Having lived in CA since I was 15 and not being able to imagine living somewhere else, I thought this volume is a must-read for all Californians, whether born here or "naturalized". Being specifically a San Francisco resident, this book shed more light on the history of this city's beginning and "teenage years" than any other source I have come across. Here you will not just read facts about people like Jack London, Frank Norris, John Muir, John C. Fremont and Richard Henry Dana. You will learn what they contributed to the idea of California and their influence on what this state has turned out to be, for good or bad. You will also learn of lesser-known figures such as Thomas Starr King, Thomas Jordan, Isidore Duncan all of whom were immensely powerful figures in their day, but hardly known today by the average Californian. The writing got a little ploddy at the end for me. Maybe I was just tired. Until I got to the last two chapters, I would have given it a 5 score, mostly on the criteria of how much I learned from it. I look forward to reading the next few volumes.

Kevin Starr has written a fantastic book. In Americans and the California Dream the reader is introduced to the giants of the age--Herbert Hoover, Leland Stanford, David Star Jordan, John Muir, John C. Fremont, etc. I also loved the fact that he included the lessor known personalities as well. Mr. Star clearly relates the truth behind all the myth and romance with regards to the Gold Rush. While Bret Harte is thorougly debunked, Starr acknowledges that the Gold Rush continues to hold the lure and romance that it always possessed. Anyone who wishes to be introduced to the wonderful history of California must read this. I will immediately purchase the second book of the series.

There are two good places to start if you want to know the history of California: the work of Carey McWilliams and this book. Starr really did his homework, and the range of detail is amazing. Like McWilliams, he knows how to tell a story, and he usually has the back-stage lore on whatever public events he describes in his lucid and very readable prose. That a fact or two occasionally get out of place (the San Diego Mission was not founded by Father Altimiri but by Junipero Serra; and San Antonio de Padua is actually in Monterey County) does not diminish the power or scope of this worthy book.

I finally got around to reading "The Grapes of Wrath" and was ashamed to realize that the context of the story was all new to me. Right about then, Kevin Starr's book came out and was reviewed in my local paper. He's done a great, steady job of illuminating the rise of the unions and the treatment of the Okies. The only major flaw I found was the lack of a map of California included in the book. I'm from the east coast and found it difficult to keep the place names straight without a ready reference.

This fourth chapter in Starr's "Americans and the California Dream" is the best yet. I was paticularly interested, in what Starr sees as the States battle between the forces of communism and fascism. The text reads like an account of a some great war, following each battle and skirmish throughout the State. I would recommend this work to anyone who is seriously interested in California or Labor history.

This book is very unusual in that it covers 150 year history of a prosecutor's office. For the People is even more unusual in being candid about the problems that that office has experienced. You will read about former prosecutors being prosecuted as well as situations where the good citizens of Los Angeles preyed on their fellow citizens using discriminatory impulses. Most people will learn about crimes and criminals that they will find interesting. As a result, the reader can learn to be more appropriately cautious about the motives and actions of strangers and new acquaintances.

Although I was born and raised in southern California, much of the information was new to me. As an attorney, I was interested in the description of the transition from the Mexican justice system to the American one after California became part of the United States. I was also impressed to see how early the L.A. D.A.'s office was hiring women, using investigators, and having public defenders available.

The bulk of the book is about famous prosecutions. These are divided into Thieves and Killers, Crimes of the Heart, Family Violence, For Financial Gain, Celebrities (In the Limelight), Turmoil in the Streets, Public Corruption, In the Line of Duty (police officers who were killed), Notorious Cases, Criminal Cohorts, Driven to Kill, and Gangs. My main complaint about the book is that many of these cases should have been more detailed, and many could have been excluded to make the space for that expanded coverage. For example, one rattlesnake killing case would have been enough for me. I didn't need the second one.

The book contains many interesting photographs that make the stories much more vivid. I liked that aspect of the book very much. It made the history come alive for me.

In addition to hearing about cases I had not known about before, the book also provided me with new details on cases I did know something about.

Human nature never ceases to amaze me. These stories certainly reinforced that poin for me. Ms. Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich had a lover she kept locked in the attic at night for years, so that her husband would not find him. Ms. Clara "Tiger Woman" Phillips was so enraged by a rival for her husband's affections that she took her rival apart with a claw hammer. Ms. Aimee Semple McPherson's scandals are detailed here involving misalliances as a backdrop to her evangalism.

The cases you've heard about are all here: Ennis Cosby; OJ; the Menendez brothers; Charles Keating; Rodney King and the 1992 riots; Sirhan Sirhan; and John Ehrlichman. If you've lived in the area a long time, you will also remember Caryl Chessman, the Watts riots, Roman Polanski, and the Manson Family. Many of the most interesting cases predate 1950, and few will know about those.

I hope you will take the time to read and appreciate this history of prosecuting crime in Los Angeles. It will remind you of the importance of having good district attorneys in every community. Otherwise, all of our lives will be in more danger, both from criminals and from false prosecution.

After you have finished the book, I suggest that you think about ways that you would be vulnerable to the criminals described here. How can you change what you do to reduce those risks?

