California's Best: Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State [Paperback]

Peter Fish (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2009

Experience California as seen through the eyes of forty-one writers spanning two centuries, from early adventurers to contemporary poets.

Edited by Sunset magazine's Peter Fish, California's Best features fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Tobias Wolff's short story Desert Breakdown, Joan Didion's essay Notes from a Native Daughter, and a selection from Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club.

Excerpts from the works of Wallace Stegner, Jack London, John Muir, Mark Twain, and many others incorporate voices from the past. Contemporary writers include Robert Hass, Daniel Duane, Anne Lamott, and Tom McNeal.

For more information, visit FarcountryPress.com.

Features works by:
Virginia Hamilton Adair
Gertrude Atherton
Mary Austin
Herb Caen
J. Smeaton Chase
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp
Ina Coolbrith
Richard H. Dana
Joan Didion
Harriet Doerr
Daniel Duane
Dana Gioia
Mary Edith Griswold
Ron Hansen
Bret Harte
Robert Hass
Helen Hunt Jackson
Robinson Jeffers
Clarence King
Anne Lamott
Jack London
William Lewis Manly
Wilma McDaniel
Tom McNeal
Joaquin Miller
Max Miller
Walter Mosley
John Muir
Charles Nordhoff
Frank Norris
Jenny Price
Gary Snyder
Gary Soto
Wallace Stegner
John Steinbeck
George Sterling
Robert Louis Stevenson
Amy Tan
Mark Twain
Judy Van der Veer
Tobias Wolff

Editorial Reviews

Review

With this book, Peter Fish has managed to pull together famous and lesser-known writers from across the years and landscapes to create a picture of California that is both timeless and surprising. The strength of California's Best is that it gives you a renewed appreciation for the magnetic pull this state has had over the people who have lived and written here. It's a great read. -----Katie Tamony, editor-in-chief, Sunset Magazine

Armchair travelers will find that California's Best provides them with the services of an ideal tour guide. Peter Fish marshals sharp wisdom and deep knowledge to forge a book that offers a memorable journey through California's extraordinary landscapes and histories. With each poem, memoir, short story, or essay, Fish steps aside to let a remarkable array of writers take over the tour. Readers will finish the journey not only with an enhanced appreciation for California but also with heightened powers of observation and reflection to bring to bear on every place they land. -----Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of Desert Passages and The Legacy of Conquest

Jack London, Wallace Stegner, Gary Snyder, John Steinbeck and Joan Didion, Mark Twain and Tobias Wolff, Robert Hass and so many excellent others California's Best is a terrific regional anthology, elegantly organized, with brilliant selections. Don't miss this one. -----William Kittredge, co-editor, with Annick Smith, of The Last Best Place

About the Author

Peter Fish was born in Santa Barbara, California, and grew up in Ventura. He received a B.A. in history from Yale University, where he focused on the history of the American West. He was a Mirrielees Fellow in creative writing at Stanford University and a Hoyns Fellow in fiction at the University of Virginia. He has written and edited for Sunset Magazine for many years and is currently Sunset's editor-at-large. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Nancy, and son, Joseph.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Farcountry Press (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560374942
• ISBN-13: 978-1560374947
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #962,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom was born in Santa Ana, California. His father was a native Californian who raised oranges, and his mother grew up on a farm in northwest Nebraska, where Tom spent his childhood summers. After earning a BA and a teaching credential from UC Berkeley, Tom moved to Hay Springs, Nebraska, taught high school English, drove a school bus, substituted briefly in a one-room schoolhouse, and began work on what would become Goodnight, Nebraska. Tom holds an MA in creative writing from UC Irvine and was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. His short stories have been widely anthologized, and "What Happened to Tully" was made into a film. He is the author, with his wife, Laura, of four young adult novels published by Knopf and a picture book called The Dog Who Lost his Bob. He has two sons and lives in Southern California, where he grows oranges.

Customer Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars Proud California, May 22, 2010

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Linda Ballou "Linda Ballou" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: California's Best: Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State (Paperback)

Over the past three decades, I have visited many of the places described in this treasury of California's finest writers. It is with tremendous pleasure that I revisited them through the eyes of the many wonderful writers who have called proud California home. Jack London and John Steinbeck being the most notable, but what about Annie Lamott who has written about Marin with insider wit and wisdom, Mary Austin who brings her desert home alive in Land of Little Rain? This stories of the writers included in this collection are both impressive and enlightening. John Muir's poetic renderings of the High Sierra's inspired me to know the magic of the "Range of Light" myself. This journey served as the inspiration for my story "Falling in the Footsteps" of John Muir included in my book Lost Angel Walkabout-One Traveler's Tales. I am truly grateful to Peter Fish for bringing two centuries of great writing from the golden state together in this wonderful anthology.

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