From O.J. to Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes to rolling blackouts, silicon valley to riots in the street, California state historian Kevin Starr has assembled the history of the Golden Gate State since 1990 to create a vivid snapshot of a state constantly on the edge of tomorrow. Coast of Dreams captures an extraordinary place, from its rich and exceptionally diverse palette of people, cultures and values; to its economy that is larger than most nations and mirrors the economic state of the country; to a political landscape so roiled that a Governor can be recalled scant months after his re-election and replaced by a Hollywood action star. This is a book that is sweeping in scope, intimate in detail and altogether fascinated with the splendor of California. “Vivid, precise, and astute. . . . Starr's cultural range has always been broad and his grasp sure. Most important, he's able to put tastes and ways of life in historical context.”– Los Angeles Times Book Review “Kevin Starr is nothing short of the John Muir of our times. . . . [He] is utterly fascinated by California and how it has evolved.” – Los Angeles Times “Starr brings his magnificent, multivolume series Americans and the California Dream, the product of a quarter-century of work up to the present. An unfailingly interesting, highly readable contribution to Starr's grand series.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Extraordinary. . . . Sweeping, deeply personal and insightful”– Tucson Gazette In this extraordinary book, Kevin Starr-widely acknowledged as the premier historian of California, the scope of whose scholarship the "Atlantic Monthly has called "breathtaking"-probes the possible collapse of the California dream in the years 1990--2003. In a series of compelling chapters, "Coast of Dreams moves through a variety of topics that show the California of the last decade, when the state was sometimes stumbling, sometimes humbled, but, more often, flourishing with its usual panache. From gang violence in Los Angeles to the spectacular rise-and equally spectacular fall-of Silicon Valley, from the Northridge earthquake to the recall of Governor Gray Davis, Starr ranges over myriad facts, anecdotes, news stories, personal impressions, and analyses to explore a time of unprecedented upheaval in California. "Coast of Dreams describes an exceptional diversity of people, cultures, and values; an economy that mirrors the economic state of the nation; a battlefield where industry and the necessities of infrastructure collide with the inherent demands of a unique and stunning natural environment. It explores California politics (including Arnold Schwarzenegger's election in the 2003 recall), the multifaceted business landscape, and controversial icons such as O. J. Simpson. "Historians of the future," Starr writes, "will be able to see with more certainty whether or not the period 1990-2003 was not only the end of one California but the beginning of another"; in the meantime, he gives a picture of the place and time in a book at once sweeping and riveting in its details, deeply informed, engagingly personal, and altogether fascinating. "From the Hardcover edition. Kevin Starr is University Professor of History at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. From 1994 to 2004, he served as the state librarian for California. His writing has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and gold and silver medals from the Commonwealth Club of California. He divides his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Chapter 1 Surf's Up! Most sunny afternoons in Newport Beach, Orange County, in the fall of 1997, Veronica Kay, a five-foot-eleven sun-bleached blonde Valkyrie, a junior at Newport Harbor High, could be found surfing toward shore on a killer wave. It may have cost Veronica $1,600 to do this bit of surfing-that's the fee she would collect that afternoon in Los Angeles after modeling for Union Bay jeans, J. Crew, Sunglass Hut, or any other company that was seeking a knockout blonde with the Southern California surfer look. Veronica Kay was certainly that: she had won Seventeen magazine's New Star Showcase (supermodel Niki Taylor got her start in the same contest), and was already the star of modeling sessions in Tahiti for Wave Action magazine and heading for Bali in May for another shoot. Kay was also a ranked surfer, obsessed with the waves since the age of thirteen, winning at the end of her sophomore year her first national competition at Trestles, a surf spot near San Clemente. Without the surf, Kay might have been just another lost California kid. Her parents divorced when she was six. The split plunged Kay's mother and two siblings into poverty. Only contributions of groceries from friends kept them fed. Her brother and sister struggled with drug addiction. It was the same old California story, sadly, and at thirteen Kay might very well have been expected to follow the drill; but she picked up a surfboard instead, and in May 1996 was