Contains:
Part 1. Doors of perception. Notes toward an understanding of California / Herbert Gold --
California rising / Wallace Stegner --
Eureka! A celebration of California / John Gregory Dunne --
Lost Horizon / Lewis H. Lapham --
Part 2. Northern California Country. First glimpse of the Sierra / John Muir --
Emerson at Yosemite / John Muir --
Roughing it in San Francisco / Samuel Langhorne Clemens --
The society upon the Stanislaus / Nigey Lennon --
The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras county / Samuel Langhorne Clemens --
What the railroads will bring us / Henry George --
The Shirley letters from the California mines / Louise Clapp --
Old Chinatown / Will Irwin --
Sojourner / Gerald Haslam --
A social history of the hippies / Warren Hinckle --
Why Norman is still on the bus / Lionel Rolfe --
Hippies without a home / Frank Robertson --
Country women / Kate Coleman --
The oranges of the millennium / Henry Miller --
The serial / Cyra McFadden --
Part 3. Southern California Country. Harry's bar, century city / Jack Smith --
Vulnerable / Richard Reeves --
Looking for history in L.A. / William Irwin Thompson --
The discovery of Los Angeles / Carey McWilliams --
Don't shoot Los Angeles / Carey McWilliams --
The loved one / Evelyn Waugh --
The deer park / Norman Mailer --
All the world's a TV / Ben Masselink --
Part 4. Voices of dissent. Factories in the field / Carey McWilliams --
Their blood is strong / John Steinbeck --
The Okies: forty years later / Gerald Haslam --
The organizer's tale / Cesar Chavez --
Berkeley and the university revolution / Sheldon S. Wolin and John H. Schaar --
A journey into the minds of Watts / Thomas Pynchon --
The revolt of the cockroach people / Oscar Zeta Acosta --
The mayor of Castro Street / Randy Shilts --
Part 5. Paving paradise. The boutiquing of California's coast / John McKinney --
Spaced out west / Stanley Poss --
When you wish upon a star / Richard Stayton --
Bouncing at the whisky / Jeffrey Shore --
Byting the apple / James D. Houston.