America, a position it's never really relinquished. He talks about the booming of the major cities and the blossoming of the minor towns. He analyzes trends in music and its composers, movies and their stars, architecture and its designers, and literary movements and their authors. He notes the vast demographic trends and the ubiquitous cultural innovations. He chronicles the politics of water usage and the struggles over freeway construction. He connects the growth of the super-cities with the solitary wildernesses they encroached on. He profiles the civic leaders and the restive outcasts, the cops and the criminals, the ordinary citizens and the pioneering artists, the religious figures and the radical environmentalists, the trailblazing progressives and the reactionary conservatives. As the legendary lazy grade school book report has it, California emerges as "a land of many contrasts".
Those contrasts are inevitable in a state so large, which left plenty of room for misfits and outcasts. I found the sections discussing Brubeck and the jazz scene, or Robinson Jeffers and the loose assortment of poets scattered around Big Sur, or David Brower and the environmentalist movement riveting. Maybe there is no such thing as a true cultural consensus, or maybe any social process that generates a consensus will automatically generate a backlash. While millions were busy filling up the San Fernando Valley, a few found refuge far from development, or made their own accommodations with the often-messy process of settling down. Texas has its outposts of freethinkers and hippies, but it's difficult to say if we're located at similar points on our respective growth curves.
As much as the state's contrasts, though, I was interested in his portrayal of its consensuses, particularly California's invention of the American middle class and its accompanying postwar cultural and economic characteristics. While obviously Californians as a whole have never agreed on everything, and many individual items like the suburb or the automobile were invented elsewhere, it's not much of an oversimplification to observe that it was in that state that the "American way of life" reached its most complete definition: the decent house with a nice yard, good schools, family-friendly entertainment, the option to have a flashy car, and so on. Starr unearths all kinds of little details about that lifestyle that I'd never thought about before. One example is his discussion of bowling, which as a mass recreational activity was essentially invented in Southern California. That not only explains all the bowling in The Big Lebowski, a quintessentially Southern Californian film, but also sheds new light on pioneering works like Robert Putnam's treatise on social capital Bowling Alone. The tiki craze, for another example, which I vaguely remembered from South Pacific, was a lot more iconic than I had thought.
Of course, the question of what made California so good at embodying American-ness could come down to any one of its many upsides - the weather, the scenery, the variety - but it seems like the main key to its success was pretty simple: cheap land, leading to cheap houses, which not only let normal people raise their families comfortably and affordably, but also built demand for jobs. I reached the end of the book and I came back to my original comparison between California and Texas. To what extent are the denizens of 1950s California a good comparison group for 2010s Texans? Well, there are as many points of analogy as you want there to be - both states grew rapidly because they offered something attractive to people at the time. Texas even at its peak never boomed to the same extent that California did, but we live in different times. To paraphrase Goldwater, Texas offers "an echo, not a choice".
I will say that reading this book reinforced vague notions I'm still pondering about how many bitter contemporary arguments over tax structures and regulatory stances might be distant sideshows in terms of what makes a state successful or not. Make it easy enough to start a family and you're halfway there (counterexamples like nearly free Rust Belt houses notwithstanding), regardless of what other economic development policies a state government tinkers with. I do think that California's philosophy towards infrastructure, both physical like the epochal water and transportation projects, or human infrastructure like its world-class university system, is far more inspiring than Texas' desultory half-privatized muddles. Maybe someday we'll have our own shift in priorities - California's transformation from the homeland of Nixon and Reagan to a Democratic stronghold might come sooner in Texas than we think.
Until then, Starr's work is phenomenal in and of itself, and while I probably won't chase down all seven other volumes he's produced in this series, I've benefited tremendously from his work, just as the US has benefited from the success of its (still) most populous and most emblematic state.
March 19, 2020
Having an interest in both California history and the mid-century era, this book is right up my alley. That aside, it’s thoroughly researched, and covers the key people and events of the political, cultural, and social history of California after the Second World War through the early 1960s. While the book is organized by subject, rather than chronologically - each chapter can be read on its own - it’s still easy to follow along and gives a comprehensive picture of the era.
July 14, 2010
The Dreams series continues with Golden and this one starts strong nostalgia wise covering
those compelling popular culture tidbits of the era;
TV show 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet', The Kinsey Report,
Howdy Doody, The Davey Crockett craze - almost as if
life itself gurgled up from the San Fernando Valley.
