California Dreams and Realities

39 NEW selections were chosen for their relevance and diversity. Reflecting the most recent responses to current events, new selections include:
--An illuminating look into the sometimes invisible lives of undocumented nannys and housekeepers, by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo.
--A personal essay by Mario Garcia about growing up Mexican-American in an Anglo suburb of Southern California.
--A thoughtful analysis of the recent recall effort by Glen Browder that looks at the national implications of California's historic experiment with direct democracy.

2 NEW chapters on California places and California culture expand the focus of the third edition. "Exporting Culture: California and the Popular Imagination" offers students insights about such diverse places as San Francisco's Castro District, the oil fields of Kern County, and the desert landscape of Palm Springs; the readings in "The Geography of Desire: California and the Sense of Place" explore the exportation of California culture on a national, and even global, level.

New advice on reading critically. A new introduction walks students through the process of reading critically, offering practical critical reading strategies, and includes a model analysis of Jack Lopez's essay, "Of Cholos and Surfers."

NEW images enliven the text. Each chapter in the third edition now opens with a thematically related frontispiece, and one or two stand-alone images treated as texts appear in the body of each chapter. Highlights include an iconic Sunkist Orange crate label and an amusing photograph of a multilingual sign in a strip mall.