Orange empire : California and the fruits of Eden / Douglas Cazaux Sackman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sackman, Douglas Cazaux, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orange industry--California--History.

Orange industry.

Environmental conditions.

History.

California--History.

California.

California--Economic conditions.

Economic conditions.

California--Environmental conditions.

Physical Description:

xv, 386 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2005]

Summary:

This Innovative History of California opens up new vistas on the interrelationship among culture, nature, and society by focusing on the state's signature export-the orange. From the 1870s onward, California oranges were packaged in crates bearing colorful images of an Edenic landscape. This book demystifies those lush images, revealing the orange as a manufactured product of the state's orange industry. Orange Empire brings together for the first time the full story of that enormous and influential industry-how growers, scientists, and workers transformed the natural and social landscape of California, turning it into a factory for the production of millions of oranges. The orange industry put up billboards in cities across the nation and placed enticing pictures of sun-kissed fruits in nearly every American's home. It convinced Americans that oranges could be consumed as embodiments of pure nature and talismans of good health. But, as this book shows, the tables were turned during the Great Depression when Upton Sinclair, Carey McWilliams, Dorothea Lange, and John Steinbeck made the Orange Empire into a symbol of what was wrong with America's relationship to nature.

Contents:

Prologue: An Allegory of California 1

Part 1 Fabricating Eden

1 Manifesting the Garden 20

2 A Cornucopia of Invention 53

3 Pulp Fiction: The Sunkist Campaign 84

Part 2 Work in the Garden

4 The Fruits of Labor 123

5 "The Finished Products of Their Environment" 154

Part 3 Reclaiming Eden

6 A Jungle of Representation: The EPIC Campaign versus Sunkist 185

7 A Record of Eden's Erosion 225

8 "A Profit Cannot Be Taken from an Orange": Steinbeck's Case for Environmental Justice 262

Epilogue: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them 289.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-374) and index.

ISBN:

0520238869

OCLC:

53398028

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description