Kevin Starr

“A California classic . . . California, it should be remembered, was very much the wild west, having to wait until 1850 before it could force its way into statehood. so what tamed it? Mr. Starr’s answer is a combination of great men, great ideas and great projects.”— The EconomistFrom the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, the Golden State’s premier historian distills the entire sweep of California’s history into one splendid volume. Kevin Starr covers it Spain’s conquest of the native peoples of California in the early sixteenth century and the chain of missions that helped that country exert control over the upper part of the territory; the discovery of gold in January 1848; the incredible wealth of the Big Four railroad tycoons; the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906; the emergence of Hollywood as the world’s entertainment capital and of Silicon Valley as the center of high-tech research and development; the role of labor, both organized and migrant, in key industries from agriculture to aerospace. In a rapid-fire epic of discovery, innovation, catastrophe, and triumph, Starr gathers together everything that is most important, most fascinating, and most revealing about our greatest state.Praise for California“[A] fast-paced and wide-ranging history . . . [Starr] accomplishes the feat with skill, grace and verve.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review“Kevin Starr is one of california’s greatest historians, and California is an invaluable contribution to our state’s record and lore.” —MarIa ShrIver, journalist and former First Lady of California“A breeze to read.” — San Francisco

The Golden Gate Bridge links the urbanity of San Francisco with the wild headlands of Marin County, as if to suggest the paradox of California and America itself-the place that Fitzgerald saw as the last spot commensurate with the human capacity for wonder. The bridge, completed in 1937, also announced to the world America's engineering prowess and full assumption of its destined continental dominance. The Golden Gate is a counterpart to the Statue of Liberty, pronouncing American achievement in an unmistakable American fashion. The nation's very history is expressed in the bridge's art deco style and stark verticality.Kevin Starr's Golden Gate is a brilliant and passionate telling of the history of the bridge, and the rich and peculiar history of the California experience. The Golden Gate is a grand public work, a symbol and a very real bridge, a magnet for both postcard photographs and suicides. In this compact but comprehensive narrative, Starr unfolds the hidden-in-plain-sight meaning of the Golden Gate, putting it in its place among classic works of art.

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 San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union,but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today.Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.

Examining California's formative years, this innovative study seeks to discover the origins of the California dream and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on Californians but also on the rest of the country.

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.

Kevin Starr is the foremost chronicler of the California dream and indeed one of the finest narrative historians writing today on any subject. The first two installments of his monumental cultural history, "Americans and the California Dream," have been hailed as "mature, well-proportioned and marvelously diverse (and diverting)" ( The New York Times Book Review ) and "rich in details and alive with interesting, and sometimes incredible people" ( Los Angeles Times ). Now, in Material Dreams , Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles.In a lively and eminently readable narrative, Starr reveals how Los Angeles arose almost defiantly on a site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the Irrigation Crusade, the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to Los Angeles), and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil, the boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are also fascinating sections on the city's architecture the impact of the automobile on city planning, the Hollywood film community, the L.A. literati, and much more.By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams , Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.

In this extraordinary book, Kevin Starr–widely acknowledged as the premier historian of California, the scope of whose scholarship the Atlantic Monthly has called “breathtaking”–probes the possible collapse of the California dream in the years 1990—2003. In a series of compelling chapters, Coast of Dreams moves through a variety of topics that show the California of the last decade, when the state was sometimes stumbling, sometimes humbled, but, more often, flourishing with its usual panache.From gang violence in Los Angeles to the spectacular rise–and equally spectacular fall–of Silicon Valley, from the Northridge earthquake to the recall of Governor Gray Davis, Starr ranges over myriad facts, anecdotes, news stories, personal impressions, and analyses to explore a time of unprecedented upheaval in California. Coast of Dreams describes an exceptional diversity of people, cultures, and values; an economy that mirrors the economic state of the nation; a battlefield where industry and the necessities of infrastructure collide with the inherent demands of a unique and stunning natural environment. It explores California politics (including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in the 2003 recall), the multifaceted business landscape, and controversial icons such as O. J. Simpson.“Historians of the future,” Starr writes, “will be able to see with more certainty whether or not the period 1990-2003 was not only the end of one California but the beginning of another”; in the meantime, he gives a picture of the place and time in a book at once sweeping and riveting in its details, deeply informed, engagingly personal, and altogether fascinating.

