Book list
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Pastor, University of Southern California professor and author of Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration (2016), considers California's political history and the lessons that can be drawn from it on issues like immigration, socioeconomic policies, and labor reform. Citing statistics, government reports, and local newspapers, Pastor traces and analyzes the various factors, movements, and trends in California's decline and growth from the 1950s up to the present day. Pastor includes a broad swath of information and covers the impacts of both conservative and liberal policies on the state's transformation. Pastor writes clearly and thoughtfully, but readers will need time to read and reflect on his arguments in this academic-leaning text. Readers interested in U.S. social and political economy at the state and local levels will find this a deeply engaging look at the sociopolitical landscape of the Golden State, and what it means for the rest of America.--Pun, Raymond Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus
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A look at the recent history of California and what it may mean for the future of the United States.Presenting both a broad overview and also a series of sharply specific deep dives, Pastor (Sociology/Univ. of Southern California; co-author: Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas, 2015, etc.) traces the story of California since the 1950s, making a compelling case that the state's revival over the last decade or so offers a road map for America in the age of Trump. It's a landscape the author knows intimately; at USC, he co-directs the University's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Here, he develops a multifaceted argument: that California's growth and prosperity was a direct result of forward-looking policies, including free higher education and vast infrastructure projects; that its decline, growing out of the economic insecurities of the 1980s and 1990s, was triggered by xenophobia and protectionism; and that its restoration is the product of progressive political alliances that have made the state a model for national resistance. It's a lot to pack into roughly 200 pages (minus notes), but Pastor pulls it off. He is a knowledgeable guide who writes with fluid authority that is accessible but detailed. Furthermore, his book is no facile defense of exceptionalism but rather a nuanced examination of both the state's complicity in pioneering various destructive policies (reckless tax cutting, anti-immigrant efforts at the ballot box) and its emergence, in the aftermath, as a new political and social landscape, intersectional and built from the grass roots up. "Can the rest of the United States learn from the California story?" Pastor wonders. "The Golden State has its own peculiar history and there is no one size fits all….But no matter how the message may be received, Californians have a special responsibility to communicate what they have learned."Provocative and deftly argued, Pastor's book reminds us that the future is unwritten and that it always has deep roots in, and connections to, the past.

Publishers Weekly
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This slim, densely packed volume covers a great deal of material, tracing the decline of California's midcentury prosperity and the state's eventual rebound from divisive policies and politics. Pastor, a sociologist, blames the decline on Proposition 13, the 1978 property-tax-limitation measure he then feared would "shipwreck the state"-and still feels had a disastrous effect. He gives an opinionated, liberal-minded history of how Prop 13 and other voter initiatives have affected California, emphasizing the unraveling of the social compact that had accommodated a diverse, immigrant-heavy population and a relatively low degree of inequality. The book locates the state's political nadir, in terms of its embrace of reactionary politics, in 2003 with the election to governor of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a celebrity with no political experience peddling populist solutions. After that point, Pastor earnestly tracks the state's renaissance. The story he relates isn't so much a triumph of liberal political leadership and increased public spending that followed Schwarzenegger's administration, but rather a long, methodical series of inclusionary changes in business, demographics, and representative participation. The author holds out a reasonable promise that his state's experience could inform the next swing of the national political pendulum. Like-minded readers will find this claim heartening. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.