20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When California was cool, August 29, 2009
This review is from: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream) (Hardcover)
Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream)
Kevin Starr is himself a wondrous California resource. He seems to know all things California and this is the eighth volume in his "Americans and the California Dream" series. Opening it I felt like I was entering one of those latter-day off-beat supermarkets originating in the Golden State, encountering a cornucopia and expecting to be surprised by some of what I might find (or not). I was not disappointed.
Starr has a scholar's command of the material and a home-boy's affection for his subject. His great strength is as a compiler, distiller, and packager of the extensive historical literature on the state. This particular volume covers his own formative years (he is a San Francisco native) and it shows, favorably.
Golden Dreams is fact-jammed, but Starr renders it palatable by typically telling us just enough to humanize each of hundreds of persons whom he has selected to portray the culture, society, and politics of this period. Fortunately for both the author and his readers, California seems to have long had more than its share of memorable characters. Wisely, he does not adhere strictly to the 1950-1963 time boundaries when it is helpful to have retrospective context or to project toward later consequences.
The book includes five major sections covering suburbanization, the major cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego), politics and public works, selected aspects of culture, and what Starr calls dissenting opinions (primarily environmental and civil rights issues). The "Politics and Public Works" section, for example, ably documents how California prosperity was built on public investment, especially in the defense and aerospace industries, highways, water works, and higher education.
Certain imperfections are noticeable but tolerable in this expansive survey. Some readers may question the relative emphases Starr (or his editor) gives to certain life and culture topics. For example, there is an entire chapter on San Francisco regional literature, which in this context seems inordinately inclusive of many comparatively minor writers. So too, four pages on Tiki restaurants seem too much. On the other hand, I enjoyed his chapter on jazz (others may not, but I am a fan), and I felt it justified to balance West Coast contributions against those of New York, New Orleans, and Chicago, for instance.
As in one of the new-fangled California supermarkets, a few staples are missing. Surprisingly, Starr does not give sufficient attention to certain of the state's major industries. While he discusses the water and migrant labor politics of agriculture, we are mostly left to wonder about its variety, technologies, transformations, environmental impacts, and contribution to the state's economy. And although he identifies particular films and television shows and their stars to support various points throughout, he offers no systematic discussion of these industries as businesses during this period. Nor does he assess at any length how the advent of television viewing altered the lives of not just Californians, but Americans generally.
Starr's coverage overwhelmingly focuses on Southern California and the Bay Area, fair enough based on the population distribution. However, the counties north of Marin and Sonoma are left out altogether (except for occasional mention in relation to statewide political issues), the Central Valley receives very little attention, and Sacramento is noted only as a place where politics are done and Joan Didion grew-up.
On the whole, however, Golden Dreams is not only highly engaging, it serves as a good reminder of how much certain things changed both during the fifties and since. San Francisco, for example, was still "fundamentally conservative politically," although elements had long been "liberal in matters of private life." I had forgotten that the Republican national conventions in both 1956 and 1964 were in San Francisco (what could be more far-fetched today?).
Starr believes that "the national experience and the California experience became, increasingly, a converging phenomenon" in this period. California certainly exercised a major influence on the broader popular culture. Back then this Midwestern youth, and virtually all of my peers as I recall, thought California was the place to be. Surely, however, the state's image was idealized - it was not so golden for many groups, especially the poor.
As development has overcome parts of the state and as public investment now unravels the Golden State is less the model for dreams and emulation that it was in the fifties. Nevertheless, most readers are likely to be highly appreciative of Starr's satisfying re-creation of that time and place. I would look forward to his volume to cover the remaining period in this series, 1964 to 1989, if indeed one is forthcoming.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
History "lite" and fun., August 27, 2009
This review is from: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream) (Hardcover)
This is the latest in the author's outstanding and unique survey of California history. He identifies key themes and trends in culture, demographics, politics, etc., then organizes his presentations around people central to those events and trends. Often this reads like a gossip column. But all in all this approach makes the book (and its predecessors) interesting and readable.
To persons deemed most central to the events and trends, the author dedicates paragraphs and sometimes pages. Others (and their haunts, as in clubs, etc.) are mentioned, often in long, encyclopedic lists (so-and-so in Burbank, so-and-so in LA, so-and-so in San Francisco, etc.). This style characterizes most sections of the book. Not surprisingly, the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions receive most of the author's attention, especially in relation to the arts and intellectual life more generally.
Note the opening to the previous paragraph: "persons deemed most central..." Herein lies something of an issue. Starr is doing the "deeming," that is, conveying a sense of cause and effect for the various cases. Fine, but he does not really (in depth, with careful analysis) back up these choices/attributions of cause. In the words of the very thoughtful Publishers Weekly review cited by Amazon, "too often biography subsitutes for analysis." This is why I headed my own review as "lite," and only gave it 4 stars.
Like one of the previous reviewers, I found factual errors, perhaps in part deriving from the author's desire to jam pack the book with names and putative "facts." In any case, they don't spoil the overall effect, and do (as with gossip) spice up the tales.
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20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Someone didn't proof read very well, July 15, 2009
This review is from: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream) (Hardcover)
I've read all of the other volumes of Mr. Starr's history of California and think for the most part they are quite fascinating and have a knack for giving forth little known facts as well as well known ones in a way that is not banal, but fresh and interesting. But I have been appalled by the number of errors in spelling: 'Liseux' for Lisieux; 'Glen Rowell' for Galen Rowell; 'Tehema County' for Tehama County. There were others but why belabor a point? The problem with this kind of error occurring is that is challenges the credibility of the writing. For example, I thought I'd read it wrong except that I hadn't, that in Mr. Starr's book California he gave the year of the Moscone-Milk murder as 1979 and it having been such a monumental event in the lives of most northern Californians, the date was 1978. I gave the book away as I didn't want to face any more such errors which should not have happened. Nonetheless, there was much to be learned from this volume and all of the volumes on the history of the state.
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