From there the author focuses chapters on specifics
from the founding of the LA civic music center to the
burgeoning take-no-prisoners environmental movement.
It's not quite as readable as the previous books in the
series, I believe the others had a better flow.
Naturally a selection of areas are going to more interesting
to a reader than others. The book is organized so that you
can pick out a favorite subject in a chapter and not have
to read the whole book.
Peculiarly I found that when a topic inspired me enough to
research it elsewhere, that there was information available
that, if included, would have made the story less dramatic.
Also a some items inaccurate, though most of the time it was small
items, but makes one wonder about the other subjects.
A variety of the items that interested me:
- Living in the suburbs as a choice of the west, that is, didn't
want to duplicate the urban masses of the Atlantic seaboard.
I appreciated this insight as I'm always wondering why do
movie critics, pundits, etc always jump on the chance to
disdain the suburbs, I've never understood their reasoning.
- The move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA and the dealings of
the owner Walter O'Malley with the city.
- The beat movement in San Francisco, Gary Snyder, Ferlinghetti
et. al.
- Alan Watts influence in popularizing Zen to USA.
- Aldous Huxley running around the country praising the virtues
of LSD. (this was! 1955). Course he thought only those
that could appreciate it should take it (those almost as
smart as he i imagine).
- Dave Brubeck bringing cool jazz to mainstream USA.
- The evolution of the surfing culture & the myth makers -
The Beach Boys, the book & movie Gidget.
- Why were things so prosperous in CA during this period?
Wealth through defense & aerospace.
those compelling popular culture tidbits of the era;
TV show 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet', The Kinsey Report,
Howdy Doody, The Davey Crockett craze - almost as if
life itself gurgled up from the San Fernando Valley.
From there the author focuses chapters on specifics
from the founding of the LA civic music center to the
burgeoning take-no-prisoners environmental movement.
It's not quite as readable as the previous books in the
series, I believe the others had a better flow.
Naturally a selection of areas are going to more interesting
to a reader than others. The book is organized so that you
can pick out a favorite subject in a chapter and not have
to read the whole book.
Peculiarly I found that when a topic inspired me enough to
research it elsewhere, that there was information available
that, if included, would have made the story less dramatic.
Also a some items inaccurate, though most of the time it was small
items, but makes one wonder about the other subjects.
A variety of the items that interested me:
- Living in the suburbs as a choice of the west, that is, didn't
want to duplicate the urban masses of the Atlantic seaboard.
I appreciated this insight as I'm always wondering why do
movie critics, pundits, etc always jump on the chance to
disdain the suburbs, I've never understood their reasoning.
- The move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA and the dealings of
the owner Walter O'Malley with the city.
- The beat movement in San Francisco, Gary Snyder, Ferlinghetti
et. al.
- Alan Watts influence in popularizing Zen to USA.
- Aldous Huxley running around the country praising the virtues
of LSD. (this was! 1955). Course he thought only those
that could appreciate it should take it (those almost as
smart as he i imagine).
- Dave Brubeck bringing cool jazz to mainstream USA.
- The evolution of the surfing culture & the myth makers -
The Beach Boys, the book & movie Gidget.
- Why were things so prosperous in CA during this period?
Wealth through defense & aerospace.
January 2, 2013
The draw of this book for me is that it covers the time and place of my father's formative years, which also happens to be truly one of the golden place/ages in human history. Starr does a nice job managing the possibilities of scope, covering briefly the artistic, political, economic, geographic and cultural developments of the era and reports the political parts evenhandedly. As a general history, it lacks a consistent narrative, but the writing flows well and reads easily. I skipped a couple of the later sections that were not about Los Angeles and didn't feel I missed out on what I wanted to learn. My dad used to glaze over a bit fondly when his memories turned to LA in the 50s; this book helped me fill in the picture, too.
May 27, 2013
A perfect capstone to this great series. We see California come into its own and influence the rest of America; politically, culturally and economically.
December 12, 2023
I loved the beginning, and was excited to learn more about midcentury California, and the era in which it took the most-populated-state title from New York. But after about 300 pages, I started getting overwhelmed with detail, to the point where I had difficulty following the story. The minutia is understandable, since Kevin Starr was California’s State Librarian, and an avid historian. Some topics interested me highly, but others didn’t. And others bogged down with too much information, even though the subjects themselves interested me. Also, his frequent metaphor for San Francisco, Baghdad by the Sea, became irksome.
