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Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950 (Americans and the California Dream) | 
 enlarge | Author: Kevin Starr
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $37.50
Buy New: $26.95
You Save: $10.55 (28%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 387194
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0195124375
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.4052
EAN: 9780195124378
ASIN: 0195124375
Publication Date: May 23, 2002
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Extremely light cover wear
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Product Description
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. Now, in Embattled Dreams, the sixth volume in this monumental work, Starr looks at 1940s California, the war years and their aftermath.
California in the years surrounding World War II was a time of sweeping change, drama and intrigue, heroism and tragedy, a decade that saw the emergence of a new, more powerful role for California in the nation. Starr captures this exciting era with his unique vision and masterful prose. He describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as "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 with Henry Miller at Big Sur, to film noir and the fiction of Raymond Chandler. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks.
Philadelphia Inquirer hailed Starr as "the foremost chronicler of that often fabulous region, imposing upon the dramatic elements of California history a novelist's imagination and a cosmopolitan and sophisticated intelligence." In Embattled Dreams, Starr provides an unforgettable portrait of California, a spell-binding account of the state as it transformed itself from a regional power to the dominant economic, social, and cultural force in the nation.
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| Customer Reviews:
Another Kevin Starr winner June 1, 2008
Any history book by Kevin Starr is worth reading. I'm working my way through all of them. He is the greatest California historian ever!
a pivotal decade April 1, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Kevin Starr has created a brilliant picture of California in an eventful decade. I need not add to the summaries Amazon has above; I can say that Starr's writing is vivid and sweeping and he manages to place all the events and social evolution in perspective.
And I found material that was still fresh, even given my own background as a consumer of history and as a lifetime Californian. The impact of wartime shipbuilding and aviation industry on California's sleepy economy and postwar prosperity; the zoot-suit riots and what they revealed about California's race problems; the bar and nightlife scenes in SF and LA; the Legislature's mover-fixer Artie Samish and his downfall; the noirish Black Dahlia murder in a time when Hollywood was discovering film noir. Indeed, Mr. Starr illuminates the last one by pointing out Hollywood's mingling with the LA underworld and with some of the rougher LAPD detectives.
It's true that Starr may have crowded his canvas somewhat, but he is adept at fitting them together and presenting them as one epic transformation in the state's history. Given the impact that California's major social upheavals have had for the US and the wider world -- the Gold Rush, Silicon Valley, the dot-com boom -- this book, and this period, is well worth a read.
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