Volume 17, Number 5 · October 7, 1971
A State of Catastrophe
By Francis Carney
Political Change in California: Critical Elections and Social Movements, 1890-1966
by Michael Paul Rogin, by John L. Shover
Greenwood, 251 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Reagan and Reality: The Two Californias
by Edmund G. (Pat) Brown
Praeger, 248 pp., $6.95
Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey
by Lou Cannon
Doubleday, 340 pp., $7.95
The Destruction of California
by Raymond F. Dasmann
Collier, 233 pp., $1.50 (paper)
Anti-California: Report from Our First Parafascist State
by Kenneth Lamott
Little, Brown, 272 pp., $6.95
The Secret Boss of California
by Arthur H. Samish, by Bob Thomas
Crown, 192 pp., $5.95
Long ago Carey McWilliams, among the wisest commentators on California, said that 'the time has not come to strike a balance for the California enterprise. There is still too much commotion—too much noise and movement and turmoil.' There is still plenty of commotion and turmoil but, if several of the authors under review are right, the time may have come for the Owl of Minerva to take flight. Morbidity is fashionable now, of course, and California is not its only subject. Longeur, fatigue, decay, stasis, playing-out, running-down, destruction, and death are themes so pervasive in contemporary culture that they need no further elaboration here. California, though, seems to provide a special stimulus to the imagination of disaster.
Review, 5545 words
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