Customer Reviews

California: A History (Modern Library Chronicles)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Just the name California brings up images in our minds. They may be of the big Hollywood sign, the Watts riots, the gigantic redwood trees, the pacific ocean, the images run on and on. In this book, Mr. Starr gives a history beginnning with the first mention of the name in a 1510 book where it was stated that California was an island.

From there he has written perhaps the best single volume history of the state yet written. He has pictured California with all its greatness, and with its problems. He talks about the beauty, the climate, the life that California provides. He also mentions the soaring housing prices, grid-locked freeways, poor state government and more. It's a fair look at the state as it exists today and as it was in the past.

Mr. Starr is a professor at USC and for ten years was the state librarian. He has written many time of California, this is the distillation of a lifetime of work.

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.

Kevin Starr has spent the last quarter of a century chronicling the history of the State of California in 7 thick and comprehensive volumes. I must confess that sadly I've read none of them. When I found out that Starr would be doing a history of California for the Modern Library Chronicles I was overjoyed and California: A History did not disappoint. Starr starts at the point that Europeans first viewed California and takes the reader on a whirlwind history that ends in today's California with the rule of the Governator. Chapters are a combination of chronological and topical. I wish I could give the book perfect marks for accuracy, but I found mistakes in the Chapter 10 [O Brave New World!] which is the one chapter I know enough about to evaluate in detail. On page 258, Starr gets the telescopes on Mt. Wilson fouled up [the "60-inch reflector telescope" is most likely the Snow Solar Telescope (which George Hale did already have and moved to Mt. Wilson), the "observatory with a 60-inch reflector lens" is the 60-inch telescope built in 1908 with a 60-inch MIRROR, and the "100-inch lens" is the 100-inch MIRROR of the most famous telescope on Mt. Wilson, the Hooker Telescope]. This mix up in details makes me wonder about what else the proof readers missed, but aside from that I enjoyed the book immensely.

This book just blazes along. It's a quick .. too quick .. a read. While the task of covering 250 years (or so) of California in 344 (small) pages is an impossible task, the result is a text that is superficial and that would be appropriate for a summary tourist guide.

I think Professor Starr knocked this one out in his sleep. His other works are much more valuable.

I would pass right by this volume and proceed directly to "California; An Interpretive History" by Rawls/Bean (now in its 8th Edition). For good reason, Rawls/Bean is the standard introductory survey to California history.

A history of California, from the founding years through to Gov. Schwarzenegger, was always an ambitious undertaking, one fraught with difficulties, starting with how to approach it. A large, diverse state with a complex history, there are only a few options: compile an encyclopedia, focus on a few defining events, or create lists. Unfortunately, Starr takes the last approach, keeping the book to a short 350 pages, but filling those pages with one or two sentences on every event and every major figure in California history.

Unfortunately, while comprehensive, the disjointed style and lack of detail on any topic make for painful reading. Nearly every paragraph deserves its own book or at least its own chapter. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 rates 3 paragraphs.

Here's one example taken at semi-random: "The previous evening, a drunken miner had tried to break into Josefa's cabin, where she was living with her common-law husband, also a Mexican. Upbraided by Josefa the next day for his conduce, the miner called her a whore. Enraged, she stabbed him to death."

This was the most interesting passage on the page I opened at random, but it certainly needs to be its own story. As a novel or movie, this event could succeed in illustrating life during that period in California history, but as half a paragraph, it's just more event in a long list of things that happened.

When Starr turns to arts and literature, the effect is even worse, pages packed with names of artists and writers. Starr seemed to feel the need to include every writer who ever even visited San Francisco.

Further, parentheticals in nearly every sentence and a reliance on passive voice make the book feel as if it was dictated by a PBS narrator. Though cleared of footnotes and written in large text on small pages to appeal to a general audience, Starr is clearly a historian rather than a writer. Possibly this would have been a more interesting book had it been written by a journalist or novelist rather than an academic, though I expect that a journalist or novelist would realized that this undertaking was impossible and would instead have focused on one particular person or event.

In the end, I felt that I learned more about California history by reading a book focused on a particular theme - for example, Dennis McDougal's Privileged Son, which in the process of telling the history of the LA Times through multiple generations of the founding Chandler family, goes a good job telling the history of Los Angeles itself.

Overall, this book is far too dry to recommend it to someone looking for an overview of California history, and too cursory for anyone looking to learn anything about one particular time or place.

