California An American history

A sweeping survey of the Golden State over the last 12,000 or so years. It's not easy to compress the history of Delaware, much less the vast realm of California, in under 500 pages. Yale professor Faragher, author of many books about American history, succeeds admirably. His underlying theme is diversity. California "includes more variation in climate than any other," and it also encompasses 178 major habitat types, 109 federally recognized Native American tribes and bands, and people from all over the world (for which reason Los Angeles alone, it's estimated, has more than 500 Salvadoran restaurants). Faragher is quick to add that diversity has not always been positive. Economic inequality is perhaps nowhere more pronounced, at least within the bounds of the U.S., and California has given birth to the most progressive and the most retrograde political traditions, which Faragher illustrates by contrasting Govs. Earl Warren and Ronald Reagan. The author tackles numerous controversial and unpleasant issues head-on, from the dispossession and murder of countless Indigenous people to the long tradition of police brutality symbolized by the vicious 1991 attack on Rodney King and the subsequent realization that "the LAPD was an authority unto itself." One theme that might have used a few more pages is the profound division--political, economic, and cultural--between rural and urban California, which might as well be separate nations, marked by what the late Joan Didion described as "rancorous differences in attitude and culture." Wobblies, Black Panthers, Forty-Niners, conquistadors, and Native peoples all appear in Faragher's vigorous narrative, both a celebration of the state's wealth and creativity and acknowledgment that so much of its history is marked by "conflict, turmoil, and violence." Though this book may not supplant Kevin Starr's multivolume history of California, it makes a valuable complement, highly readable and with a compelling governing argument. A masterful history of a place that is both reality and ideal, and central to the modern world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.