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• Highway 99: The History of California's Main Street

  $22.95 $13.77 0 review(s)

  
  

  Stephen H. Provost Before it was a modern freeway, California’s State Highway 99 was “the main street of California,” a simple two-lane road that passed through the downtowns of every city between the Mexican border and the Oregon state line. “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street” turns back the clock to those days when a narrow ribbon of asphalt tied the state’s communities together, with classic roadside attractions and plenty of fun along the way. “Highway 99” documents the birth, growth, and transformation of the highway; the gas stations, motels, restaurants, and attractions that flourished and declined by the roadside; and the communities, personalities, and historical events that made their mark on the highway. From the migrations of the Dust Bowl to the birth of the Bakersfield Sound to the foundation of America’s fast-food culture, the history of California has happened around Highway 99, and “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street” brilliantly depicts that history.

• THE CALIFORNIA SNATCH RACKET

  $16.95 0 review(s)

  
  

  Subtitle: "Kidnappings During the Prohibition and Depression Eras." In California in the 1920s and 1930s, kidnapping—nicknamed the “snatch racket” by a cynical newspaperman—was the most booming criminal enterprise around. Driven by greed, desperation and sometimes plain stupidity, ransom artists preyed indiscriminately on Hollywood socialites, wealthy heiresses and even poor people who couldn’t pay a dime. Every new disappearance sold more newspapers, but for both the kidnappers and their unfortunate victims, even the simplest caper often went tragically wrong. “California Snatch Racket” brings this dark and forgotten era into shockingly vivid life. Richly illustrated, “California Snatch Racket” reflects newspaper, police, court and prison accounts of the times written in a style that places the reader on the scene. Avoiding supposition and sensationalism, the book offers true accounts of the crimes and the people. These 15 bizarre, often ironic tales illustrate the complex cruelties that flourished in the Golden Era of the Golden State. A modern city rises and lynches a pair of kidnappers. A victim begs leniency for his kidnapper in a case where a technicality demands the death penalty. A couple of college kids imitate the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping to prove their intellectual prowess and famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson fakes her own kidnapping to cover up an affair. “California Snatch Racket” recounts its stories in the manner of the times, while leaving judgment to the courts and the readers.

• The Edge: The Pressured Past and Precarious Future of California's Coast

  $18.95 $11.37 0 review(s)

  
  

  Kim Steinhardt and Gary Griggs The Pacific coast is the most iconic region of California and one of the most fascinating and rapidly changing places in the world. Densely populated, urbanized, and industrialized—and also home to complex, fragile ecosystems—the coast is the place where humanity and nature coexist in a precarious balance that is never perfectly stable. The Edge is a dramatic snapshot of the California coast’s past, present, and probable future in a time of climate change and expanding human activity. Written by two marine experts who grew up on the coast, The Edge is both an appreciation of the coast’s natural and cultural uniqueness and a warning of the changes that threaten that uniqueness. As ocean levels rise, coastal communities are starting to erode, and entire neighborhoods have been lost to the sea. Coastal ecosystems and wildlife that were already stressed by human settlement now face new dangers. Fisheries, oil drilling, recreation, housing and environmental advocates compete to define the future of the region. A masterful and sweeping synthesis of environmental and social science, The Edge presents a comprehensive portrait of the history, people, communities, industries, ecology, and wildlife of the coast.

• MURDER IN THE GARDEN

  $16.95 $10.17 0 review(s)

  
  

  As countless thousands poured into the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California in the decades following the Civil War, some brought visions of man's darker side to this new Eden. Murder in the Garden is the absorbing examination of fifteen notorious crimes from the not-too-distant past of Fresno, California.

• THE NEWHALL INCIDENT

  $16.95 $10.17 0 review(s)

  
  

  Midnight, April 5, 1970. Minutes after a red Pontiac with two men in it is stopped, four young California Highway Patrolmen lay dead of gunshot wounds. The incident still stands as the worst of its kind in America.

• THE GHOST DETECTIVES' GUIDE TO HAUNTED SAN FRANCISCO

  $14.95 0 review(s)