Embattled Dreams
California in War and Peace, 1940-1950
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sixth volume in Starr's notable cultural history of California examines the decade that changed the largely agricultural state into a powerful national player in politics, defense, manufacturing and, of course, entertainment. State Librarian of California and University of Southern California history professor Starr opens with a broad-brush overview of the state on the brink of the U.S. entry into WWII. The chapters that follow are almost encyclopedic, detailing the curtailment of Japanese-American civil rights; California's wartime role in the defense industry; the career and political impact of Earl Warren; the rising number of minorities; the hunt for communists; and the growing cultural and economic power of Hollywood. All this happened amid the pursuit of the California dream. Starr writes, "the war had given rise to an intensified expectation of a better life." Dramatic profiles go some way toward bringing the history to life, but Starr doesn't have a particular flair for novelistic narrative, and in any case the crowded volume doesn't give him much room to stretch his storytelling muscles. Likewise, given the scope of the book, some subjects are addressed only briefly. Annotated lists of movies, for example, are meant to give a sense of the country's mood, but the effort feels hurried. While readers should not expect sustained analysis of any single subject, this ambitious book gives a broad, comprehensive overview of how the decade changed California ("Something vibrant, explosive, inchoate even, had entered the California experiment"), and how California in turn shaped the postwar destiny of the nation. 38 b&w photos not seen by PW.
