California

From the European conquest to today's economic crisis, Californians have experienced tumultuous growth and painful conflicts. Like the grinding of tectonic plates that has produced the state's very landscape, these encounters, disputes, and transformations have continuously made and remade California. California: On-the-Road History doesn't relate the cleaned-up tale of the California dream that school textbooks and the tourism commission tell. Rather it presents the sometimes bitter, sometimes triumphant history behind the California myth. Included are recommended museums, state parks, and other attractions, alongside literary excerpts from local authors who give readers a sense of California in different eras. Interlink's new travel series is a glorious, full-colour salute to the cultural, geographic, and historical riches of the United States. These brief histories are as idiosyncratic as the individual states themselves: here a treatise on country music; there a brief history of North American mountain climbing. Each volume nevertheless shares elements that make any one of them a literate companion for that American classic: the road trip. Featuring: Historical maps, full-colour & b&w photographs, must-see sites, famous sons & daughters, literary extracts.