|
What's the Matter with California?: Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking | 
 enlarge | Author: Jack Cashill
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $7.00 (50%)
New (29) Used (11) from $7.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 535860
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 1416531033
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9781416531036
ASIN: 1416531033
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
There's an unspoken fault line in California. No, not the San Andreas Fault nor any of the geologic ones we all know about. This fault line is cultural -- formed by the waves of ethnic and social groups that have rammed willy-nilly into California and now refuse to get along. Californians today worry about "The Big One," but it's a cultural cataclysm they -- and the rest of us -- should fear. When writer and columnist Jack Cashill was skewered along with Kansas (despite the fact that he lives in Missouri) in Thomas Frank's New York Times bestseller What's the Matter with Kansas?, he decided to fight back with a riposte from the heart -- an honest, biting, and wickedly funny look at what's wrong with the purplest of blue states: almighty California itself. The media moguls, multiculturalists, union bosses, and eco-warriors who run California have abandoned liberalism for total insanity. They have transformed the Golden State from America's future into America's Rome. Spectacularly sybaritic and self-indulgent, overtaxed and overregulated, California lives on past glories, and even Conan the Republican cannot muster the will to defend its borders. Now, finally, Jack Cashill is here to rally the right-thinking citizens of the state (and the nation) and rescue this gorgeous chunk of real estate from its increasingly shaky future.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Great Book September 19, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Tells the rest of the story that the main stream media drops off. It will shock you in a sense but is worthwhile reading for anyone living in California or those outside wanting insight into understanding California.
A courageous, timely, and well-researched book May 10, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Cashill gives a brilliant response to Thomas Frank's hate letter to Middle America, "What's the Matter with Kansas?". This witty, insightful, and prophetic book, "What's the Matter with California?" is a must-read! The leftist goons at Publisher's Weekly, who can rarely see past their own bias, would love nothing more than to sneer at Cashill's meticulous research (check out the extensive footnoting) and clear-eyed insights in order to stifle this book and its message. Despite the best efforts of those who cherish the bankrupt values that this book exposes, many good Californians and Americans are discovering - and loving - this book.
Author Cashill is ingeneous in his usage of the tectonic plate metaphor to describe the cultural earthquakes that have rumbled across the California landscape over the past 50 years. I read this book immediately after having read Simon Winchester's intriguing "A Crack in the Edge of the World," and found the two books to be fascinating bookends on California's natural and social history.
Looking back at "What's the Matter with Kansas?" we can see that the gist of that book was that people in predominantly conservative, "traditional values" states such as Kansas were too stupid to understand that they were "voting against their own self-interests" whenever they failed to vote for secularist or left-leaning candidates.
Frank's sneering and elitist prose indicated that issues such as faith, values, family, or Second Amendment rights were the refuge of people too unsophisticated to grasp the "real causes" of their economic or social pain. This idea, long an article of faith among many secularist academics, social engineers, media elites, and entertainers, has gained further currency via Frank's book.
Jack Cashill blows Frank's feeble assertions out of the water. He starts by exploding Frank's own presumptions about Kansas and moves quickly into a compelling narrative that manages somehow to be both sprawling and coherent.
In the same vein as Ben Stein's documentary film, "Expelled", Cashill challenges the new "conventional wisdom" and the strangling political correctness that has covered up root causes of so much chaos and destruction. A colorful parade of characters such as Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, Gavin Newsome, and Jim Jones populate and provide context for some of these massive cultural battles ... and their outcomes.
For millions of good Californians and Americans who wonder at the sometimes bizarre direction that "official" California politics and society seem to take, the book offers clear understanding and answers that are guaranteed to be controversial and deeply angering in many high places.
The book closes with a very moving and encouraging picture of one California town that is successfully swimming against the tide of decadence and corruption.
It's a very important read ... if you dare! The intellectually lazy and cultural cowards need not apply.
 Anecdotal and annoying March 2, 2008
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
I rarely dredge up the enthusiasm to write a review, positive or negative, but this book is SO badly researched (read: anecdotal, at best) that I had to say something. He is so profoundly biased that this book will only serve to fan the flames of the culture war, not illuminate any real concerns from the Red states about the bluest of the blues. I am a Californian who was looking for insight - instead I got an analysis about as sophisticated as marshmallow fluff. A waste of my time.
 What's wrong with California January 25, 2008
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
What's wrong with California...
It couldn't be the (relatively) inexpensive first rate UC and CSU public college systems?
Or its status as the sixth largest economy in the world?
How about the forward thinking environmental legislation and medicinal legislation? Or the amazing diverse environments of southern and northern California and their populations?
Those are good, but wait, there aren't enough flags in Berkeley! Oh and Jim Jones and Charles Manson are from there too! And it's full of liberals (actually the state has large conservative populations as well).
Yes California has it's problems. LA is full of terrible schools, and the state has not dealt adequately with solving immigration problems (regardless of your views, doing nothing about illegal immigrants is not a solution).
However, to paint California as a mess is to ignore all that is great about this state. Every state has its problems, and its own boneheaded politicians. But overall, if any readers compared California with other states, they would realize how great a place it is to be.
Unbalanced Critique of the Golden State January 11, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Rather sententious, tendentious and mean spirited collection on what ails the Golden State. Yes it is a state with many problems, and what country of over 30 million people doesn't? In many ways, the Golden State functions as a country within a country. Are there misguided leaders? Are there distortions of what it truly means to be liberal? More than any other state, and likely more than most countries, California embraces risk in business, social change, scientific progress, environmental rights and individual expression, and thereby disturbs the comfortable folks who reject all change, and fosters the conditions and provides the sanctuary to the creative forces in human nature.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