Beginning with architecture and furniture design grabbed my interest. The sections on LAPD and California Catholicism fascinated me. Political intrigues indeed intrigued me. As a longtime UCSC employee, the chapter on University of California was surprisingly informative, particularly as Clark Kerr, the UC founding hero, was not exactly squeaky clean. He was also rather down on UCSC, despite a campus building bearing his name. Who knew? And I never was informed that the first UCSC graduation became a political protest supported by the profs. Fascinating reading.
The freeway chapter was surprisingly engaging, but the water re-allocation, Big Sur back-to-the-earth movement, and much of the Beats chapter not so much so. Jazz chapter was okay, and I wonder why the People of Color chapter came last. Prejudice towards many groups dictated much state history, and it seems more logical to begin with it.
That being said, there is something in Golden Dreams for everyone who wants to learn about midcentury California. The chapters aren’t particularly sequential, so I would recommend that casual readers choose their chapters and areas of interest, and not feel compelled, as I did, to examine every detail.
If only Kevin Starr had written a California history book to follow this volume, say 1964-1980. He made references at the end of several chapters indicating that the stage had been set for a new era, but alas, he died at age 76, after writing just 7 books in this series.
Beginning with architecture and furniture design grabbed my interest. The sections on LAPD and California Catholicism fascinated me. Political intrigues indeed intrigued me. As a longtime UCSC employee, the chapter on University of California was surprisingly informative, particularly as Clark Kerr, the UC founding hero, was not exactly squeaky clean. He was also rather down on UCSC, despite a campus building bearing his name. Who knew? And I never was informed that the first UCSC graduation became a political protest supported by the profs. Fascinating reading.
The freeway chapter was surprisingly engaging, but the water re-allocation, Big Sur back-to-the-earth movement, and much of the Beats chapter not so much so. Jazz chapter was okay, and I wonder why the People of Color chapter came last. Prejudice towards many groups dictated much state history, and it seems more logical to begin with it.
That being said, there is something in Golden Dreams for everyone who wants to learn about midcentury California. The chapters aren’t particularly sequential, so I would recommend that casual readers choose their chapters and areas of interest, and not feel compelled, as I did, to examine every detail.
If only Kevin Starr had written a California history book to follow this volume, say 1964-1980. He made references at the end of several chapters indicating that the stage had been set for a new era, but alas, he died at age 76, after writing just 7 books in this series.
March 25, 2020
Golden Dreams is the second-to-last installment of Kevin Starr's magnum opus, an eight-volume history of California over the course of a century, from its riotous early days as an American territory in 1850 to the dawn of the new millennium. Not gonna lie: I know it's shallow but I was hooked by that beautiful cover. For certain people, California in the prosperity of the postwar era was a suburban paradise, where perfectly tanned nuclear families barbecued in private backyards under the eternal sunshine and shiny cars roamed the new freeways like the wild buffalo of yore. Except for San Francisco, which to this day remains an actual city like the old Eastern metropolises of Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC. And thank God. The next book on my TBR is
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
.
While Starr had a lot of poetry to work with - California's story is certainly quite the epic - he gets bogged down in so much minutiae. Even chapters that should have been absolutely fascinating - such as the one on jazz and its great musicians destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, addicted - were a chore to get through. On the other hand, this wasn't intended to be popular history but more an encyclopedic record, so I'm probably judging it from the wrong angle. It's definitely loaded with information and the fact that Starr completed seven more of these is truly an impressive feat.
While Starr had a lot of poetry to work with - California's story is certainly quite the epic - he gets bogged down in so much minutiae. Even chapters that should have been absolutely fascinating - such as the one on jazz and its great musicians destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, addicted - were a chore to get through. On the other hand, this wasn't intended to be popular history but more an encyclopedic record, so I'm probably judging it from the wrong angle. It's definitely loaded with information and the fact that Starr completed seven more of these is truly an impressive feat.
February 17, 2025
read to find out what the historical record said about the destruction of the latino neighborhood on the Chavez Ravine site. remember listening to live radio account featuring multiple deaths from from surprise bulldozing of structures on a holiday evening.
the deaths were not part of this historical record.
a huge postive was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow in California
my favorite part of the text were telling of Jazz in the postwar era - with local artists Brubeck, Tjader & Desmond in cool jazz - Bird's sojourn recounted with $1 gallons of California port featured
the deaths were not part of this historical record.
a huge postive was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow in California
my favorite part of the text were telling of Jazz in the postwar era - with local artists Brubeck, Tjader & Desmond in cool jazz - Bird's sojourn recounted with $1 gallons of California port featured
August 1, 2021
This one was probably my mistake... I was so excited about California history after reading "The Mirage Factory" that I picked this up next, thinking maybe I would read every book ever written in the genre. But this is... basically a textbook, or a reference book. Full of interesting information but it's not exactly a casual read. It is what it is, I suppose!
