History Of California Research Articles

Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens Errol Wayne Stevens. In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. 236 pp. Illustrations. Hardcover $39.95. Nicolas G. Rosenthal Nicolas G. Rosenthal NICOLAS G. ROSENTHAL is a professor of history at Loyola Marymount University, where his teaching and research focus on Indigenous, California, and U.S. history. He is the author of Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (2012) and is at work on a history of Indigenous artists in the twentieth century. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 120–122. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.120 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 Nicolas G. Rosenthal; Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 120–122. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.120 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 Many of us who teach college courses on California history focus a portion of the class on the Great Depression. Often framed as both preludes to and influences on the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s New Deal, popular movements such as guaranteed income to the state’s senior citizens through the Townsend Plan and Upton Sinclair’s ill-fated run for governor on the End Poverty in California (EPIC) platform make the case for studying California to understand the state’s influence on national trends and broader patterns. Yet there is surprisingly little scholarship contextualizing these and other “utopian schemes” for which Los Angeles, especially, became an ideal environment in the 1930s. Thus, explanations for why Southern California was at the center of such movements often revert to those used by cultural commentators of the period. Author Nathanael West, for instance, in his classic 1939 novel Day of the Locust, depicted the thousands of... You do not currently have access to this content.

Letter from the Editor

Editorial| May 01 2023 Letter from the Editor Mary Ann Irwin Mary Ann Irwin Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.1 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 Mary Ann Irwin; Letter from the Editor. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 1–3. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.1 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 This issue addresses the fundamental role of controversy in history. We expect Michael F. Magliari’s “The California Indian Scalp Bounty Myth: Evidence of Genocide or Just Faulty Scholarship?” to provoke controversy. In it, Magliari debunks an assertion that has become commonplace in histories of the newly formed state of California: that white Americans were so determined to exterminate California’s Indigenous population that state, county, and other officials appropriated funds and paid cash bounties to so-called “Indian hunters” for scalps, heads, and other Native American body parts. Magliari traces this evolving narrative through multiple secondary sources, searching for the primary source evidence upon which these claims were originally based. His article records the results of that careful search. We invite scholars of California history to debate Magliari’s conclusions. This is our job as historians: we argue with one another. It is our duty, as scholars, to seek the truth and to... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White Richard White. Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University. New York: W.W. Norton, 2022. 362 pp. Hardcover $35.00. Robert W. Cherny Robert W. Cherny ROBERT W. CHERNY, professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University, has written on Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics and on California and western history, most recently in Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend (2023). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.105 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 Robert W. Cherny; Review: Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University, by Richard White. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 105–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.105 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 As the long subtitle indicates, this book is about several things, but they all focus, in one way or another, on the death of Jane Lathrop Stanford on February 28, 1905, in the Moana Hotel in Honolulu. The attending physicians, the coroner’s jury, and public officials in Hawaii all concluded that Stanford, the widow of railroad baron and former California governor Leland Stanford and the cofounder of Stanford University, had been poisoned by strychnine. There had been a previous attempt at poisoning on January 14, 1905, when she was in the Stanford mansion in San Francisco. But despite the abundant physical and circumstantial evidence, Stanford University officials, led by President David Starr Jordan, insisted that hers was a natural death. As White acknowledges early on, Robert Cutler, in The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford (2003), confirmed that Stanford indeed died by strychnine poisoning. White explains that his initial interest in... You do not currently have access to this content.

