In 1949, lawyer, historian, and journalist Carey McWilliams stepped back to assess the state of California at the end of its first one hundred years―its history, population, politics, agriculture, and social concerns. As he examined the reasons for the prodigious growth and productivity that have characterized California since the Gold Rush, he praised the vitality of the new citizens who had come from all over the world to populate the state in a very short time. But he also made clear how brutally the new Californians dealt with "the Indian problem," the water problem, and the need for migrant labor to facilitate California's massive and highly profitable agricultural industry. As we look back now on 150 years of statehood, it is particularly useful to place the events of the past fifty years in the context of McWilliams's assessment in California: The Great Exception. Lewis Lapham has written a new foreword for this edition.

California: The Great Exception

History

Lewis H. Lapham

Carey McWilliams

Americas

University of California Press

This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field―together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck―dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry―Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians―the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California

Business & Money

Economics

The Education of Carey McWilliams

Simon&Schuster

California, the Great Exception

California, the great exception

Peregrine Smith

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

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

Heyday Books

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Books by Carey McWilliams