July 10, 2020
After reading Cadillac Desert, I wanted to better understand the story California culture. I loved the breadth of topics covered in this book (architecture, music, surf, agriculture, business, immigration, and much more). Looking forward to reading more by Kevin Starr.
August 24, 2025
Volume seven of the magnificent eight volume series.
After WWII California was not only overly dependent on War Department money but was still a collection of interdependent regions rather than a unified state. To remedy this governor Pat Brown championed the state highway system, state water project, and state college system laying the groundwork for an economic powerhouse now the fourth largest economy in the world.
After WWII California was not only overly dependent on War Department money but was still a collection of interdependent regions rather than a unified state. To remedy this governor Pat Brown championed the state highway system, state water project, and state college system laying the groundwork for an economic powerhouse now the fourth largest economy in the world.
November 20, 2014
Any effort to distill one of California's most significant time periods into a ~500 volume will present challenges to any author. However, Kevin Starr handles the task with much success. Focusing on California's most significant metropolitan areas - San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego - Starr traces the evolution of each city proper and the construction of city identity. Amidst demographic, economic, and sweeping cultural transformation, Starr examines competing factions' attempts to shape the growth and development to their agendas.
Starr pays particular tribute to the influential figures who shaped California trends (that in turn shaped national trends) in design, music, literature, and political activism. Yet for the reader who is not intimately familiar already with these histories, the sheer information deluge is difficult to handle, and the book at times comes off as a mere dumping ground and discussion of, for example, significant literary works.
Inherent in any book of such a large undertaking, the narrative pays only lip service to monumental issues like civil rights (after all, which groups truly benefited from post-war abundance?). Any chapter, even paragraph possibly, could be spun off into its own book of equal length. But to fault the author for not writing a 5000+ page book is unfair, and we should all applaud his efforts in chronicling California's history through his volumes.
We often forget in our fixation on the present, that California was not always such an influential state, and that its history is in many ways substantially a 20th century phenomenon. In this regard, the book does a masterful job of placing California in the forefront of its heyday in economic, political, and cultural terms.
Starr pays particular tribute to the influential figures who shaped California trends (that in turn shaped national trends) in design, music, literature, and political activism. Yet for the reader who is not intimately familiar already with these histories, the sheer information deluge is difficult to handle, and the book at times comes off as a mere dumping ground and discussion of, for example, significant literary works.
Inherent in any book of such a large undertaking, the narrative pays only lip service to monumental issues like civil rights (after all, which groups truly benefited from post-war abundance?). Any chapter, even paragraph possibly, could be spun off into its own book of equal length. But to fault the author for not writing a 5000+ page book is unfair, and we should all applaud his efforts in chronicling California's history through his volumes.
We often forget in our fixation on the present, that California was not always such an influential state, and that its history is in many ways substantially a 20th century phenomenon. In this regard, the book does a masterful job of placing California in the forefront of its heyday in economic, political, and cultural terms.
December 30, 2010
This one takes a while to read but if you love California as I do, every page is worth it. Every page is chock full of facts, stories and vignettes interweaving the history and of the 13 years Starr views as the "Golden" years -- post-war California that BOOMED and grew and became a State of Wonder and Unlimited Potential. Starr begins with the growth of San Fernando (and the unveiling of what made the region what it is infamous for now -- the crazy quilt of highways linking up the region).
He then transverses the state, covering everything from the emergence of the Beat generation in San Francisco (while also taking us back to a City by the Bay which once was home to the largest bank in the world -- the old Bank of America -- as well as headquarters to some of the largest corporations in the America (Southern Pacific, Levi Strauss, etc.).
Starr also pays close attention to the change of color of the state -- namely, the rise (or is that return?) of the Latino population as a political force (remember Caesar Chavez?) and how a governor named Brown (Jerry's dad, Pat) dealt with it.
This is another volume of Starr's multi-volume "Americans and the California Dream" series. He has done extraordinary research and is a beautiful, eclectic writer and, again, if you love California, you should read this book. But a warning to you California lovers: It will leave more than a bitter-sweet taste in your mouth as you compare these years with the last ten years in California of decline and political ineptitude. Maybe the glory days will return.
