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Gathers selections from fiction, poetry, and essays about California by authors including Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Frank Norris, William Saroyan, John Muir, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Wallace Stegner, Amy Tan, and Kenneth Rexroth
From the internationally bestselling author of the Mars Trilogy and New York 2140 Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures—one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia—form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias. What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation? What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs? What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love? This Tor Essentials edition of Three Californias includes an introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill and Red Plenty. “[Robinson] invites us to share his characters’ intensely personal, intensely local attachment to what they have. The result may shame you into entertaining new hope for the future.” —The New York Times on Pacific Edge At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for California’s remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem type—its distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of California’s ecological patterns and the history of the state’s various ecosystems, outlining how the challenges of climate change and invasive species and opportunities for regulation and stewardship could potentially affect the state’s ecosystems. The text explicitly incorporates both human impacts and conservation and restoration efforts and shows how ecosystems support human well-being. Edited by two esteemed ecosystem ecologists and with overviews by leading experts on each ecosystem, this definitive work will be indispensable for natural resource management and conservation professionals as well as for undergraduate or graduate students of California’s environment and curious naturalists.
"Hoskyns brings a genuine love as well as an outsider's keen eye to the rise and fall of the California scene. . . . This is a riveting story, sensitively told." —Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone From enduring musical achievements to drug-fueled chaos and bed-hopping antics, the L.A. pop music scene in the sixties and seventies was like no other, and journalist Barney Hoskyns re-creates all the excitement and mayhem. Hotel California brings to life the genesis of Crosby, Stills, and Nash at Joni Mitchell’s house; the Eagles’ backstage fistfights after the success of "Hotel California"; the drama of David Geffen and the other money men who transformed the L.A. music scene; and more.
Perhaps no country's history is as fascinating and perplexing as that of Mexico. "Mother Mexico," land of paradox, of contradiction and extreme--these are the strands that Lesley Byrd Simpson weaves into a unified fabric in presenting the country's history. First published in 1941, Many Mexicos was awarded the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal for Literature. Travelers, students, and all who delight in the adventure of narrative history have since treasured the volume for its clarity and readability. Now, completely revised, the Silver Anniversary Edition reflects the vast published output of these past twenty-five years on the history of Mexico. Some chapters have been enlarged, others corrected. A map of Mexico showing political subdivisions is now included, and, in general, new material has been added to document the author's controversial statement (and there are many). Bloody conquests and revolutions; men, good or evil; art, religion, and institutions brought from Spain or made in Mexico; topography and climate; the conflict of cultures and races; and finally, the emergence of Mexico into today's bewildering world--this in broad outline is the absorbing story Mr. Simpson so warmly presents.
Is California beyond repair? A sizable number of Golden State citizens have concluded that it is. Incessant budget crises plus a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock have led to demands for reform, even a constitutional convention. But what, exactly, is wrong and how can we fix it? In California Crackup, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul provide clear and informed answers. Their fast-paced and often humorous narrative deftly exposes the constitutional origins of our current political and economic problems and furnishes a uniquely California fix: innovative solutions that allow Californians to debate their choices, settle on the best ones, hold elected officials accountable for results, and choose anew if something doesn’t work.
Those of us who live in California know that it is an amazing place, and one of the reasons our state is so unique is the incredible diversity of life throughout its length and breadth. This atlas shows what the diversity of life in California is and where such resources are located.
Native Americans who populated the various ranchos of Mexican California as laborers are people frequently lost to history. The "rancho period" was a critical time for California Indians, as many were drawn into labor pools for the flourishing ranchos following the 1834 dismantlement of the mission system, but they are practically absent from the documentary record and from popular histories. This study focuses on Rancho Petaluma north of San Francisco Bay, a large livestock, agricultural, and manufacturing operation on which several hundredÑperhaps as many as two thousandÑNative Americans worked as field hands, cowboys, artisans, cooks, and servants. One of the largest ranchos in the region, it was owned from 1834 to 1857 by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, one of the most prominent political figures of Mexican California. While historians have studied Vallejo, few have considered the Native Americans he controlled, so we know little of what their lives were like or how they adjusted to the colonial labor regime. Because VallejoÕs Petaluma Adobe is now a state historic park and one of the most well-protected rancho sites in California, this site offers unparalleled opportunities to investigate nineteenth-century rancho life via archaeology. Using the Vallejo rancho as a case study, Stephen Silliman examines this California rancho with a particular eye toward Native American participation. Through the archaeological recordÑtools and implements, containers, beads, bone and shell artifacts, food remainsÑhe reconstructs the daily practices of Native peoples at Rancho Petaluma and the labor relations that structured indigenous participation in and experience of rancho life. This research enables him to expose the multi-ethnic nature of colonialism, counterbalancing popular misconceptions of Native Americans as either non-participants in the ranchos or passive workers with little to contribute to history. Lost Laborers in Colonial California draws on archaeological data, material studies, and archival research, and meshes them with theoretical issues of labor, gender, and social practice to examine not only how colonial worlds controlled indigenous peoples and practices but also how Native Americans lived through and often resisted those impositions. The book fills a gap in the regional archaeological and historical literature as it makes a unique contribution to colonial and contact-period studies in the Spanish/Mexican borderlands and beyond.

California Desert

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks, and Forests

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 408


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