Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden [Hardcover]

Douglas Cazaux Sackman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0520238869 | ISBN-13: 978-0520238862 | Edition: 1

This innovative history of California opens up new vistas on the interrelationship among culture, nature, and society by focusing on the state's signature export--the orange. From the 1870s onward, California oranges were packaged in crates bearing colorful images of an Edenic landscape. This book demystifies those lush images, revealing the orange as a manufactured product of the state's orange industry. Orange Empire brings together for the first time the full story of the orange industry--how growers, scientists, and workers transformed the natural and social landscape of California, turning it into a factory for the production of millions of oranges. That industry put up billboards in cities across the nation and placed enticing pictures of sun-kissed fruits into nearly every American's home. It convinced Americans that oranges could be consumed as embodiments of pure nature and talismans of good health. But, as this book shows, the tables were turned during the Great Depression when Upton Sinclair, Carey McWilliams, Dorothea Lange, and John Steinbeck made the Orange Empire into a symbol of what was wrong with America's relationship to nature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Douglas Sackman peels an orange and finds inside nothing less than an American agricultural-industrial culture in all its inventive, exploitative, transformative, and destructive power. A beautifully researched and intellectually expansive book." - Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains"

From the Inside Flap

"Douglas Sackman peels an orange and finds inside nothing less than an American agricultural-industrial culture in all its inventive, exploitative, transformative, and destructive power. A beautifully researched and intellectually expansive book."--Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 401 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (February 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520238869
• ISBN-13: 978-0520238862
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 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: #1,566,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an historian who writes about the American West, environmental history, Native American History, and the Pacific.

My new book, Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America, looks at the intertwined lives and landscapes of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the Yahi Indian man named Ishi. It considers America's fascination with Ishi as a mirror of its ambivalence about modernity and the "winning of the west." You can read more about it on the blog.

My first book, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden, is a cultural and environmental history of California focusing on its iconic export--the Sunkist orange. It received the Martin Ridge Award, given to books considered classics or future classics in California history, by the Historical Society of Southern California.

I have also edited the Blackwell Companion to American Environmental History, a collection of 32 essays by leading historians designed as a state of the field report for the young sub-discipline of environmental history. I wrote the chapter on food and co-authored the one on gender for this book, which is due out in May of 2010.

I am a Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma Washington, and previously taught at Oberlin College, the University of California at Irvine, and Claremont Graduate University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, August 21, 2010

By 

David B. Eck "davideck57" (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (Hardcover)

A surprisingly readable book about California's Orange Empire. Covers the rise and fall of citrus growing in Southern California. The expected topics are covered, such as how the industry started, the beginnings of Sunkist, how Sunkist created a national demand for fresh citrus fruit year-round, etc. There is an remarkable section on the Depression and the attempts to unionize citrus workers. John Steinbeck even makes an appearance. I assumed the book would be a bit dry, but this wasn't the case at all. Those living in, or those who have an interest in the history of Southern California should read this book. I hope there is a paperback version of this book coming. The hardcover price is steep.