Material dreams : Southern California through the 1920's / Kevin Starr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Starr, Kevin.

Series:

Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California dream

Americans and the California dream

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History.

California, Southern--History.

California, Southern.

Los Angeles (Calif.)--History.

Los Angeles (Calif.).

Southern California.

Physical Description:

xiv, 453 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Southern California through the 1920's

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, 1996.

Summary:

Kevin Starr is the foremost chronicler of the California dream and indeed one of the finest narrative historians writing today on any subject. The first two installments of his monumental cultural history, Americans and the California Dream, have been hailed as "mature, well-proportioned and marvelously diverse (and diverting)" (The New York Times Book Review) and as "a luminous and delightful saga that will become an American classic" (W. Jackson Bate). Now, in Material Dreams, Starr turns to one of the most vibrant decades in the Golden State's history, the 1920s, when some two million Americans migrated to California, the vast majority settling in or around Los Angeles. Kevin Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.

Contents:

I Foundations in Water

1 Prophesying Through Water: Hydraulic Visions and Historical Metaphors 3

2 Imperial Ironies: The Dreams and Realities of Social Irrigation 20

3 Aqueduct Cities: Foundations of Urban Empire 45

II The City on the Plain

4 From Oz to Oildorado: The Rise of Los Angeles in the 1920s 65

5 Boosting Babylon: Planning, Development, and Ballyhoo in Jazz-Age Los Angeles 90

6 The People of the City: Oligarchs, Babbitts, and Folks 120

7 USC, Electricity, Music, and Cops: The Emergence of Institutional Los Angeles 151

III Materializing History

8 Designs for Living: Architecture in Southern California, from the Bradbury Building to the Watts Towers 181

9 Anacapa and Arcadia: The Santa Barbara Heritage 231

10 Castles in Spain: The Santa Barbara Alternative 263

IV Life and Letters in the Southland

11 Opinion and the Aristocracy of Art: The Search for Common Ground in Emergent Los Angeles 305

12 The Book Triumphant: Bibliophilia and Bohemia in Greater Los Angeles 334

13 On the Blue Train Through Dijon: Pasadena Begins Its Literary Career 362

Material Dreams 390.

Notes:

"First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1996"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [401]-425) and index.

ISBN:

9780195072600

019507260X

OCLC:

42362431

Publisher Number:

99970124411