This volume of original essays by leading scholars is an innovative, thorough introduction to the history and culture of California. Includes 30 essays by leading scholars in the fieldEssays range widely across perspectives, including political, social, economic, and environmental historyEssays with similar approaches are paired and grouped to work as individual pieces and as companions to each other throughout the textProduced in association with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Includes index.

Introductory Essays. Beyond Dreams and Disappointments: Defining California through Culture / James Quay -- Rereading, Misreading, and Redeeming the Golden State: Defining California through History / D J Waldie -- I Thought California Would Be Different: Defining California through Visual Culture / Catherine Gudis -- At the Crossroads: Defining California through the Global Economy / Richard A Walker -- Early California. Junípero Serra across the Generations / Steven W Hackel -- Alta California, the Pacific, and International Commerce before the Gold Rush / David Igler -- Licit and Illicit Unions: Engendering Mexican Society / Rosamaría Toruno Tanghetti -- Race and Immigration in the Nineteenth Century / Omar Valerio-Jiménez -- Conquest and Statehood. The 1850s / William Deverell -- Nature and Conquest: After the Deluge of '49 / Douglas Cazaux Sackman -- Native Californians in the Nineteenth Century / William Bauer -- Transformations in Late Nineteenth-century Rural California / David Vaught -- Transnational Commercial Orbits / Robert Chao Romero -- Reconsidering Conservation / Benjamin Heber Johnson -- Religion in the Early Twentieth Century / Darren Dochuk -- Immigration, Race, and the Progressives / Lon Kurashige -- New Deal, No Deal: The 1930s / Rick Wartzman -- Modern California. World War II / Arthur Verge -- Between Liberation and Oppression: Gay Politics and Identity / Daniel Hurewitz -- Making Multiculturalism: Immigration, Race, and the Twentieth Century / Kevin Allen Leonard -- The Long 1950s / Shana Bernstein -- Apportionment Politics, 1920-70 / Douglas Smith -- Under the Warm California Sun: Youth Culture in the Postwar Decades / Kirse Granat May -- At the Center of Indian Country / Nicolas G Rosenthal -- Sexual Revolutions and Sexual Politics / Josh Sides -- A Generation of Leaders, but Not in the Fields: The Legacy of Cesar Chavez / Miriam Pawel -- Hollywood Changes its Script / John Horn -- California Prospects in the Twenty-first Century. Immigration and Race in the Twenty-first Century / Bill Ong Hing -- Political Prospects in the Twenty-first Century / Raphael J Sonenshein -- Environmental Prospects in the Twenty-first Century / Jon Christensen.