Some of the reviewers here seem have an obvious political or regional axe to grind, and I would read their reviews accordingly. I found this to be an informative and highly entertaining overview of California history. I thought the author generally made good calls as to what was important and/or entertaining enough to include. Guess what? A three hundred page overview won't be exhaustive. But if you're interested in the subject, I suspect this book will whet your appetite for more.

I took Professor Starr's history of California class while an undergrad at USC, so I had been interested in reading this one volume history of the state for years. I had read Starr's Coast of Dreams (http://www.amazon.com/Coast-Dreams-Kevin-Starr/dp/0679740724/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252364634&sr=8-1) previously, but did not feel I had the time to read the other parts of the multi-volume history, so I went with the single volume instead.

Many of the criticisms in some of the other reviews seem to reflect the fact that the reviewers chose to go with the single volume condensed history, instead of the more detailed multi-volume books. Having read Coast of Dreams, I can say that at least that entry does not have the shortcomings other reviews mention which are somewhat accurate. This book does not go into too much detail, some sections are fast tours through different aspects of California and its culture, and some paragraphs read almost like lists of famous Californians. But that is the point of the one volume book.

The book starts chronologically, but the 20th century is primarily told thematically. There are chapters on public works, art and culture, politics, and more. That can be a little confusing, for example a governor does something a few pages before he is elected. But overall, this is probably a good way to relay lots of information about 20th century California.

If you want more detail, read Starr's other books. If you want a quick tour through California, go with this one volume book.

I am a native Californian, live in Silicon Valley, and love the Golden State. I have seen the storied parts of Europe - Provence, Tuscany, Sicily - and yes, Venice,, Rome and Paris. I also know the U.S. quite well (Texas is quite amusing). Yet, there is no comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area, Yosemite, La Jolla, Big Sur, Mt. Shasta, Monterey, Napa Wine country, East Oakland and East Los Angeles - this is the best, most innovative, most diverse, most fantastic place on Earth.
I respect the book Mr. Starr has written, but it doesnt fully capture what makes California such a unique place. let me illustrate by one example. In the 1990s and even now, California's Silicon Valley transformed the entire planet like no other time in human history - through the Internet and world wide Web. Yahoo, Google, Cisco, eBay, Apple, Facebook on top of the 'old' economy companies like Intel, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Genentech etc etc. did more than any place or people ever to make the world flat (to quote Tom Friedman of the NYT). This is a place where the most innovative, driven people of Asia, America and Europe meet and work together to forge (mostly) a better world - it is the Constantinople, the Venice or the Renaissance Florence of the modern times.
Similarily, Hollywood in S. California (which began with Charlie Chaplin in the Niles Canyon area near S.Francisco) provided the most widespread means that humanity has to look at itself in the mirror, and yet Kevin Starr does not give it the deserved importance
He devotes less to these than he spends on railroad robber barons and other minute happenings of the 19th century - admittedly important, but did they change the entire world, in such a short time!?

As a student of California history, I was looking forward to Starr's condensed account of the state's history. After all, he has written many books on various eras of California and there was every reason to rejoice over a shorter book to learn more. However, I was very disappointed in this error-prone, often dry and shallow account of our history. While it is a fast read and some of the facts were interesting (like how California got its name), Starr tends to write some of the more uninteresting history of his beloved and favored San Francisco and glosses over some of the more important history of Southern California, one of the largest metropolises on the planet. While I haven't read all of the books on California history, I would not recommend this one as the defining one for those who want to learn more about the Golden state.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book. It covers many, many topics related to the history of California. As such, do not expect the author to delve too much on every single topic. I did find that some were more interesting than others and merited further treatment, instead of the paragraph or two dedicated to them.

One thing that I will say (and that prompted me to write this review) is that, when I read this book, I had several moments when I would cringe. Sometimes I would have to re-read the passage (and cringe again) to make sure that is what the author wrote. Why did I cringe? Although the author tries to keep it middle-of-the-road, his prejudices do come out in certain pages (he tilts a little to the right and has an interesting view of race and race relations).

Before you vote that my review was not helpful, I will tell you that that I am a minority and I tend to tilt to the left. While this may be the reason why some of his passages made me cringe, I would have given an author that tilts to the left the same rating. When you purchase a book with a title such as "California: A History," you expect an impartial account of history. If I purchased a book entitled "A people's history of..." then I would know what I was getting into.

Like I said in the beginning, overall I enjoyed reading the book. His list of sources is excellent. I'm thankful to the author that he pointed me towards a couple of more books.