This marvelously evocative book by Stephen Johnson, Gerald Haslam, and Robert Dawson―all natives of the Great Central Valley of California―is the first to explore in detail the rich natural and social history of the state's agricultural heartland. Gerald Haslam's text celebrates the tenacious people of the Valley, where hard work and ingenuity are the means to both survival and success. This is land that gives little but yields, under pressure, to creative experiments with unusual crops. Stephen Johnson's and Robert Dawson's stunning photographs reveal the immense beauty of the region as well as the delicate relationship between the land and the people who work it. The Central Valley is California's economic hub as well as its physical center. A plain some 430 miles long and up to 75 miles wide, surrounded by mountains and covering nearly fifteen million acres―about the size of England―this valley has become the richest farming region in the world. More than 25 percent of the table food produced in the U.S. is grown here. Its southernmost county, Kern, produces more oil than some OPEC countries. The Valley is as rich in people as it is in resources. Tagalog, Hmong, Spanish, English, Cantonese, Russian, Italian―all are spoken here. The population of farm laborers, small family farms, powerful agribusinesses, and, increasingly, urban professionals make the region's economic disparities as palpable as its cultural diversity. The Valley has also produced a wealth of writers―Maxine Hong Kingston from Stockton, Richard Rodriguez and Joan Didion from Sacramento, Gary Soto from Fresno, among others―as well as the award-winning El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers' Theater). But the Valley is imperiled. The past 150 years of massive agricultural expansion and population growth have systematically destroyed much of the area's original wildlife, and the "plain of majestic oaks" seen by early travelers has vanished. The region is also plagued by a host of critical issues: chemical pollution, soil erosion, water politics, the treatment of minorities, economic inequities, farm foreclosures. Johnson's and Dawson's photographs―which are complemented by engravings by Thomas Moran, paintings by Albert Bierstadt and William Hahn, and photographs by Carleton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, and Russell Lee, among others―bring home to us, as only visual images can, that it is up to us to safeguard the future of this endangered valley, to conserve its extraordinary human and natural wealth, and to try to reclaim some of its lost grandeur.

The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland (A Centennial Book)

Arts & Photography

Haslam, Gerald W.

JOHNSON, Stephen

Dawson, Robert

Photography & Video

University of California Press

California has been fertile ground for country music since the 1920s, nurturing a multitude of talents from Gene Autry to Glen Campbell, Rose Maddox to Barbara Mandrell, Buck Owens to Merle Haggard. In this affectionate homage to California's place in country music's history, Gerald Haslam surveys the Golden State's contributions to what is today the most popular music in America. At the same time he illuminates the lives of the white, working-class men and women who migrated to California from the Dust Bowl, the Hoovervilles, and all the other locales where they had been turned out, shut down, or otherwise told to move on. Haslam's roots go back to Oildale, in California's central valley, where he first discovered the passion for country music that infuses Workin' Man Blues. As he traces the Hollywood singing cowboys, Bakersfield honky-tonks, western-swing dance halls, "hillbilly" radio shows, and crossover styles from blues and folk music that also have California roots, he shows how country music offered a kind of cultural comfort to its listeners, whether they were oil field roustabouts or hash slingers. Haslam analyzes the effects on country music of population shifts, wartime prosperity, the changes in gender roles, music industry economics, and television. He also challenges the assumption that Nashville has always been country music's hometown and Grand Ole Opry its principal venue. The soul of traditional country remains romantically rural, southern, and white, he says, but it is also the anthem of the underdog, which may explain why California plays so vital a part in its heritage: California is where people reinvent themselves, just as country music has reinvented itself since the first Dust Bowl migrants arrived, bringing their songs and heartaches with them.

Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California

Music

California has been fertile ground for country music since the 1920s, nurturing a multitude of talents from Gene Autry to Glen Campbell, Rose Maddox to Barbara Mandrell, Buck Owens to Merle Haggard. In this affectionate homage to California's place in country music's history, Gerald Haslam surveys the Golden State's contributions to what is today the most popular music in America. At the same time he illuminates the lives of the white, working-class men and women who migrated to California from the Dust Bowl, the Hoovervilles, and all the other locales where they had been turned out, shut down, or otherwise told to move on.Haslam's roots go back to Oildale, in California's central valley, where he first discovered the passion for country music that infuses Workin' Man Blues. As he traces the Hollywood singing cowboys, Bakersfield honky-tonks, western-swing dance halls, "hillbilly" radio shows, and crossover styles from blues and folk music that also have California roots, he shows how country music offered a kind of cultural comfort to its listeners, whether they were oil field roustabouts or hash slingers.Haslam analyzes the effects on country music of population shifts, wartime prosperity, the changes in gender roles, music industry economics, and television. He also challenges the assumption that Nashville has always been country music's hometown and Grand Ole Opry its principal venue. The soul of traditional country remains romantically rural, southern, and white, he says, but it is also the anthem of the underdog, which may explain why California plays so vital a part in its heritage: California is where people reinvent themselves, just as country music has reinvented itself since the first Dust Bowl migrants arrived, bringing their songs and heartaches with them.