The sixth volume in one of the great ongoing works of American cultural history--Kevin Starr's monumental Americans and the California Dream-- Embattled Dreams is a peerless work of cultural history following California in the years surrounding World War II.During the 1940s California ascended to a new, more powerful role in the nation. Starr describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as the "arsenal of democracy" (especially the significant part women played in the aviation industry). He examines the politics of the state: Earl Warren as the dominant political figure, the anti-Communist movement and "red baiting," and the early career of Richard Nixon. He also looks at culture, ranging from Hollywood to the counterculture, to film noir and detective stories. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks.In Embattled Dreams , Starr again provides a spellbinding account of the Golden State, narrating California's transformation from a regional power to a dominant economic, social, and cultural force."With a novelist's eye for the telling detail, and a historian's grasp of the sweep of grand events.... [Starr's] got it all down.... I read the book with absorbed admiration."--Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War"The scope of Starr's scholarship is breathtaking."-- Atlantic Monthly"A magnificent accomplishment."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review"Brilliant and epic social and cultural history."-- Business Week"Ebullient, nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind."-- San Francisco Chronicle

California, Wallace Stegner observed, is like the rest of the United States, only more so. Indeed, the Golden State has always seemed to be a place where the hopes and fears of the American dream have been played out in a bigger and bolder way. And no one has done more to capture this epic story than Kevin Starr, in his acclaimed series of gripping social and cultural histories. Now Starr carries his account into the 1930s, when the political extremes that threatened so much of the Depression-ravaged world--fascism and communism--loomed large across the California landscape.In Endangered Dreams , Starr paints a portrait that is both detailed and panoramic, offering a vivid look at the personalities and events that shaped a decade of explosive tension. He begins with the rise of radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the 1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers; he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the Comintern in 1935. The highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the coastwide maritime strike, and here Starr's narrative talents are at their best, as he brings to life the astonishing general strike that took control of San Francisco, where workers led by charismatic longshoreman Harry Bridges mounted the barricades to stand off National Guardsmen.That same year socialist Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor, and he launched his dramatic End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign. In the end, however, these challenges galvanized the Right in a corporate, legal, and vigilante counterattack that crushed both organized labor and Sinclair. And yet, the Depression also brought out the finest in state Democrats fought for a local New Deal; California natives helped care for more than a million impoverished migrants through public and private programs; artists movingly documented the impact of the Depression; and an unprecedented program of public works (capped by the Golden Gate Bridge) made the California we know today possible.In capturing the powerful forces that swept the state during the 1930s--radicalism, repression, construction, and artistic expression--Starr weaves an insightful analysis into his narrative fabric. Out of a shattered decade of economic and social dislocation, he constructs a coherent whole and a mirror for understanding our own time.

What we now call "the good life" first appeared in California during the 1930s. Motels, home trailers, drive-ins, barbecues, beach life and surfing, sports from polo and tennis and golf to mountain climbing and skiing, "sportswear" (a word coined at the time), and sun suits were all a part of the good life--perhaps California's most distinctive influence of the 1930s. In The Dream Endures , Kevin Starr shows how the good life prospered in California--in pursuits such as film, fiction, leisure, and architecture--and helped to define American culture and society then and for years to come.Starr previously chronicled how Californians absorbed the thousand natural shocks of the Great Depression--unemployment, strikes, Communist agitation, reactionary conspiracies--in Endangered Dreams , the fourth volume of his classic history of California. In The Dream Endures , Starr reveals the other side of the picture, examining the newly important places where the good life flourished, like Los Angeles (where Hollywood lived), Palm Springs (where Hollywood vacationed), San Diego (where the Navy went), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (where Einstein went and changed his view of the universe), and college towns like Berkeley. We read about the rich urban life of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in newly important communities like Carmel and San Simeon, the home of William Randolph Hearst, where, each Thursday afternoon, automobiles packed with Hollywood celebrities would arrive from Southern California for the long weekend at Hearst Castle.The 1930s were the heyday of the Hollywood studios, and Starr brilliantly captures Hollywood films and the society that surrounded the studios. Starr offers an astute discussion of the European refugees who arrived in Hollywood during the prominent European film actors and artists and the creative refugees who were drawn to Hollywood and Southern California in these years--Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Man Ray, Bertolt Brecht, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, and Franz Werfel. Starr gives a fascinating account of how many of them attempted to recreate their European world in California and how others, like Samuel Goldwyn, provided stories and dreams for their adopted nation. Starr reserves his greatest attention and most memorable writing for San Francisco. For Starr, despite the city's beauty and commercial importance, San Francisco's most important achievement was the sense of well-being it conferred on its citizens. It was a city that "magicallybelonged to everyone."Whether discussing photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, "hard-boiled fiction" writers, or the new breed of female star--Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and the improbable Mae West-- The Dream Endures is a brilliant social and cultural history--in many ways the most far-reaching and important of Starr's California books.