A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District

Research Article| May 01 2023 A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District James R. Grossman James R. Grossman JAMES R. GROSSMAN is executive director of the American Historical Association. Formerly vice-president for research and education at the Newberry Library, he has taught at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Diego. The author of Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration and A Chance to Make Good: African-Americans, 1900–1929, Grossman was project director and coeditor of the print and digital Encyclopedia of Chicago. He is editor emeritus of the University of Chicago Press book series “Historical Studies of Urban America,” which he abandoned to his colleagues after fifty volumes. Articles and short essays have focused on urban history, African American history, ethnicity, higher education, and the place of history in public culture. Short pieces have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time, New York Daily News, North Shore Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hill, and elsewhere. Grossman’s consulting experience includes history-related projects generated by BBC, Smithsonian, various “Teaching American History” programs, and a wide range of theater companies, films, museums, libraries, and foundations. He has served on governing boards of the American Council of Learned Societies, Association of American Colleges and Universities, Center for Research Libraries, National Humanities Alliance, Vivian G. Harsh Society, and Chicago Metro History Education Center. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 78–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.78 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 James R. Grossman; A Letter from the American Historical Association to California’s Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 78–81. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.78 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 In January 2022, the American Historical Association (AHA) sent a letter to the leadership of the Placentia–Yorba Linda Unified School District (California) opposing a proposed Resolution No. 21–12, “Resolution Opposing the Teaching of Critical Race Theory” (see the proposed resolution at https://4.files.edl.io/e3c9/11/22/21/155531-39d91aa4-c235-4949-a1f4-153f76aa17e8.pdf). We were alerted to this agenda item by a resident concerned about censorship and the quality of history education. We immediately noticed that its text resembled bills being introduced in many state legislatures; the AHA had already begun writing letters to members of those legislatures (for the AHA’s list of letters, organized by state—at this writing, eighteen states—see https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/teaching-history-with-integrity/freedom-to-learn). In this particular letter the AHA noted that “the proposal singled out one set of ideas—critical race theory—as a subject that cannot be taught in Placentia–Yorba Linda schools. The letter includes a link to a statement criticizing similar legislative efforts to restrict education about racism in American... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Italian Immigration in the American West, 1870–1940, by Kenneth Scambray

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Italian Immigration in the American West, 1870–1940, by Kenneth Scambray Kenneth Scambray. Italian Immigration in the American West, 1870–1940. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2021. 368 pp. Illustrations. Paperback $45.00. William Issel William Issel WILLIAM ISSEL is professor of history emeritus at San Francisco State University. His recent publications include a chapter, “Deutsche Einwanderer in San Francisco,” in California Dreams: San Francisco—Ein Porträt (2019), and a thriller, Coit Tower (2022), that features an Italian American private investigator in World War II San Francisco. Issel is the winner of the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Catholic Historical Association for his book For Both Cross and Flag (2010), a study of a forgotten culture war in California between Italian American Catholics and Italian American Communists before and during World War II. From 1976 to 1979, while teaching in London, he traveled extensively in Italy and Sicily interviewing city planners, architects, and citizen activists for his lectures on the conservation and preservation of historic central city districts in Italy, France, the UK, and the USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 109–111. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.109 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 William Issel; Review: Italian Immigration in the American West, 1870–1940, by Kenneth Scambray. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 109–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.109 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 When Humbert W. Ziroli entered the mess hall for dinner on his first day at the Naval Academy, several fourth-year midshipmen surrounded him and pushed him up against the wall. “You’re our first Italian. Let’s hear you sing.” The nineteen-year-old Ziroli walked to the nearest table, swept aside several place settings, climbed atop the table, and belted out the “E lucevan le stelle” (“And the stars were shining”) aria from Puccini’s Tosca. “Nobody at Annapolis ever bothered me about being Italian again.” Asked to explain his audacious response years later, the highly decorated retired admiral credited his bravery to his family and his Worcester, Massachusetts, Italian community institutions.1 In Italian Immigration in the American West, Kenneth Scambray assembles a rich collection of personal and family stories of Italians who found themselves caught up in the quotidian contests over access to power, privilege, and prestige that flourished in... You do not currently have access to this content.

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

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.

