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University of California Press

California, With a New Preface

America's High-Stakes Experiment
by Peter Schrag (Author)
Paperback
Price: $29.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Jan 2008
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780520254053
Trim Size: 6 x 9
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About the Book

Peter Schrag takes on the big issues—immigration, globalization, and the impact of California's politics on its quality of life—in this dynamic account of the Golden State's struggle to recapture the American dream. In the past half-century, California has been both model and anti-model for the nation and often the world, first for its high level of government and public services—schools, universities, highways—and latterly for its dysfunctional government, deteriorating services, and sometimes regressive public policies. California explains how many current "solutions" exacerbate the very problems they're supposed to solve and analyzes a variety of possible state and federal policy alternatives to restore government accountability and a vital democracy to the nation's most populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy.

About the Author

Peter Schrag is a contributing editor and columnist at the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of many books, including Paradise Lost (UC Press) and Final Test.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2008 Edition 
Sources and Acknowledgments 
Introduction 
1. The New California 
2. Dysfunction, Disinvestment, Disenchantment 
3. Action Hero 
4. Hybrid Democracy 
5. Fragile Experiment 
Notes 
Index 

Reviews

“California , with its diversity of cultural backgrounds and languages, has extraordinary advantages both as a beacon to and as the nation’s pre-eminent economic and cultural link with -the rest of the world.”
— Sacramento Bee
“In a book worthy of wide attention . . . the intellectually limber author takes stock of the forces remaking the state into a test case of a teeming, postindustrial, insanely diverse democracy. . . . Professorial and sweeping, Schrag’s book poses intricate questions about political dysfunction and demographics.”
— San Francisco Magazine
“Peter Schrag . . . is nothing if not timely. . . . His take on immigration, for one, could have been ripped from the headlines and does much to illuminate a subject that affects—and inflames—everyone in the Golden State.”
— San Diego Union-Tribune
“Schrag is faithful to his evidence, wherever it takes him and he offers mountains of it”
— Los Angeles Times
“The right observer to be asking these questions. . . . Schrag is faithful to his evidence, wherever it takes him — and he offers mountains of it. He muscles up his analysis with long-forgotten studies.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
“This book's masterful depiction of California at a crossroads is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the complexity of the state's continuing social experiment.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“Lucid, evenhanded and thoughtful, Schrag offers one of the best analyses yet of the California train wreck and its troubling implications for America’s future.”
— Publishers Weekly
"I recommend California for anybody interested in understanding the great challenges facing our state."—Senator Dianne Feinstein