The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (Americans and the California Dream)

The late 1930s and early 1940s introduced to California culture some of the features that still characterize it today, at least in the view of outsiders to the Golden State: surfing, drive-in movie theaters, barbecues, motels, polo shirts, and recreational vehicles. The period brought equally enduring but less superficial changes, too: advances and setbacks alike in race relations, resource management, urban development, and transportation. Kevin Starr continues his multivolume history of California with this deeply learned, always fascinating account of California at the dawn of the modern age, with a cast of characters ranging from the Native American hermit Fig Tree John to violinist Yehudi Menuhin and hardboiled-fiction master Raymond Chandler.