Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader (California Legacy Book)($13.87Value)

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A collection from one of the twentieth century's great activist journalists ''It suddenly occurred to me that, in all the world, there neither was nor would ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here, indeed, was the place for me: a ringside seat at the circus.''--Carey McWilliams, in Southern California Country Carey McWilliams (1905-1980)--lawyer, activist, historian, and editor of The Nation for two decades--wrote the history of California as no one else could, or would. Alternately scathing, amusing, and disturbing, his sharp and literate accounts shatter the myths meant to obscure the real workings of the state, revealing always the relationship between the exploited and those who would exploit them. Readers will find that McWilliams's writing on history and the issues of his day is still relevant--in fact, it is the basis for the field that we now call California studies. His painstakingly researched accounts on topics ranging from racism to the intricacies of commerce, from farm labor to the cults of California, have opened the door for generations of writers and thinkers. Introduction by Gray Brechin; Preface by Wilson Carey McWilliams ''McWilliams was one of the most politically aware and influential writers of his day, exposing the plight of the California migrant farmworker, speaking out against the interning of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and condemning the McCarthy witch-hunts of the Cold War period.''-- Rutgers Focus (magazine) ''If there was a march, [McWilliams] marched; a committee or panel, he served; a pamphlet to be written, he wrote; a witness needed, he testified.''--John Gregory Dunne ''If John Steinbeck was a novelist seeking documentation, Carey McWilliams was a documentary journalist seeking the moral and imaginative intensity of art.'' --Kevin Starr Carey McWilliams was born December 13, 1905 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the son of a cattle rancher. After attending the University of Southern California he was admitted to the California State Bar in 1927 and practiced law in Los Angeles. In 1945 he became a contributing editor to The Nation and and worked his way into becoming the editor in 1952. As a journalist McWilliams was in the vanguard of most of the radical social causes of the day—exposing the plight of the California migrant farm workers, speaking out against the interning of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and condemning the McCarthy witch hunts of the cold War period, to name only a few of the the movements with which he associated. The author of more than a dozen books, McWilliams was one of the most politically aware and influential writers of his day. Carey McWilliams died in New York on June 17, 1980. Used Book in Good Condition