The Left Coast
California on the Edge
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Philip L. Fradkin, one of California’s most acclaimed environmental historians, felt drawn to the coast as soon as he arrived in California in 1960. His first book, California: The Golden Coast, captured the wonder of the shoreline’s natural beauty along with the controversies it engendered. In The Left Coast, the author and his photographer son Alex Fradkin revisit some of the same places they explored together in the early 1970s. From their written and visual approaches, this father-son team brings a unique generational perspective to the subject. Mixing history, geography, interviews, personal experiences, and photographs, they find a wealth of stories and memorable sights in the multiplicity of landscapes, defined by them as the Wild, Agricultural, Residential, Tourist, Recreational, Industrial, Military, and Political coasts. Alex Fradkin’s expressive photographs add a layer of meaning, enriching the subject with their distinctive eloquence while bringing a visual dimension to his father’s words. In this way, the book becomes the story of a close relationship within a probing study of a varied and contested coastline.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Coastal California is easy to imagine, hard to hold, and impossible to fully describe." The Left Coast unites California historian Philip Fradkin (Wallace Stegner and the American West) and his son, photographer Alex Fradkin, in an homage to the beautiful scenes and varied uses for the land of coastal California. The text and photographs create two different, complementary views of the coast. Chapters address the coast's different personalities: wild (Sinkyone Wilderness), agricultural (Point Reyes Peninsula), residential (San Mateo County), tourist (Monterey), recreational (Los Angeles County beaches), industrial (Port of Los Angeles), military (San Diego harbor), and political (Bolsa Chica wetlands). Historian Fradkin intertwines history, geology, memories, and anecdotes in flowing, poetic text that meanders through time. Photographer Fradkin presents photographs in both color and black-and-white, with subjects that clearly demonstrate the many qualities of the coast as well as its people, from the enormous Santa Monica Pier to an old-growth redwood forest. Readers will learn about the varied topics including the exploration efforts of Juan Rodr guez Cabrillo, California's ports, and the historical politics that led to the current politics.