Kevin Starr has achieved a fast-paced evocation of three Roman Catholic civilizations—Spain, France, and Recusant England—as they explored, evangelized, and settled the North American continent. This book represents the first time this story has been told in one volume. Showing the same narrative verve of Starr's award-winning Americans and the California Dream series, this riveting—but sometimes painful—history should reach a wide readership.Starr begins this work with the exploration and temporary settlement of North America by recently Christianized Scandinavians. He continues with the destruction of Caribbean peoples by New Spain, the struggle against this tragedy by the great Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Jesuit and Franciscan exploration and settlement of the Spanish Borderlands (Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Baja, and Alta California), and the strengths and weaknesses of the mission system.He then turns his attention to New France with its highly developed Catholic and Counter-Reformational cultures of Quebec and Montreal, its encounters with Native American peoples, and its advance southward to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The volume ends with the founding of Maryland as a proprietary colony for Roman Catholic Recusants and Anglicans alike, the rise of Philadelphia and southern Pennsylvania as centers of Catholic life, the Suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, and the return of John Carroll to Maryland the following year.Starr dramatizes the representative personalities and events that illustrate the triumphs and the tragedies, the achievements and the failures, of each of these societies in their explorations, treatment of Native Americans, and translations of religious and social value to new and challenging environments. His history is notable for its honesty and its synoptic success in comparing and contrasting three disparate civilizations, albeit each of them Catholic, with three similar and differing approaches to expansion in the New World.

In this richly illustrated hardcover book, award-winning photojournalist Santi Visalli has beautifully captured the warmth and spirit of San Francisco. Spectacular views of the city's most notable landmarks-the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, and Lombard Hill-are joined by images of the city's newest sites, including San Francisco MoMA, the stylish new Clift Hotel, and PacBell Stadium. The book brings together the historical and topical, creating a lasting tribute to this pearl of the Pacific RimThe first title in a new series from Universe, San Francisco is a great package at an affordable price, offering tourists the perfect memento of an unforgettable trip. A gorgeous celebration of what is arguable he most beautiful city in the United States, the book will also be a favorite for native San Franciscans and armchair travelers alike.

In this second volume of acclaimed historian Kevin Starr's masterful work on Catholics in America, he picks up where he left off in his Continental Ambitions, which traced the stirrings of independence among the colonists of New England.Starr shows how Catholics participated in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. He then traces the establishment of the first Catholic dioceses in the new republic. In his captivating style, Starr dramatizes the representative personalities in this formative period.

"Kevin Starr's California Dream series...has evolved into something much richer and more significant than Starr could reasonably have expected when he began."--The Atlantic The set includes: Americans and the California Dream, Inventing the Dream, Material Dreams, Endangered Dreams, and The Dream Endures.

First edition. Complex narrative creates a mythical history of San Francisco. Sebastian Collins, a winemaker and scholar of the Baroque, joins forces with others to create a center for the book and the arts. Information on libraries and characters such as Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson make an appearance. x , 854 pages. dust jacket.. cloth-backed boards.

My "Welcome to 50" physical was not what I had hoped. I was a mess and my doctor told me I was at risk of heart attack or stroke. That should have got me motivated, but it wasn't until I was unable to walk up our sleigh riding hill to continue playing with my kids that the reality hit me. I was too young to be this old! I said a prayer and started my fitness quest. I had no idea of the road ahead, and fitness didn't happen overnight. I had been good at losing 20 lbs, but I was a pro at gaining 25. After many cycles, I was over weight on prescription blood pressure pills, and feeling a bit helpless. Now nearly 10 years into my journey, folks often ask me what the secret is? That is a great question, but the answer for me was not in a pill, a vile, or surgery. The answer didn’t come on a CD, or web talk, or quick fix diet. No, for me the road I took was the long slow road that involved gaining knowledge of food and fitness and a change in lifestyle. A change I had put off till 50! I thought my ice cream, cake, candy, hours of TV, long work days, and yes my fat pants and big shirts were simply part of the aging process. I thought we were suppose to get fat and slow down as we age, I thought an inch a decade around the middle was normal, I thought diets were not for me, that the only real weight lifters lifted big weights. Needless to say, but I was confused and it showed up in my quality of life. In short, I was wired wrong based on years of miss information. I didn’t know what a macro was let alone why a bunch of cheese and dressing on a salad was an issue. I thought you had to run for cardio and that running was something done by others. I thought elevators to go up and stairs to go down was sufficient. I accepted that blood pressure pills, antacids, and acid reflux was normal (as were stretchy pants and white footies). In short the answer for me was submitting to the fact that I knew nothing. This book is an attempt to share my story and the lessons learned along the way. I found a way to get fit and I must say this investment in health and fitness has proven a life time of returns. What a journey and one that I strongly recommend!!! If you are looking to get started, it is my hope that my story can help you on your fitness quest! My quest has seen body building, power lifting, masters track and field, 5k's, 1/2 marathons, a marathon, sprint distance triathlons, bicycle tours, and mountain biking. Not to mention getting off all prescription medication, losing 50 lbs, and being able to play with my kids and grandkids!!! If I can do this, anyone can!!!