One of the most gripping images from the 1960s captures the slight figure of Dr. S. I. Hayakawa scrambling onto a sound truck parked in front of San Francisco State College amid campus unrest. Hayakawa had hoped to use this soapbox to address the assembled demonstrators, but instead he ended up ripping out speaker wires and halting an illegal campus demonstration—or denying first-amendment rights to the crowd, depending on your perspective. Indeed, Hayakawa’s entire life defies simplistic labels, and his ability to be categorized largely depends on personal perspective. This intimate and detailed biography draws on interviews with friends and family members, as well as Hayakawa’s own papers and journals, to bring this controversial and fascinating figure to life. He was an enigma to colleagues as well as adversaries, a Republican senator who consistently bucked his party’s ideals with his support of the women’s movement, abortion rights, and even Ronald Reagan’s search for a female running mate. The son of Japanese immigrants, born and raised in Canada before moving to the United States, Hayakawa emerges here as a complex and complicated figure. His blend of heritage, politics, artistic inclination, and intellectual achievement makes him quintessentially American. Visit the author's Web site for bibliographic notes.

In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa

Biographies & Memoirs

Haslam, Janice E.

Historical

Bison Books

Twenty-five stories about quintessential Californians -- working people who struggle to make a living.

That Constant Coyote: California Stories

Literature & Fiction

United States

University of Nevada Press

Haslam’s stories are of the quintessential California of working people who struggle to make a living. He is their spokesperson—no matter what their color or language—because he, too, has chopped cotton under the searing sun, has toiled on drilling rigs in fog thick as oatmeal, has lived in a house where Spanish and English mingled. His writing marks a boundary between the Golden State's stereotypes and the real people who persevere in seeking the California dream.
That Constant Coyote contains twenty-five stories in all, nineteen selections previously published and six new pieces. The stories included in this anthology tell us what life is like in the regions of California and the West where drudgery characterizes each day, where menudo para desayuno or biscuits and gravy replace champagne brunch. Delve into these pages and you will quickly find a set of fascinating characters who inhabit "the other California"—a place Haslam knows well and so deftly describes. Foreword by Ann Ronald. Western Literature Series.

This expanded edition of The Other California, originally published in 1990, contains nineteen essays (six of them new to this collection) on the landscape, literature, and life in the Great Central Valley of California. The Valley, a vast, flat patchwork of fields and orchards, has become the richest farming region in the history of the world. It also has a rich literary tradition: William Saroyan, Joan Didion, William Everson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Soto, and Richard Rodriguez were all raised in this agricultural heartland. Haslam's collection represents the experience of living in the Valley through a variety of writings; some are personal, some regional, others literary. Many of these essays were originally published in national magazines; as a group, they offer readers a fine collection of writings on the landscape and literature of California's Great Central Valley.

The Other California: The Great Central Valley In Life And Letters (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Condor Dreams And Other Fictions (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

In this collection of twenty-five short stories, Gerald Haslam explores the rural areas and small towns of his native region - California's Great Central Valley. The stories reveal a principally masculine cast that is as culturally diverse, and sometimes as zany, as Westerners actually are - a Chinese laborer, a Portuguese farmer, a Vietnamese schoolboy, a black cowboy, an Okie rowdy, an Armenian poet, plus some who blend those and other ingredients.The opening story, "Condor Dreams" is a reflective and delicately instructive tale of a father and son and their connection with the California condor that serves as a metaphor for the region's traditional way of life. "Scars" is a poignant examination of the life of a young man victimized by his alcoholic mother. In "Rising Action" fifteen-year-old Ernest alternately yearns for his first sexual encounter and seeks out a confessor to save him from purgatory. In "Mal de Ojo" Haig regales his gullible charge with the tale of the longest fistfight in small-town history.These pieces range from traditional stories to vignettes to sketches and tales as Haslam seeks literary structures that powerfully project his characters and their experiences. The author's triumph in these stories is that, by making us care about his characters and their settings, he allows us to care more about ourselves and our land.

Condor Dreams And Other Fictions (Western Literature Series)

Haslam explores the rural areas and small towns of his native region—California's Great Central Valley—in this collection of twenty-five short stories. The stories are filled with a principally masculine cast that is as culturally diverse as the West gets: a Chinese laborer, a Portugese farmer, a Vietnamese schoolboy, a black cowboy, and an Armenian poet, just to name a few. These pieces range from traditional stories to vignettes to sketches and talks as Haslam seeks literary structures that powerfully project his characters and their experiences. The author’s triumph in these stories is that, by making us care about his characters and their habitats, he allows us to care more about ourselves and our land.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Leroy Upton, the "straight white male" who is the novel’s central character, has come a long way from the sun-baked working-class neighborhood in Bakersfield where he grew up. The son of an oil-field laborer, Leroy is now a professor at a small college in Northern California. He is happily married, has three much-loved children, and close friends who share his memories and success.
But life is about to deliver a series of challenges that overturn Leroy’s hard-won serenity and threaten to destroy his marriage and his family. Leroy’s father, Earl, once so wise and invincible, is descending into the empty, helpless depths of senility, while his ill-tempered mother struggles with her own health problems. The marriage of a high school friend ends tragically. And Leroy wrestles with his own bitter secret—his fierce resentment of his beloved wife’s troubled past and of the other men who knew her before he married her.

Straight White Male

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Haslam, Gerald W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Haslam, Gerald W.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Haslam, Gerald W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland (A Centennial Book)

Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California

Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California

In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa

That Constant Coyote: California Stories

That Constant Coyote: California Stories

The Other California: The Great Central Valley In Life And Letters (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Condor Dreams And Other Fictions (Western Literature Series)

Condor Dreams And Other Fictions (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Straight White Male