Customer Reviews

The Seven States of California: A Natural and Human History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A great book and a good read: Patrica Nelson Limerick's The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West meets John McPhee's Assembling California. Part human geography, part revisionist history, part travel narrative, Fradkin looks at events big and small from a perspective other than the railroad, mining, and timber barons, and the civic boosters of the Golden State. One focus is on the untold stories of the Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Irish and the others marginalized in previous histories. Another focus is the realm of the natural world (Grizzly bear, salmon, the Cascade volcanos e.g.)and how it influenced the past and how it is reflected into the present, sometimes ironically. Fredkin weaves these together with his personal experience and research and produces a very readable, entertaining and often disconcerting whole. I have spent much time in the past reseaching California's history for professional and academic purposes and this book taught me much. Highly recommended.

Although the books is billed as presenting an ecological history of California, it appears that this is mainly to help sell it. Where Fradkin excels is in uncovering little-known social history, particularly around racial strife. There's a lot of us-vs-them in this state's history that's rarely talked about. The great thing is, the author presents a coherent, readable history, rather than a tiresome sermon from a soapbox. Worth a read.

I picked this book up as natural history, and have indeed learned much about it, getting beyond a simple coast/valley/mountains/desert mindset into the different mountain regions, their formation and more.

Of course, it's arguable that the way Fradkin breaks up the coast ranges into separate sections is more social history than natural history. But that's fine.

Speaking of that, his phrase names for each section also reflect social history as much as natural history. And are insightful in both ways.

Fradkin paints a good social history, not just of California as a whole but each of its regions individually, such as loggers in the northern coast, corporate farmers in the Central Valley, the paradoxes of Los Angeles, and so forth.

I would recommend this book to native or semi-native Californios as a fresh look at their state, as well as to outsiders.

I'm a newcomer to California. I moved here in 2003. As such, I missed out on the standard public school education about California. This book makes up for what I missed. And then some.

The author wanders around California in his VW bus. How cool is that?! Because of this, we end up with a very personal and enjoyable saunter through seven ecological areas of California. I especially loved his visits to the more remote areas of our state. And I learned much: the line drawings by Blythe are certainly on my list to visit now that Fradkin introduced me to them. And the Tule Lake area, with its amazing history, will get a visit from me soon too.

The book is readable, enjoyable, enthralling, disturbing (at times). I'd give it a five star review except for two problems:

1. The author thinks that restoring the California Condor is a waste of money. I quibble with that. No amount of money spent to undue the damage to the Condor is wasted.

2. There is a glaring error on page 60 of the edition of the book I read. In discussing the Manson murders (while hiking up to the Barker Ranch), Fradkin states "...and one of his followers, Squeaky Fromme, later shot and wounded President Gerald Ford in Sacramento". This never happened. It is a glaring error. Regretable that such a fine book would make such a serous mistake.

Other than that, I look forward to reading more of Philip Fradkin's work.

This was not the book that I expected to read, and I don't mean this in a good way.

To a large degree, Fradkin's goal is to pierce the illusion of the biggest marketing scam in North American history, that of Golden California. .... Comments such as "modern California was founded on greed and violence" only lead me to respond what empire wasn't? ...

What saves the book is that Fradkin does love the state regardless of what has happened in the past, and he does know his history. ....