California is stuffed with myths and legends, yet its political process shouldn’t be. during this refreshingly severe take, Edgar Kaskla brings an research of power—how it's allotted, the way it is used, and to what end—to endure on California’s political procedure and the various troubling matters it at the moment faces. ranging from the idea that California is in deep problem politically, economically, culturally, and environmentally, Kaskla lines the state’s fiscal and political improvement as a procedure managed through and for the elite, be they land barons, the Hollywood glitterati, or Silicon Valley execs.

Kaskla specializes in what he calls progress computing device politics—elites and their land use as promoters of improvement and redevelopment—to express scholars how the space among the wealthy and negative in California maintains to widen. As minority groups raise in dimension, because the expense of campaigning within the nation balloons, and because the state’s debt challenge mounts, the socio-economic and cultural concerns at play in California upload as much as a true risk to democratic governance. Kaskla basically outlines how all the state’s associations are geared up, but in addition exhibits how they're affected—indeed distorted—by a number of great financial and social inequalities.

Not one to mince phrases, Kaskla is in locations irreverent, yet his textual content is carefully researched and good argued, by no means crossing the road into the polemical. Tables, figures, maps, and lists for extra studying support make stronger the book’s sizeable issues and important method, and a number of pupil and teacher ancillaries support with research, overview, and preparation.