Review: Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City, by Carol Lynn McKibben

Abstract

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City, by Carol Lynn McKibben Carol Lynn McKibben. Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022. 464 pp. Paperback $30.00. Tamara Venit Shelton Tamara Venit Shelton TAMARA VENIT SHELTON is a professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and author of two books, A Squatter’s Republic: Land and the Politics of Monopoly in California, 1850–1900 and Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, which won the Phi Alpha Theta Award for Best Subsequent Book in 2020. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 124–126. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.124 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Tamara Venit Shelton; Review: Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City, by Carol Lynn McKibben. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 124–126. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.124 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search The city of Salinas, nestled in a Central California valley of the same name, is best known as the childhood home of John Steinbeck and the source of inspiration for much of his work, including East of Eden. Readers of Steinbeck and students of California rural history will recognize the diverse agricultural community presented in Carol Lynn McKibben’s meticulously and deeply researched new book, Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City. McKibben provides an exhaustive account of city building in Salinas, a place typically associated with farming. Nonetheless, as Richard C. Wade’s “spearhead thesis” taught us more than seventy years ago, the American West—including California—has always been urban. Indeed, the West was the most urban part of the country in the nineteenth century, in terms of the percentage of population living in cities. But while histories of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other... You do not currently have access to this content.