California, no less

My latest Modern Library Chronicles read was California by Keven Starr. Once again, a complex and multilayered subject was compacted and contextualized by a master historian and storyteller - I was interrupting family members all during vacation with facts, horrors, and did-you-knows from California's convulsive past.

California's history is a potion of excess, contradictions, abuse, power, beauty, and catalysts. How it has managed to keep from exploding in our faces is the simmering lid of Starr's story. That it has grown to be the 5th largest economy in the world while cultivating/offending multiple ethnic groups, weaving dreams along with perpetrating nightmares, and making itself an engine of agriculture, industry, and American culture makes its story an ongoing engaging odyssey.

I was left with a rich list of ancillary reads to chase down; from Race, Provincialism, and other American Problems by Josiah Royce (1908) to Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm labor in California by Carey McWilliams.