Review: Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, by Susan Delson

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, by Susan Delson Susan Delson. Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 418 pp. Paperback $35.00. Kim Nalley Kim Nalley KIM NALLEY, a cultural historian with a PhD from UC Berkeley, specializes in African American history and African diasporic studies. Her dissertation, “GI Jazz: African Americans as Occupiers and Artists in Post–World War II Germany,” was nominated for an “Outstanding History Dissertation” award and draws extensively upon oral history and musical/musicological analyses to investigate the differing ideas of freedom and democracy among African American GIs and Germans. Her published works include “Losing Its Grease: Black Cultural Politics in the Globalization of Jazz.” She is on the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Justice board for the California Conservatory of Jazz and has presented her work at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and GoogleTV. She is currently on the faculty of California State University East Bay. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 117–120. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.117 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 Kim Nalley; Review: Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time, by Susan Delson. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 117–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.117 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 Susan Delson, a film critic for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, investigates “Soundies” in her new book, Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time. Soundies were a type of 1940s wartime antecedent to MTV, though Delson dislikes the comparison to music videos. “Soundies were three-minute films made to be screened on movie jukeboxes known as Panorams—freestanding, closed-system projection cabinets” (3). These Panorams were placed in bars, cafés, and defense industry sites (3). Delson uses this brand name in reference to similar “musical shorts” made by Warner Brothers, Filmcraft, and a host of other companies, some of which were shown in movie houses before the main feature film. Delson mostly ignores the early shorts that feature Black people, which makes the intent of her book, “the changing image of Black Americans on screen,” difficult to prove, since what the image... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California, by Martin Rizzo-Martinez

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California, by Martin Rizzo-Martinez Martin Rizzo-Martinez. We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. 536 pp. Illustrations. Hardcover $80.00. Natale Zappia Natale Zappia NATALE ZAPPIA is associate professor of history and director of the Institute for Sustainability at California State University, Northridge. His works include The Many Faces of Edward Sherriff Curtis: A Collection of Portraits and Stories from Native North America (with Steadman Upham, 2006); Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin (2014); and Rez Metal (film and book, 2020). Zappia is also the associate project director of the Early California Cultural Atlas. He currently works with local tribal communities in Southern California on the Los Angeles Landscape History Mapping Project. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 126–128. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.126 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 Natale Zappia; Review: We Are Not Animals: Indigenous Politics of Survival, Rebellion, and Reconstitution in Nineteenth-Century California, by Martin Rizzo-Martinez. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 126–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.126 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 We Are Not Animals is a monumental volume exploring the Indigenous contours that shaped the colonial, Mexican, and American periods of Alta California. Hyperfocused on the intricate and continuous lineages, traditional ecological knowledge, and cultures of multiple communities within and around Santa Cruz (home of Mission Santa Cruz), Martin Rizzo nonetheless offers history on an epic scale. His study is enmeshed in deep time, ecologies, and practices, as well as meticulously engaged with underutilized or overlooked archival sources—particularly those originating from Indigenous archives. Weighing in at nearly five hundred pages and with close to fifty tables, maps, and figures, Rizzo’s work provides the most comprehensive and detailed account to date of the Ohlone experience in what is now the Santa Cruz coastline and mountain range. Although California is home to tech titans with global reach, Native Californians and their histories remain hidden in plain sight. Rizzo’s goal is to cast... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship, by Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship, by Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov. American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. 304 pp. Paperback $34.29. Margaret Kuo Margaret Kuo MARGARET KUO is a professor of history at California State University, Long Beach. She is the author of Intolerable Cruelty: Marriage, Law, and Society in Early Twentieth-Century China (2012). Her current research examines gender and law in Asian and Asian American history. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 115–117. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.115 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 Margaret Kuo; Review: American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship, by Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 115–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.115 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 A list of landmark Supreme Court cases related to racial discrimination usually begins with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), passes through the “separate but equal” finding of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and ends triumphantly with Brown v. Board of Education (1954). A longer list might include Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), Korematsu v. United States (1944), and Loving v. Virginia (1967). The impressive book under review helps make the case for why United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) should be among these decisions of first-order historical significance. The case is duly celebrated as a major legal victory for Asian Americans. At a time when Chinese laborers were barred from entry to the United States and Chinese residents were denied naturalization rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Chinese born in the United States were entitled to birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. Drawing upon past studies that situate Wong... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Making Minimum Wage: Elsie Parrish versus the West Coast Hotel Company, by Helen J. Knowles

