Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2003 - Hardcover

Starr, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679412883 ISBN 13: 9780679412885

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2004

Synopsis

A new volume in the author's multivolume study of California focuses on the period from 1990 to 2003, drawing on a variety of personal impressions, news stories, anecdotes, facts, and analyses to examine a period of intense upheaval and turmoil in the Golden State, from the rise and fall of Silicon Valley to the Northridge earthquake to the recall election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

About this title

About the Author:

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

From the Inside Flap:

In this extraordinary book, Kevin Starr–widely acknowledged as the premier historian of California, the scope of whose scholarship the Atlantic Monthly has called “breathtaking”–probes the possible collapse of the California dream in the years 1990—2003. In a series of compelling chapters, Coast of Dreams moves through a variety of topics that show the California of the last decade, when the state was sometimes stumbling, sometimes humbled, but, more often, flourishing with its usual panache.

From gang violence in Los Angeles to the spectacular rise–and equally spectacular fall–of Silicon Valley, from the Northridge earthquake to the recall of Governor Gray Davis, Starr ranges over myriad facts, anecdotes, news stories, personal impressions, and analyses to explore a time of unprecedented upheaval in California. Coast of Dreams describes an exceptional diversity of people, cultures, and values; an economy that mirrors the economic state of the nation; a battlefield where industry and the necessities of infrastructure collide with the inherent demands of a unique and stunning natural environment. It explores California politics (including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in the 2003 recall), the multifaceted business landscape, and controversial icons such as O. J. Simpson.

“Historians of the future,” Starr writes, “will be able to see with more certainty whether or not the period 1990-2003 was not only the end of one California but the beginning of another”; in the meantime, he gives a picture of the place and time in a book at once sweeping and riveting in its details, deeply informed, engagingly personal, and altogether fascinating.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0679412883
• ISBN 13: 9780679412885
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 765