A Golden Starr Shines
By Nicole St. Pierre
California State Librarian Kevin Starr has made it his life’s work to pin down the elusive history of California.
More than 30 years in the making, his six-volume book series titled “Americans and the California Dream” captures the enigmatic blend of dreams and hardscrabble reality that loosely defines California. To date, Starr’s books uncover how the Golden State emerged from the Gold Rush, absorbed the shocks of the Great Depression, and was transformed by World War II.
In mid-2003, Starr’s series leaps forward with the release of “Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, the 1990s.” The book delivers a series of snappy chapters and lively present-tense reporting that reveals Starr’s skill as a contemporary journalist, covering timely issues such as immigration, urban growth and the dot-com debacle.
“This was the fast-forward decade that began with the collapse of the Cold War economy, saw us recover and then saw us move into an uncertain future,” says the University Professor who teaches history.
Starr’s quest to understand California’s influence on the American experience began in 1967, when the then-Harvard Ph.D. student found himself at loss for a thesis topic.
“I went to the fourth floor of Widener Library to browse through the American collection. A section was taken up with books on California because Horace Davis had left money to the library, resulting in a tremendous collection,” says Starr. “The juxtaposition of New England, that sense of national purpose and those books on California set me on a course so that, 35 years later, I’m still struggling with explanations.”
Since receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard and his Master’s of Library Science from UC Berkeley, Starr has penned more than a million words about California. A contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times, he has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Society of American Historians, the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
So what’s next on Starr’s plate? Once again, the historian is stepping back in time. He currently is writing “Finding the Dream: California in the 1950s.” With catchy chapter titles like Kids on Bikes and Baghdad by the Bay, Starr’s book will capture the suburbanization of California, the evolution of public works, youth in the 1950s, the beginnings of the civil rights movement, and how music like that of the Rat Pack helped California swing into the 1960s.
But the ’60s will be where Starr waves goodbye to California. His next venture: “I’m going to write about the history of Roman Catholic laity and Americans in the Asia/Pacific Basin,” he says. “I’ll leave the 1960s and beyond for another California historian.”
Certainly, his will be tough shoes to fill.
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