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Making Minimum Wage: Elsie Parrish versus the West Coast Hotel Company, by Helen J. Knowles Helen J. Knowles. Making Minimum Wage: Elsie Parrish versus the West Coast Hotel Company. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. 396 pp. Paperback $29.95. Donna C. Schuele Donna C. Schuele DONNA C. SCHUELE is a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA and teaches history, political science, and law in the California State University and University of California systems. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 122–124. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.122 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 Donna C. Schuele; Review: Making Minimum Wage: Elsie Parrish versus the West Coast Hotel Company, by Helen J. Knowles. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 122–124. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.122 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 In the past few decades, a cottage industry has arisen around resurrecting the backstories of landmark constitutional decisions. By driving home the point that constitutional rights become real only if and when ordinary people stand up against their alleged violation, these studies highlight the courageousness of litigants who rarely occupied privileged positions in society. In addition, these studies often dispel the sense of inevitability that comes from a case being well woven into the constitutional fabric of the nation. In Making Minimum Wage, Helen J. Knowles does a fine job of achieving both purposes. The Supreme Court case Parrish v. West Coast Hotel (1937) consistently serves as a turning point and thus is included in a variety of U.S. law and history curricula. In courses on sex-based discrimination, the case marks the point when the Supreme Court stopped waffling over whether protective labor legislation would pass muster only if... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement, by Jennifer L. Holland

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement, by Jennifer L. Holland Jennifer L. Holland. Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. 324 pp. Illustrations. Paperback $29.95. Felicia Kornbluh Felicia Kornbluh FELICIA KORNBLUH is professor of history and of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of Vermont. She is the author of A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice (2023); and The Battle for Welfare Rights: Poverty and Policy in Modern America (2007); and coauthor, with Gwendolyn Mink, of Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective (2018). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 112–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.112 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 Felicia Kornbluh; Review: Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement, by Jennifer L. Holland. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 112–115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.112 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 In Tiny You, an account of the internal logic and symbolic politics of what she terms alternately the “anti-abortion” or “pro-life” movement, historian Jennifer Holland has produced one of the most important studies of that movement ever to appear in print. Holland’s work takes as its foci the “quad states” of the Mountain West, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and the impact of pro-life activists on diverse institutions and publics. While the work does not address itself to grassroots, legislative, or court-based legal action in California, it should be of interest to anyone who cares about U.S. politics over the past half-century. This book should also be read by everyone who is interested in the ways in which militant minorities can transform people’s daily lives, even their personal identities, and how this can, in turn, change statutory and judge-made law. It should also be read by people who... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s, by Natalie Lira

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s, by Natalie Lira Natalie Lira. Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 284 pp. Paperback $29.95. Leslie Digdon Leslie Digdon LESLIE DIGDON is an assistant professor of history and engineering at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is the project lead of the Canadian Anti-eugenics Scholarship Hub (CRASH), and her research focuses on the intersections of eugenics, public health, and institutionalization in the early twentieth century. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 107–109. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.107 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 Leslie Digdon; Review: Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s, by Natalie Lira. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 107–109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.107 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 In Laboratory of Deficiency, Natalie Lira explores the ways in which “racism, ableism, and classism” (23) were mobilized to construct both the problem of feeblemindedness and its supposed solution in Southern California in the first half of the twentieth century. Lira uses Pacific Colony, a public psychiatric hospital established in 1917, as a case study and has divided her text into thematic chapters that examine the institution’s creation and operation, as well as what it represented to the government, stakeholders, and those whom it targeted and incarcerated. Employing the lenses and frameworks of reproductive justice and critical disability studies, Lira makes important contributions to the historiographies of eugenics, institutionalization, race, and reproductive justice at both the regional and transnational levels. In so doing, she demonstrates the ways in which “diagnoses of feeblemindedness and practices of institutionalization used the language of medicine and science to naturalize existing social hierarchies and... You do not currently have access to this content.

We Are the Land: A History of Native California by Damon B.Akins and William J.BauerJr.Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 384 pp.

