From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind

An increadibly interesting and fun book; the best book I read in years. Schwartz must have spent decades researching California's history spanning four plus centuries. An eyeopener, a book that will become an 101 course on California history. Who is this guy? Whoever it is - A HUGE THANKS for the excellent job written in a delightful and readable manner. A masterpiece

Stephen Schwartz sings a paean to the experimentalist and revolutionary roots of California. From the few shreds of information about the indigenous peoples of the region through the coming of the Spanish, the arrival of the Americans and all the brawling, boiling cauldron of turmoil and triumph that followed, Schwartz remains true to his task of charting the formation of a unique section of America and of rendering its struggles and strife, its tragedies and transcendence real and stunningly palpable to the reader fortunate enough to happen upon this work. Throughout it all, he maintains his objectivity, but never hides his primary allegience: a love of freedom and a boundless sympathy for explorers, tradesmen, priests, shamans, empire builders, unionists, radicals and artistic originals of every possible stamp and hue as long as they demonstrate a respect for that freedom in whatever their endeavors. Yes, every type of character, even some villains, are given center stage and admired if they remained true to that experimentalist vision, no matter what the consequences, but are soundly criticized if they betray their own unique qualities and submerge themselves in some capitulation to the gray forces of mediocrity that always inhabit each age. Sometimes such mediocrity and stultifying forces were represented by the railroads, sometimes by forces on the left, such as the Communists. However, contrary to some reviews I have read, there is nothing rabid about Schwartz's appraisal of such forces. He never loses a sense of compassion and goes out of his way to examine the personalities of these historical personages to find some bit of redeeming grace. Clearly he loves the radicals, the anarchists who were loud, clear and unambiguously vociferous in forwarding their agendas as much as he finds little of value in the deadening straitjackets of the Communists whose hidden, clandestine activities drew no inspiration from the historical ethos of experimentalism in freedom that he succeeds so well in documenting. Schwartz writes well and has an ear for the music of language. To engage such a large mass of historical material and bring not only the major players, but even the minor ones to light with such verve and verisimilitude is a rare accomplishment indeed. You will be educated, you will be entranced, you will be entertained, but most of all, at the end, you will be grateful to the author for having the talent, the concern and the love of his subject that allowed him to make history come alive for you.

I won't normally recommend a book with a theory or hypothesis that may be easily challenged; and so I make no exception here. "From West to East" very quickly makes the point which I personally wholeheartedly agree with. We now know;and have the information available, with the help of this fine text by Mr. Schhwartz, which draws together all the formerly disparate parts of the puzzle,and tells us matter of factly that America, the nation began in California, and moved East! A must read!

A recent article in WSJ illustrates Schwartz's analitical abilities: ------------ WSJ - October 14, 1998 Another Nobel Laureate's Stalinist PastBy STEPHEN SCHWARTZWell, they did it again. A year after they awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Dario Fo, a repulsive anticlerical buffoon from Italy, the Swedish Academy has continued its run of leftist nostalgia, handing the honor to José Saramago, a Portuguese novelist and unrepentant member of that country's Communist Party.As with last year's recognition of Mr. Fo, Mr. Saramago's Nobel drew protests from the Vatican, where the daily L'Osservatore Romano criticized the award as "ideologically oriented," and protested that Mr. Saramago "remains an inveterate Communist." While the Portuguese Bishops' Conference defended their countryman, the Vatican was not alone in its dissent. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, a real hero of intellectual integrity and 1980 Nobel laureate in literature, told the Portuguese daily O Publico: "I am not a supporter of the writings of José Saramago. It is a fashionable kind of writing, filled with humor--but low humor. I do not support this work."Believing Catholics are understandably appalled at the Portuguese author's corrosive attacks on Christianity, as exemplified by his "Gospel According to Jesus Christ," published in the U.S. by Harcourt Brace in 1994. Mr. Saramago's Christ has a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, in a scene reminiscent of Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ." What is up with the Swedish Academy? Are they, as representatives of an officially Protestant nation, fanatical pope baiters?Mr. Saramago, even more than Mr. Fo, has pursued a political career that should have excited some concern among the Swedes. Mr. Fo was a fascist in his youth, then became a communist, and remains an extreme radical leftist. But his antisocial pursuits are mainly intellectual.Mr. Saramago, on the other hand, as a militant member of the Portuguese Communist Party, brings with him a history of really sinister behavior in the interest of a Stalinist agenda. This novelist has behind him an unapologetic involvement in a serious attempt to destroy the freedom of the press in his native country.Few today seem to recall that in late 1975 Portugal was poised to leave NATO and become a new Soviet satellite. The situation in Lisbon at that time was so dire that it was compared with Czechoslovakia in 1948.On Nov. 25, 1975, the Portuguese Communist Party, under its hard-line boss, Alvaro Cunhal, attempted a coup in Lisbon, using leftist Portuguese army paratroops as its cat's-paw. The adventure failed, but the party had laid the foundation for the coup by a wide-ranging campaign against freedom of the press, a months-long effort that closely resembled the assaults on press freedom that accompanied Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba.Mr. Saramago, who was then assistant editor of the L

This major revisioning of the meaning of California is a landmark of the cultural geography of the State. Schwartz offers a strikingly readable history, a cultural revision of the myths that embody the place of the California dream. He realizes that California is more a state of mind than a State of the Union. By placing the genesis of California from the deep utopian dreams of Spanish explorers, Schwartz manages to begin the deeper work of reintegration of Californian Hispanic heritage, a heritage that will become incontrovertible in the opening decades of the next century. He is also sensitive to other marginal and silenced aspects of the California story. His linking of Amerindian use of the datura and styles of shamanism to the visionary alternatives of the 60s counterculture, His strong feeling for labor history as it created a proletarian culture that has been so often down played in most cultural histories of the State. Schwartz in many ways integrates the political culture with the literary and cultural, especially poetic enterprise as embodied in the San Francisco Renaissance. By showing how California culture has a greater cosmopolitan depth than the Eastern Establishment has usually allowed, being swept up in its own ethnocentric and Eurocentric biases. In many ways following Schwartz's riveting arguments, California is truly more cosmopolitan and multicultural than has been realized. It is the future of the American dream. It provides a unique panorama of the political poetics of California. We are treated to a better account of the communist influences on culture than has usually been admitted. Schwartz has mastered an immense amount of material. Much of it never before integrated into the cultural history of the State. This mastery of several languages and an transnational poetic idiom helps to make this study one of the most vibrant and controversial cultural histories to appear in years. It makes Kevin Starr's multivolume epoch of California seems pedestrian and plodding. Schwartz'! s well written saga is one of the best revisionist histories that reinvents many of the terms and characters of the cultural politics and poetics of the State. It is a postmodernist epic history that does more to invent the future than it does by rediscovering a neglected past.