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What's the Matter with California?: Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking Paperback – August 12, 2008

3.7 out of 5 stars 23 customer reviews

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Threshold Editions (August 12, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1416531033
  • ISBN-13: 978-1416531036
  • Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,172,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Hardcover
The Publisher's Weekly reviewer gives so little indication of having read the book that he embarrasses the good name of Publisher's Weekly. As I count it, for instance, Cashill speaks of eight movies in some depth and only one does he attack, Pleasantville. Six of the eight-including Crash, Thirteen, and Boyz 'N The Hood- he praises. Did the reviewer not see Cashill's list of the best 20 movies about California??
Cashill talks about how he consciously counted flags during long walks through Berkeley and the Castro. This isn't "anecdotal." It is observational and important. As to Charles Manson, Cashill writes, "The concept of 'Susan Atkins' has considerably more explanatory potential than 'Charles Manson," which is an answer to no particularly useful question." And then he moves on to talk about Atkins and the other women because they are relevant.
As to James Jones, I never knew he was a communist, and that is Cashill's point: Jones' story has been purposefully mistold. If these are "familiar right-wing talking points," they come as news to this right winger. So much of this book is fresh and new and insightful I was constantly taken aback. Plus, Cashill's amiable style is so unlike Ann Coulter's that the comparison makes NO SENSE AT ALL! Read the book next time, Mac! Save your left-wing boilerplate for books that you did more than thumb through.
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Format: Hardcover
Very good book describing the root cause of the tremendous social problems in california and why exactly people who don't live in california should be concerned to the extent this phenomenon spreads to the rest of the country. Every liberal should read this book so that they understand the real world consequences of their beliefs and behaviors. As a former liberal myself, I can attest firsthand about what Jack Cashill is getting at with his book. I can also tell you how effective books like this are at getting liberals to abandon liberalism. My one criticism is that Cashill does not make this point strongly enough. 90% of liberals are well meaning people who don't know the truth about liberalism. They've been manipulated by evil people into supporting a fascist (and I don't mean this as a euphemism....the manipulators are specifically national socialist in their bent and their association) agenda. Once a liberal realizes this, especially when exposed to the real world consequences, he immediately abandons the cause. This is starting to happen in california. Witness how one of the strongest anti-liberal presidential candidates, Duncan Hunter, is from california. How did he get that way? Specifically, by having to find solutions to the horrible problems foisted on the community by liberals. For example, the San Diego border fence. Huge problems with crime, drugs, and even paramilitary thugs because of the open borders lobby. Hunter sees what is going on, understands the issue thoroughly, because he has to deal INTIMATELY with the consequences. He successfully lobbys for a realistic solution and makes sure it is implemented. And it works. More, Hunter knows what Cashill knows....that california is measure of things to come for the rest of the country.Read more ›
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Like another reviewer, I was prepared to not like the book, because often those outside California who write about this state tend to focus on the outer trappings of the place, rather than the inner lives of the people here. Jack Cashill, to his credit, does go deeper, and he raises insights that a lot of California natives, like myself, overlooked.

Perhaps this is because the book was clearly written as a response to leftist Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?" Frank basically scorns those in "flyover country" who are in Frank's view so hung up on "traditional values" and "the social issues" that they are too stupid to understand that they are "voting against their own self-interests" whenever they fail to vote for Leftists. Of course, Frank's presumption that people ought to want to become dependent and compliant wards of a socialist nanny welfare state, without any freedom to choose a destiny for themselves, is itself disgusting.

Cashill brilliantly responds to this tendentious leftist dogma by examining what has happened to California, a state that has in large part abandoned traditional values. He points out again and again how "the social issues" have very real bottom-line economic implications. The now bankrupt, moribund state of California, with excessive taxation, excessive costs of living and doing business, and an unemployment rate well above the national average, is seeing the proverbial chickens come home to roost. After all, to quote the author, "If Mom has a nest, and Dad has another nest, California needs a lot more nests than it otherwise would, not to mention more resources to heat, cool, light and water those nests and more gas to ferry the baby birds between them.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I live in California ad I can tell you it is on a decline and I am sorry to see a beautiful state ruined. We will be bankrupt before long. It is state run by Democrats and I have yet to see them improve anything.
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