Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era
by Kevin Starr
Americans and the California Dream (Book 2)
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Description
This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. ""How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically different society has emerged in its place,"" writes Starr.Tags
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Starr's histories of California are well-written and interesting. This volume focused almost exclusively on Los Angeles, with some forays into the Central Valley and San Francisco; the previous book was almost all about San Francisco. Kevin Starr deeply explores the idea of LA/Hollywood as a dreamy ideal, and how that evolved over time from the Mission Revival phase to the last chapters, about the beginnings of the movie industry and Hollywood. I was hoping for a somewhat different angle for research purposes--more specifics about physical changes and expansion--but it remained an intriguing read.
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Author Information
32+ Works 2,680 Members
Kevin Starr was born in San Francisco, California on September 3, 1940. He received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of San Francisco in 1962. After serving two years in the Army in West Germany, he received a master's degree in 1965 and a PhD in English and American literature in 1969 from Harvard University. He returned to San show more Francisco in 1973 and served as an aide and speechwriter to Mayor Joseph Alioto. After being appointed city librarian, he received a master's degree in library science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. He wrote a column for The San Francisco Examiner and was appointed a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Southern California in 1989. In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson named him state librarian, a post he held for 10 years. He wrote numerous book about the history of California including the eight-volume California Dream series, California, Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge, and Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, the Colonial Experience. In 2006, he received the National Humanities Medal for his work as a scholar and historian from President George W. Bush. He died from a heart attack on January 14, 2017 at the age of 76. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era
- Important places
- California, USA
- Important events
- Progressive Era
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 238
- Popularity
- 136,172
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.12)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 4