This book used to be titled "The Noiseless Tenor", but in this newer edition it has been retitled and given a few extra editorial words. This is a wide-ranging survey of references to the bicycle in mostly-20th-Century works; sometimes the reference is a stretch and Starrs points this fact out. Occasionally he has to piece together fragments of a scene to make the bicycling reference clear. Starrs' piecework is always in italic type -- and occasionally I wondered if he'd ever get to the author's words. But this collection is well-done, and Starrs obviously loves everything to do with the bicycle. His children show up occasionally (mostly in the form of recollections from a cross-country tour while they were growing up), and his own experience influenced the selection. Everything from Ernest Hemingway's flat observational prose to a truly fantastical five-rider cross-country race (against a locomotive) is fair game here, and this book suits its stated purpose of being a volume that can be stashed in the thinking cycle tourist's pannier.

I was a student of Dr. Starr's in the USC Master of Real Estate Development program in the early 1990's. Dr. Starr's analysis of California during the period is both thorough and enlightening. Dr. Starr gives particular emphasis to the Los Angeles element of California growth, with particular analysis of the Department of Water and Power, the Los Angeles Police Department, and, perhaps not coincidentally, the University of Southern California and its training of careerist professionals rather than academics. I highly recommend this work, and by linkage, any of Dr. Starr's works

If you ever wondered how L.A. blossomed into the mega metropolis that it is today, "Rivers In The Desert" is a fantastic documentary of William Mullholland triumph to bring water to the L.A. basin. Had it not been for the for the talents of Mullholland who was sent on a expedition much to the likes of Lewis and Clark, L.A. might have never been able to tap the Owens Valley. This book is an intriguing look into politics, power and greed. This book also includes many interesting photos provided by the Department of Water and Power.

I read this book seeking the origins of Progressive Republicanism, the turn-of-the-century movement that gave us Public Utility Commissions and regulated public utilities (amongst other insitutions). In a way, the current California Energy crisis is a result of not remembering this history. Electric power companies are now doing what the Southern Pacific did to California, only in different ways.

As literature, well, it's a bit goody-goody and overwrought for my taste, but I got through it without too much pushing. No, Mr. Norris is not one of our greatest writers. But, as business history, it should be required reading in all MBA programs!

All in all, what we need is a new, updated Progressivism, one that will address the role of money in our political processes. It would also restore some limits on corporate exercise of market power while still encourage competitive enthusiasm.

Frank Norris was among other things a new correspondent, an editorial assistant, as well as a war correspondent in Cuba. He is considered by many to be the first important American naturalist writer. Naturalists strive to observe and report dispassionately, much like a scientist. His writing reflects this belief, it is the modern day equivalent of a "20/20" expose. He details how monopoly affects the average man. He tells the story of the lifes that were changed as a result of our headlong rush towards industrialism. The book is long, melodramatic, and filled with scenes of early California. Unfortunately, the book carries less weight than it did when it was written and tends to become a bore after 300 pages, or less. Also we must not forget that the events in this book actually happened. So unless you have to read it for class...

Definitely not for all tastes, but a strong work, with well-drawn characters and some very beautiful (albeit long) prose passages. Norris has a habit of driving his point into the ground (a section near the end of the novel, which juxtaposes a mother and child starving to death on the street with a wealthy, upperclass, elitist meal comes to mind), but over all a profound and powerful work. Originally intended as the first part of a proposed "Trilogy of Wheat," Norris died near the publication of the second book (see "The Pit.") Definitely recommended for those who enjoy great American literature.

This is a long book, maybe one of the longest London wrote, but no matter, you can take it in small doses, because the book is a straight narrative with no suspense, no drama, only London's wishful fantasy working overtime. No matter the obstacle, and London lays them on with heavy-handed doses of pessimism, the lily-white hero and heroine, Billy and Saxon, easily overcome each while giving the author plenty of opportunity to express his famous prejudice against all non-Anglo Saxons. London also builds his case for scientific farming, sustainability, as a method that will win out every time. While in truth, London was an abject failure at farming with every experiement ending in disaster. The tale is sugar coated fantasy, London dreaming his couple into everlasting happiness. The coincidence at the end is not to be believed. It's pure sap written in the twilight of his career when his talents appear on the wane. It's the only London book I have read to date that I would not recommend on any level.

I felt that the book was technically well written, but the story, subject, and outcome, were all very melo-dramatic and predicatble. The love story was unimaginable, the plot "twists" were that of a second rate novel, and the outcome completely unlikely in real life, even back then. I live in the California valley, and I have been through every town that is tramped through in this book, and only by Mr. London's sheer talent for writing did I keep enough interest to finish it. There are better, more rewarding books in London's canon than this.

I read this book after biking through a lot of the California towns London mentions. I pedaled through Glen Ellen and saw some of the missions. Since I am male, I could relate to the character of Billy. He is an early 20th century renaissance man. I never got bored with this book. It has a lot of personal meaning to me. I come from some of the "old stock" Billy and Saxon refer to. Tons of detail. I had to read it twice to get all the details. If you like northern California and want to know what it was like 100 years ago, read this.