San Antonio College Library

This work examines California's history from 1520 to 1890. It also contains a ethnology of the state's population, economics, and politics.

The Color Bind recounts the story of California's Proposition 209, the political initiative that will transform the legal, political, and everyday meaning of civil rights for the next generation. Lydia Chavez reveals the complex motivations and maneuvers of the people, organizations, and political parties involved in the crusade to end affirmative action in California: Ward Connerly, the African American regent of the University of California who...

California is obsessed with water. The need for it--to use and profit from it, to control and manipulate it--has shaped California history to a remarkable extent. Not surprisingly, the story of Californians and water is a fascinating one, filled with enough intrigue and plot twists to power a spellbinding novel. Here for the first time Norris Hundley, a noted historian of the American West, tells that entire story, from before the arrival of Europeans...

"Illustrated in color throughout, The California Missions: History, Art, and Preservation combines engaging text with historical paintings, archival photographs, and recent photography to create a vivid chronicle of these iconic institutions. The narrative recounts their founding and early history, surveys mission art and architecture, and examines their role in shaping the history and culture of California. A final chapter discusses recent advances...

This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. "How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place," writes Starr. As he recreates the...

"A critical reader of the history of marriage understands that it is an institution that has always been in flux. It is also a decidedly complicated one, existing simultaneously in the realms of religion, law, and emotion. And yet recent years have seen dramatic and heavily waged battles over the proposition of including same sex couples in marriage. Just what is at stake in these battles? This book examines the meanings of marriage for couples in...