Suburban assumptions : San Fernando: homes and happiness in residential subdivisions --
Designs for the good life: Modernism, Tiki, Ranch --
Urban Perspectives : Urban expectations: San Diego leverages itself into big-city status --
Baghdad by the bay: Herb Caen's San Francisco --
The cardinal, the chief, Walter O'Malley, and Buff Chandler: redefining the City of Angels --
Downsides and dividends: Los Angeles as supercity --
Politics and public works : Warren, Nixon, Knight, Knowland: the demise of Republican centrism --
Cold war campus: the University of California and other secret places --
Freeways to the future: an epic of construction on behalf of the automobile --
Mare Nostrum: the state water project --
Art and life : Provincials, Baghdaders, and beats: literary San Francisco in the 1950s --
Big Sur: the search for alternative value --
Silent generation: coming of age on the coast of dreams --
Brubeck! Jazz goes to college --
Dissenting opinions : Largest state in the nation: a rebellion against growth and the destruction of environment --
People of color: the beginning of the end for Jim Crow California --
Cool, not cool: headlines and transitions
