Full name: Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era

Author: Kevin Starr Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780195042344 0195042344

This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place, writes Starr.As he recreates the lost California, Starr examines the rich variety of elements that figured in the growth of the Southern California way of life: the Spanish/Mexican roots, the fertile land, the Mediterranean-like climate, the special styles in architecture, the rise of Hollywood. He gives us a broad array of engaging (and often eccentric) characters: from Harrision Gray Otis to Helen Hunt Jackson to Cecil B. DeMille. Whether discussing the growth of winemaking or the burgeoning of reform movements, Starr keeps his central theme in sharp focus: how Californians defined their identity to themselves and to the nation. Similar books: Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 by Kevin Starr Embattled Dreams by Kevin Starr Coast of Dreams by Kevin Starr California by Kevin Starr Southern California by Carey McWilliams History of the Sierra Nevada by Francis P. Farquhar