Excellent Book

Circles of Influence looks at the transition from Impressionist-inspired landscape painting to Modernism in Southern California art. The book features essays on both the city of Los Angeles and the styles of art prevalent in the area from 1900 to 1930. A chronology of the time period and full catalogue of the exhibit are included. Artists include Mabel Alvarez, Benjamin F. Berlin, Nicholas Brigante, Conrad Buff, William Cahill, William Merritt Chase, Herbert Chster Cressey, Meta Gehring Cressey, Boris Deutsch, Helena Dunlap, Howard Arden Edwards, Lorser Feitelson, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Clarence Hinkle, Peter Krasnow, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Jean Mannheim, Knud Merrild, John Hubbard Rich, Guy Rose, Donna Schuster, Henrietta Shore, E. Roscoe Shrader, Edmund Tarbell, Channel P. Townsley, Edouard Vysekal, Lubena Buchanan Vysekal, and Karl Yens. Published in 2000 by The Orange County Museum of Art and curated by Sarah Vure.

In the late nineteenth century, California became "the cutting edge of the American dream, " the final frontier both geographically and in the minds of the many men and women who went there to pursue their destinies. In this fascinating volume Keven Starr examines California's formative years to discover the orgins of the California dreams and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on Californians but on the rest of the country.

In Endangered Dreams, Starr begins with the rise of radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the 1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers; he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the Comintern in 1935. The highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the coastwide maritime strike, and here Starr's narrative talents are at their best as he brings to life the astonishing general strike that took control of San Francisco, where workers led by charismatic longshoreman Harry Bridges mounted the barricades to stand off National Guardsmen. That same year socialist Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor, and he launched his dramatic End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign. In the end, however, these challenges galvanized the Right in a corporate, legal, and vigilante counterattack that crushed both organized labor and Sinclair. And yet, the Depression also brought out the finest in Californians: state Democrats fought for a local New Deal; California natives helped care for more than a million impoverished migrants through public and private programs; artists movingly documented the impact of the Depression; and an unprecedented program of public works (capped by the Golden Gate Bridge) made the California we know today possible.

Over 2,000 years ago, the King’s treasure was made available to all. Many that accepted the gift found it of such value that they gave their lives to protect it. Today, the King’s treasure is still available, but has 2,000 years blurred its splendor and beauty? In this book we will wipe away the years of dust and debris to uncover the splendor of the Church that Christ built. The brilliance of our King can be seen more clearly when the framework of His Church is examined from scripture directly. The Church that Christ Built book is well suited for a 12 to 13 week study program. The book consists of 13 chapters, one for each week, with discussion questions at the end of each chapter. The course has been taught to many different groups • Teens • Young Adults • Adults • Small Groups • Home Groups About the author Kevin has been a member of the Church for over 40 years. He has taught Bible lessons, developed Church curriculum, and recruited Bible school teachers. Although Kevin is active in his local Church, he supports his family as an Electrical Engineer. He graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and he received his Masters in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 2000. He has worked in industrial automation for over 30 years, has several patents, and has had the opportunity of travel around the world on several occasions. In addition to his Church and engineering responsibilities, he is a husband and a father.

This publication provides an in-depth view of Sunset Magazine over its century of publication. Articles focus on the magazine's history and evolution, from its founding by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1898, its survival through the Depression years, and its focus on environmental living and progressive technologies in the late 1980s and 1990s. Ultimately, the book records the vital role the magazine played in documenting Western American lifestyles, architecture, the values of its residents, and more. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes a bibliography, with over 9,000 articles separated by topics such as travel, people, the outdoors, civic and cultural affairs, the economy, food and entertaining, etc. Also included is a chronology of over 900 Sunset books, and an author-subject index.