California: America's High-Stakes Experiment - Softcover

Peter Schrag takes on the big issues - immigration, globalization, and the impact of California's politics on its quality of life - in this dynamic account of the Golden State's struggle to recapture the American dream. In the past half-century, California has been both model and anti-model for the nation and often the world, first for its high level of government and public services - schools, universities, highways - and latterly for its dysfunctional government, deteriorating services, and sometimes regressive public policies. "California" explains how many current "solutions" exacerbate the very problems they're supposed to solve and analyzes a variety of possible state and federal policy alternatives to restore government accountability and a vital democracy to the nation's most populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy.

"Once again, Peter Schrag asserts himself as a perceptive and courageous commentator. This book can be painful because it is so true. Here is first-rate social commentary: edgy, engaged with disquieting issues, yet never, finally, despairing that California might regain its way and, after corrective action, reclaim its role as a hopeful American experiment."--Kevin Starr, Professor of History, University of Southern California
"Peter Schrag has written a reasoned and passionate essay about California's vast problems and its even more astonishing possibility as America's America."--Richard Rodriguez, author of "Brown: The Last Discovery of America
"There is no one better at observing, analyzing and understanding the great California experiment in politics and culture than Peter Schrag. For more than a century, this state has been the nation's economic and cultural leader. The question posed by Schrag is whether that leadership will continue or end in the 21st century. Facing the growing conflicts of diversity, dysfunction, disinvestments and disenchantment, can this state again govern itself? The answer to that question will be a test not only for California but for the future of the nation."--Leon E. Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff, and Director, Panetta Institute
"I recommend Peter Schrag's "California: America's High-Stakes Experiment for anybody interested in understanding the great challenges facing our state. California, once known throughout the world for the quality of its schools, freeways, water systems and parks, has not significantly improved its infrastructure since the late 1960s when there were 16 million residents. We now have 37 million, according tothe California Department of Finance, and by 2025 there could be as many as 46 million. After reading this book, you can understand why Schrag concludes that California is 'the ultimate test both for the nation and perhaps the world of whether a society so large and diverse could successfully integrate into an effective modern democracy.'"--Senator Dianne Feinstein
"Schrag has managed a rare accomplishment--offering a detailed account of the political, demographic, and fiscal realities of California in a both broadly appealing and carefully detailed volume. This is a timely, relevant, and very important work."--Mark Baldassare, director of research, Public Policy Institute of California, and author of "California in the New Millennium