We Are the Land: A History of Native California by Damon B.Akins and William J.BauerJr.Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 384 pp.

Announcing the 2022 Richard J. Orsi “Best Article” Prize

Editorial| February 01 2023 Announcing the 2022 Richard J. Orsi “Best Article” Prize Mary Ann Irwin Mary Ann Irwin Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mary Ann Irwin; Announcing the 2022 Richard J. Orsi “Best Article” Prize. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 1–2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.1 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 It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of our Richard J. Orsi prize for the best article published in California History in 2022. It was difficult to choose the best of the eleven peer-reviewed research articles we published in volume 99. Nonetheless, the committee unanimously selected Warren C. Wood, “S. An-Sky’s The Dybbuk and the Process of Jewish American Identity in 1920s San Francisco,” Vol. 99, No. 2, May (Summer) 2022, with each member agreeing that a very close second was Catherine Christensen Gwin, “The Selling of American Girls: Mexico’s White Slave Trade in the California Imaginary,” Vol. 99, No. 1, February (Spring) 2022.The committee’s report on the winning article notes:In this well-researched and fascinating case study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century San Francisco’s small but vibrant Jewish community, Warren C. Wood shows how the 1928 staging of playwright S. An-Sky’s The Dybbuk helped heal... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities, by Peter S. Alagona

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities, by Peter S. Alagona Peter S. Alagona. The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 296 pp. Illustrations. Hardcover $26.95. Emily Wakild Emily Wakild EMILY WAKILD is the Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Chair for the Environment and Public Lands at Boise State University. She is the author of Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks (2011) and coauthor, with Michelle K. Berry, of A Primer for Teaching Environmental History (2017). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.111 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Emily Wakild; Review: The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities, by Peter S. Alagona. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 111–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.111 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 Peter Alagona’s Accidental Ecosystem provides a marvelous history of the present, with key episodes from the past for context. Arguing that urban spaces became “rich wildlife habitat” (2) while we were mostly not paying attention, Alagona masterfully brings debates about rewilding into conversation with the habitat where most people and many animals already live: cities. Instead of treating wildlife populations and large vertebrate habitat as something out there, the author shows with countless vivid and compelling examples that nature’s return is already happening in here. The book’s style, pace, and evidence convincingly argue that the choices we make today about compassionate management will “affect wildlife and shape ecosystems—in cities and beyond—for generations to come” (7). This book has the potential not just to reshape the field, but to reshape the way humans approach the benefits and challenges of living with animals. Over the course of fourteen chapters, Alagona... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification, by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification, by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli Pascale Joassart-Marcelli. The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. 288 pp. Illustrations, maps, and tables. Paperback $30.00. Sean M. Crotty Sean M. Crotty SEAN M. CROTTY is an associate professor of geography and affiliated faculty, Center for Urban Studies, Texas Christian University. He lived in San Diego for nine years while completing an MA and PhD in geography at San Diego State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines the spatial dimensions of a variety of messy urban phenomena, from the locational strategies of informal day-laborers to the adaptive reuse of abandoned grain silos. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 96–98. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.96 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Sean M. Crotty; Review: The $16 Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification, by Pascale Joassart-Marcelli. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 96–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.96 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 If you are looking for a simple, apolitical book to talk about at your next big family meal or book club meeting, The $16 Taco probably will not fit the bill. However, if you are interested in understanding the ways that food and power intersect to create landscapes of hunger and plenty in U.S. cities, then order The $16 Taco immediately. Joassart-Marcelli uses the lens of the foodscape, “the social, political, economic, and cultural setting in which food acquires meaning and value” (6–7), to frame a compelling argument for the centrality of food in much broader structural issues of social, political, cultural inequalities made material in cities across the United States. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, and readers with expertise in history, economics, urban planning/studies, critical race theory, food studies, and geography will all find sections that speak directly to their particular areas of interest. The $16 Taco reflects... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975, by Frank P. Barajas

