For much of this century California was the envy of the continent, not just for what nature had made but for what civil society had created: speedy freeways, the country's best public school system, public works that made the desert bloom. Not any more California's public works and social services are crumbling, and public education has plunged from the top to the bottom of nationwide measures. How could the American dream go so wrong so fast? No quick synopsis can do justice to the detailed analysis Schrag presents in the volume. The moral of the story is that contempt for government creates governments that is contemptible - a moral the rest of the country should study since, metaphorically speaking, California is famously the place where the rest of us are heading