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Transforming California
In Transforming California, Stephanie Pincetl argues that the transformation of nature in order to enhance economic development lies at the heart of much of the state's recent history. She sees late-twentieth-century California on a path of continued environmental degradation, gripped by cynicism about government. Transforming California describes the evolution of the state's institutions of government as they apply to land use and development, and it shows how land-use decisions affect people's quality of life and their daily interactions with each other and with their environment. Pincetl offers an alternative vision for the renewal of the democratic spirit and process in California and for a reconciliation with nature.
Not So Golden After All
Quality public education, modern highway systems, and reasonably priced housing—these are just some of the qualities that once made California one of the most desirable places to live. Just a few decades later, the state finds itself with an education system that is failing its citizens, one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and a quickly evaporating dream of home ownership. Illustrating each step of the breakdown that led to its current state of dysfunction, Not So Golden After All: The Rise and Fall of California provides insight into a system gone amuck. It addresses complicated topics in an engaging manner to help the public and leaders alike understand how to make polic...
A History of Wine in America, Volume 2
"Pinney covers new ground and new research, and treats the entire period in a new way. [History of Wine in America] will be welcomed by scholars and by wine enthusiasts."—Dr. James Lapsley, University of California, Davis "A worthy successor to Pinney's landmark History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition, and like that volume evidencing a wealth of knowledge, presented with grace and style. In addition to telling fascinating stories, both of these books are invaluable references. Anyone interested in the history of American wine should read them."—Paul Lukacs, author of American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine "I am confident the term definitive will apply to this work for innumerable vintages to come. Wine lovers from New England to California now have one place to turn for the history of their favorite beverage, wherever in America its grapes are grown."—Charles L. Sullivan, author of A Companion to California Wine and Zinfandel "An essential reference book for anyone wishing to sound authoritative at the dinner table."—Bruce Cass, editor of The Oxford Companion to the Wines of North America
Sunset Limited
The only major US railroad built from west to east, the Southern Pacific played a major role in the shaping of the West & the development of southern California in particular. 'Sunset Limited' explores the corporate strategy over time to reveal how the company saw its place in the world.
Golden Dreams
A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period--1950 to 1963--when the California we know today first burst into prominence. Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of ...
The Great Thirst
The story of "the great thirst" is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization of farmland and open spaces, persisting despoliation of water supplies, and demands for equity in water allocation for an exploding population. People the world over confront these problems, and Hundley examines them with clarity and eloquence in the unruly laboratory of California. The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans an...
Pathways to the Present
Ranging from the Hawaiian Archipelago to the Aleutian Islands, from Silicon Valley to Guam, Pathways to the Present is a thoroughly researched and concisely argued account of economic and environmental change in the postwar "American" Pacific. Following a brief survey of the history of the Pacific, the author takes the Hawaiian Islands as the center of American activities in the region and looks at interactions among native Hawaiian, developmental, military, and environmental issues in the archipelago after World War II. He then turns to land- and water-use problems that have intersected with more nebulous quality-of-life concerns to generate policy controversies in the Seattle region and th...
Landscape and the Ideology of Nature in Exurbia
This book explores the role of the ideology of nature in producing urban and exurban sprawl. It examines the ironies of residential development on the metropolitan fringe, where the search for “nature” brings residents deeper into the world from which they are imagining their escape—of Federal Express, technologically mediated communications, global supply chains, and the anonymity of the global marketplace—and where many of the central features of exurbia—very low-density residential land use, monster homes, and conversion of forested or rural land for housing—contribute to the very problems that the social and environmental aesthetic of exurbia attempts to avoid. The volume shows how this contradiction—to live in the green landscape, and to protect the green landscape from urbanization—gets caught up and represented in the ideology of nature, and how this ideology, in turn, constitutes and is constituted by the landscapes being urbanized.
Beyond Chinatown
Examines the history of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, from its obscure 1920s-era origins, through the Colorado River Aqueduct and State Water Projects, to today's daunting mission of drought management, water quality, environmental stewardship, and post-9/11 supply security. Simultaneous.
Bird versus Bulldozer
An examination of the struggle to conserve biodiversity in urban regions, told through the story of the threatened coastal California gnatcatcher “A well-written and thoroughly researched book. . . . Provides a detailed examination of the struggle to conserve biodiversity in urban areas.”—Susan Catherine Cork, Conservation Biology The story of the threatened coastal California gnatcatcher is a parable for understanding the larger ongoing struggle to conserve biodiversity in regions confronted with intensifying urban development. Because this gnatcatcher depends on vanishing coastal sage scrub in Southern California, it has been regarded as a flagship species for biodiversity protection...