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975, by Frank P. Barajas Frank P. Barajas. Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 288 pp. Photographs, illustrations, and map. Hardcover $60.00. Tomás F. Summers Sandoval, Jr. Tomás F. Summers Sandoval, Jr. TOMÁS F. SUMMERS SANDOVAL JR. is an associate professor of history and Chicanx-Latinx studies at Pomona College. He is the author of Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco (2013) and is currently president of the Oral History Association. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 109–111. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.109 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Tomás F. Summers Sandoval; Review: Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975, by Frank P. Barajas. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 109–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.109 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 How did a multigenerational population of ethnic Mexicans in Ventura County express a collective politics in the mid-twentieth century? This question lies at the heart of the new book by Frank P. Barajas (California State University, Channel Islands), a thorough local history of the Chicano movement that also makes significant interventions in the broader historical understanding of the era. In Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975, Barajas outlines the postwar political efforts of Mexican Americans in the region, from movements “with increased fervor for an equal education” to those “in defense of a largely migrant-Mexicanist population of workers” (82, 139). The ethnic Mexican population at the center of the story was more variegated than homogeneous. While they built from a common ground, sharing a “farmworker provenance” and a sense of purpose and action, differences of generation, nativity, and even... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream”, by Shelley Sang-Hee Lee

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream”, by Shelley Sang-Hee Lee Shelley Sang-Hee Lee. Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream.” Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022. 216 pp. Paperback $26.00. Elwing Suong Gonzalez Elwing Suong Gonzalez ELWING SUONG GONZALEZ teaches U.S. history at Rio Hondo College. She is also a middle school teacher, artist, and historian who has researched and published work on Vietnamese refugee resettlement and on immigration and demographic changes in Los Angeles. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 101–103. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.101 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Elwing Suong Gonzalez; Review: Koreatown, Los Angeles: Immigration, Race, and the “American Dream”, by Shelley Sang-Hee Lee. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 101–103. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.101 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 In an age of liberal multiculturalism, globalization, and neoliberalism, the role of the ethnic immigrant enclave has shifted from previous iterations as restricted ghetto or landing pad for socially marginalized groups. Shelley Sang-Hee Lee’s Koreatown, Los Angeles explores the creation and growth of a relatively recently established ethnic enclave, one that exists as both a geographic location and a symbolic place within a racially and ethnically diverse urban landscape. Using the histories of Korean immigration to the United States, post–World War II social and demographic changes, and L.A.’s makeover and ascent to major “global city,” Lee examines the specific story of L.A.’s Koreatown and poses questions about how ethnic spaces are developed, for whom, and at what cost. Lee’s work shifts back and forth between macro-level structural and systemic forces and inequalities and the day-to-day lived experiences and local-level efforts of individuals who shaped Korean immigrant settlement and placemaking in... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture, by Corrina Laughlin

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture, by Corrina Laughlin Corrina Laughlin. Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 201 pp. Paperback $29.95. Terry Shoemaker Terry Shoemaker TERRY SHOEMAKER is an assistant teaching professor at Arizona State University. He holds advanced degrees in religious studies and has published books and articles on the topics of evangelicals in America, religion and sports, and popular culture. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (1): 107–109. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.107 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Terry Shoemaker; Review: Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture, by Corrina Laughlin. California History 1 February 2023; 100 (1): 107–109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.1.107 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 American evangelicals, a politically active and vocal Protestant subgroup, first rose to political prominence in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration. In the past decade, evangelicals reclaimed a prominence in American news and media outlets due to their overwhelming support for the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump. Known for adopting new technological tools, evangelicals have successfully utilized digital resources to spread their message, values, and ethics. However, adoption of technology has many consequences, as Corrina Laughlin argues well in Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture. Simply stated, the digital world is “reshaping what it means to be an evangelical” (8). As a framework for her study, Laughlin establishes the concept of the “digital habitus,” a relational space that permits individuals to engage with one another and form echo chambers; however, the algorithmic systems that power the digital habitus are not neutral, and they influence the... You do not currently have access to this content.

Review: Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber

Review: <i>Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration</i>, by Rachel Schreiber