Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (Americans and the California Dream) - Softcover

Starr, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019507260X ISBN 13: 9780195072600

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

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 "rich in details and alive with interesting, and sometimes incredible people" (Los Angeles Times). 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.
In a lively and eminently readable narrative, Starr reveals how Los Angeles arose almost defiantly on a site lacking many of the advantages required for urban development, creating itself out of sheer will, the Great Gatsby of American cities. He describes how William Ellsworth Smyth, the Peter the Hermit of the Irrigation Crusade, the self-educated, Irish engineer William Mulholland (who built the main aquaducts to Los Angeles), and George Chaffey (who diverted the Colorado River, transforming desert into the lush Imperial Valley) brought life-supporting water to the arid South. He examines the discovery of oil, the boosters and land developers, the evangelists (such as Bob Shuler, the Methodist Savanarola of Los Angeles, and Aimee Semple McPherson), and countless other colorful figures of the period. There are also fascinating sections on the city's architecture the impact of the automobile on city planning, the Hollywood film community, the L.A. literati, and much more.
By the end of the decade, Los Angeles had tripled in population and become the fifth largest city in the nation. In Material Dreams, Starr captures this explosive growth in a narrative tour de force that combines wide-ranging scholarship with captivating prose.

About this title

From the Publisher:

8 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Back Cover:

In this book, the author is focusing on the making of Southern California, its design and material construction in the early and mid-twentieth century, with special reference to the visions and metaphors underlying such a process. This is also a book about design, construction, and identity, whether in aqueducts, architecture, gardens, city-plans, transportation systems, hotels, studio sets, symphony orchestras, or hydroelectric grids.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 019507260X
• ISBN 13: 9780195072600
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496