Coast of Dreams

History

Kevin Starr

Americas

Penguin

Coast of Dreams is an astonishingly rich, thoughtful, entertaining and horrifying account of one of the most mesmerising places on earth. Kevin Starr's marvellous new book allows its readers both to revel in the Californian oddness but also to see the magic that has drawn in millions of people like bodybuilder-turned actor-turned-Govenor Schwarzenegger. The success that has made California into one of the world's biggest economies and its great generator of culture and ideas has not been cost free however and the picture that emerges from Coast of Dreams is a troubled one. Contemporary Californians are caught in the middle of a period of transformation where the state struggles to understand the diversity of its people, the confusions of its values and customs and the loss of one California and the ambiguous imposition of a new and uncharted identity.

Coast of Dreams : A History of Contemporary California

World

Allen Lane.

Circles of Influence looks at the transition from Impressionist-inspired landscape painting to Modernism in Southern California art. The book features essays on both the city of Los Angeles and the styles of art prevalent in the area from 1900 to 1930. A chronology of the time period and full catalogue of the exhibit are included. Artists include Mabel Alvarez, Benjamin F. Berlin, Nicholas Brigante, Conrad Buff, William Cahill, William Merritt Chase, Herbert Chster Cressey, Meta Gehring Cressey, Boris Deutsch, Helena Dunlap, Howard Arden Edwards, Lorser Feitelson, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Clarence Hinkle, Peter Krasnow, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Jean Mannheim, Knud Merrild, John Hubbard Rich, Guy Rose, Donna Schuster, Henrietta Shore, E. Roscoe Shrader, Edmund Tarbell, Channel P. Townsley, Edouard Vysekal, Lubena Buchanan Vysekal, and Karl Yens. Published in 2000 by The Orange County Museum of Art and curated by Sarah Vure.

Circles of Influence: Impressionism to Modernism in Southern California Art, 1910-1930

Nancy Dustin Wall Moure

Orange County Museum of Art (Calif.)

Sarah Vure

Orange County Museum of Art

Beautiful new photographs taken in 2012 and 2013 of the entire state of California by acclaimed national photographer Carol M. Highsmith, who is sometimes called America s Photographer, appear in CALIFORNIA, a spectacular, hardbound keepsake coffee-table book.
 These contemporary photos reflect every part of the Golden State, from Alturus to La Jolla, Lake Shasta to the Desert Cities, the Redwood Forest to the Imperial Valley, and every memorable place in between.
 CALIFORNIA is written by historian Kevin Starr, who is renowned for his ongoing series of books about California. And the nation s distinguished Librarian of Congress, James Billington, will provide the book s introductory foreword.
 But this highest-quality, 265-page book is available for a limited time only. 
 The book features Carol M. Highsmith s pick of her images in the Jon B. Lovelace Collection, in the nation's magnificent Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Mr. Lovelace s company, the Capital Group, underwrote Highsmith s expeditions throughout California following his death in 2011.
 Highsmith has produced glorious views of California's lush valleys and rocky shores; forbidding deserts; remarkable mining towns and bountiful fields and stunning state and national parks. And of course, jaunty Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento are lavishly represented in this comprehensive presentation of colorful California.
 This book features the most comprehensive, updated view of this gorgeous state to be published for a decade or more. Many of the images, all captured within the past year, will be selected from the This Is California! Web site, which describes Highsmith s California expedition.
 Buy your copies of CALIFORNIA, featuring photography by Carol M. Highsmith and the words of California historian Kevin Starr and Librarian of Congress James Billington.

California Book

Arts & Photography

carol-m-highsmith

Photography & Video

Chelsea Publishing, Inc.

Clio on the Coast: The Writing of California History, 1845-1956

The Book Club of California

A narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose, Kevin Starr's acclaimed multi-volume Americans and the California Dream is an unparalleled work of cultural history. In this volume, Starr covers the crucial postwar period―1950 to 1963―when the California we know today first burst into prominence.Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism. He explores the Silent Generation and the emergent Boomer youth cult, the Beats and the Hollywood "Rat Pack," the pervasive influence of Zen Buddhism and other Asian traditions in art and design, the rise of the University of California and the emergence of California itself as a utopia of higher education, the cooling of West Coast jazz, freeway and water projects of heroic magnitude, outdoor life and the beginnings of the environmental movement. More broadly, he shows how California not only became the most populous state in the Union, but in fact evolved into a mega-state en route to becoming the global commonwealth it is today.Golden Dreams continues an epic series that has been widely recognized for its signal contribution to the history of American culture in California. It is a book that transcends its stated subject to offer a wealth of insight into the growth of the Sun Belt and the West and indeed the dramatic transformation of America itself in these pivotal years following the Second World War.

Golden Dreams (Americans and the California Dream)

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

George Sterling (1869 – 1926) was an American poet based in California who, during his lifetime, was celebrated in California as one of the greatest of American poets. A protégé of Ambrose Bierce, Sterling was himself mentor to the young Clark Ashton Smith. His literary and social circle included Nora May French, Jack London, and H. L. Mencken. Besides his eleven volumes of poetry and four verse dramas, Sterling wrote a critical work on Robinson Jeffers and a number of short stories. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described Sterling as "a kind of leashed Swinburne" and pointed to the influence of Baudelaire and the Symbolist poets. This edition of his complete poetry and verse dramas includes hundreds of uncollected and unpublished poems, along with a comprehensive bibliography and commentary. Cumulatively, they establish Sterling as one of the leading poetic figures in the English-speaking world in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Complete Poetry of George Sterling (3 VOLUMES)

Literature & Fiction

George, Sterling

Poetry

Hippocampus Press

The Tote Guide to Horseracing and Betting

Sports & Outdoors

Individual Sports

Kensington West Productions Ltd

From the first known photograph taken in Los Angeles to its most recent sweeping vistas, this photographic tribute to the City of Angels provides a fascinating journey through the city’s cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. It traces the city’s development from the 1880s real estate boom, through the early days of Hollywood and the urban sprawl of the late 20th century, right up to the present day. With over 500 images, L.A. is shown emerging from a desert wasteland to become a vast palm-studded urban metropolis.
Events that made world news―including two Olympics, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, and the Rodney King riots―reveal a city of many dimensions. The entertainment capital of the world, Hollywood, and its celebrities are showcased along with many other notable residents, personalities, architects, artists, and musicians. The city’s pop cultural movements, its music, surfing, health food fads, gangs, and hot rods are included, as are its notorious crimes and criminals. This book depicts Los Angeles in all its glory and grit, via hundreds of freshly discovered images including those of Julius Shulman, Garry Winogrand, William Claxton and many other superb photographers, culled from major historical archives, museums, private collectors, and universities. These are given context and resonance through essays by renowned California historian Kevin Starr and Los Angeles literature expert David L. Ulin.

Los Angeles, Portrait of a City

History & Criticism

Taschen America

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Books by Kevin Starr