He then transverses the state, covering everything from the emergence of the Beat generation in San Francisco (while also taking us back to a City by the Bay which once was home to the largest bank in the world -- the old Bank of America -- as well as headquarters to some of the largest corporations in the America (Southern Pacific, Levi Strauss, etc.).
Starr also pays close attention to the change of color of the state -- namely, the rise (or is that return?) of the Latino population as a political force (remember Caesar Chavez?) and how a governor named Brown (Jerry's dad, Pat) dealt with it.
This is another volume of Starr's multi-volume "Americans and the California Dream" series. He has done extraordinary research and is a beautiful, eclectic writer and, again, if you love California, you should read this book. But a warning to you California lovers: It will leave more than a bitter-sweet taste in your mouth as you compare these years with the last ten years in California of decline and political ineptitude. Maybe the glory days will return.
January 21, 2012
Golden Dreams is a very thorough book on aspects of California history during the time period of 1950-1963. This book really looks at the suburbanization of California (which was occurring along with the rest of the country. The book focuses primarily on San Francisco and Los Angeles but a decent amount of time was also spent on places like San Diego. The book covers urban, social, political, and art/media history from the time period with detailed and thoughtful analysis. Environmental and race history were also included as part of the overall analysis. The book can be dry at times and I picked it up expecting mostly and urban history read which I found enjoyable but the arts and media chapters did not hold my interest as much. Overall it is a good book on the history of California for the time period but you really have to hold a strong interest in all aspects if you want to get through it.
July 5, 2013
Kevin Starr turns the spotlight onto what would appear to be a placid, if not downright torpid time in California's history: the era stretching form the end of the Second World War through America's escalating involvement in Vietnam; being Kevin Starr, he finds much to fascinate during this period. A wartime economy, followed by the growth of the military-industrial complex, had the state rolling in wealth. The will of politicians such as Edmund "Pat" Brown fostered the consolidation of the State's infrastructure, as ambitious projects in highways, water development, and education were implemented. Under the still surface, however, forces of change were brewing, particularly in the organization of the Filipino and Latino farmworkers, and the strides that various ethnic groups were making towards civil rights. I suspect Starr will be favoring us with a book detailing the social ferment of the '60's and '70's California, and I will be happy to read it.
February 7, 2015
Kevin Starr provides a comprehensive overview of the State as it emerges into its Golden Age -- the place where we all wanted to go. Starr touches on all the key elements, from the development of its highways and its water infrastructure to the shifts in its politics and the establishment of its system of higher education.
The story is far bigger than one volume, but fortunately Starr provides copious notes for further exploration.
While the beginning is slow, his writing comes to life in vivid portrayals of the various actors in California and the problems they set to solve. One wishes that the jazz section were expanded somewhat more, and that the inside life of San Francisco was diminished. (This latter point is one of the more interesting shifts, that the history of the era is of the decline of SF as a cultural shift -- that internal struggle is not well developed in this volume).
The story is far bigger than one volume, but fortunately Starr provides copious notes for further exploration.
While the beginning is slow, his writing comes to life in vivid portrayals of the various actors in California and the problems they set to solve. One wishes that the jazz section were expanded somewhat more, and that the inside life of San Francisco was diminished. (This latter point is one of the more interesting shifts, that the history of the era is of the decline of SF as a cultural shift -- that internal struggle is not well developed in this volume).
June 30, 2013
Kevin Starr's California saga continues and he's very much on form with this volume covering the 1950s and into the 1960s. As in other volumes this is a comprehensive history, including economics, culture, politics and more. I especially enjoyed the sections on the emergence of the civil rights, La Raza and gay liberation movements, but also the chapters on Carmel and Big Sur (Henry Miller, et al)(partly because I was in Big Sur when I was reading this), Japanese internment, Cold War California, the state's political shift from Republican to Democrat and San Francisco in the era of Herb Caen. Starr's encyclopedic histories continue to amaze, although I'm always annoyed that San Jose and the South Bay are mostly ignored.
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July 21, 2009Love this book.
August 8, 2009
Here is history I actually lived through. Dense with facts, this would be more compelling with a little more attention to narrative flow.
May 17, 2010
Fascinating stuff on every page so far...
June 15, 2014
A must read for any Native Californian...Overwhelming with information at times, but still a fascinating survey of California from after the war until 1963.
February 17, 2016
This book made me understand that I arrived in Southern California about 43 years too late.
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