The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s by Kevin Starr (State Librarian of California Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning, State Librarian of California Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning, University of Southern Calfiornia California)
The fifth volume in Starr's classic history of California, The Dream Endures shows how Californians rebounded from the Great Depression to emerge in the 1930s into what is now known as "the good life." Starr illustrates the ways the good life prospered in California-in film, fiction, leisure, and architecture. Starr looks at the newly important places where Californians lived out this sunny lifestyle: areas like Los Angeles (where Hollywood lived), Palm Springs (where Hollywood vacationed), San Diego (where the Navy went), the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (where Einstein changed his view of the universe), and college towns like Berkeley. "In this, more than any other of Starr's monumental California histories, we see the stirrings of uniqueness in the social and cultural evolution of California. Starr's theme is relevant to all of America and the national destiny."-Neil Morgan, San Diego Union-Tribune "Enormously sensitive and moving. Social and cultural history doesn't get any better."-San Francisco Chronicle "In his monumental continuing study of California, Kevin Starr belongs in the company of the best."-Herbert Gold, Los Angeles Times Book Review