Isla Vista: A Citizen's History

Isla Vista is a spirited college town of 20,000 people crammed into a half-square mile of the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. This book tells the story of how local politicians, greedy developers, and uncaring officials at the University conspired to build a company town that 40 years later remains 96 percent renters and 33 percent paved over. It's the gripping tale of how residents rose in rebellion during the tumultuous year of 1969-70, during which they burned down the local Bank of America and put Isla Vista on the front pages of newspapers across America. The book is also the only account of how a community rose from the ashes of that fire and how its youthful planners created a vision of a self-governing and environmentally sound village that continues to resonate with each new generation of students, but whose implementation has been repeatedly thwarted by the same cabal that created the town.