A01=Carey McWilliams
agricultural industry
agriculture
american history
american west
asian american
Author_Carey McWilliams
california
california agriculture
california history
Category=JP
Category=KCZ
Category=NHTB
central valley project
conservation
crops
drought
environment
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exceptionalism
farm workers
frontier
geography
gold rush
hispanic
history
immigration
indigenous culture
indigenous people
irrigation
kearneyism
labor
latino
latinx
migrant labor
native americans
nonfiction
politics
sacramento
spanish colony
statehood
travel
violence
water rights
water use
west
Product details
- ISBN 9780520218932
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Apr 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In 1949, lawyer, historian, and journalist Carey McWilliams stepped back to assess the state of California at the end of its first one hundred years--its history, population, politics, agriculture, and social concerns. As he examined the reasons for the prodigious growth and productivity that have characterized California since the Gold Rush, he praised the vitality of the new citizens who had come from all over the world to populate the state in a very short time. But he also made clear how brutally the new Californians dealt with "the Indian problem," the water problem, and the need for migrant labor to facilitate California's massive and highly profitable agricultural industry. As we look back now on 150 years of statehood, it is particularly useful to place the events of the past fifty years in the context of McWilliams's assessment in California: The Great Exception. Lewis Lapham has written a new foreword for this edition.
Carey McWilliams (1905-1980), editor of The Nation from 1955 to 1975, also served as California Commissioner of Immigration and Housing for four years. He was the author of many books, including Factories in the Field, Ill Fares the Land, Brothers under the Skin, A Mask for Privilege, and Southern California: An Island on the Land. Lewis H. Lapham, a native San Franciscan, is the editor of Harper's Magazine.
