Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book for a Summer read
Review: As a California historian and author of "Southern California Miscellany" I am particular about books written from an insider's point of view. This book fills the gaps often left by writers who do not know of which they speak. The author is definitley an insider who has all the best details down in print along with an entertaining story. This is a wonderful book to read while on vacation.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book for a Summer read
Review: As a California historian and author of "Southern California Miscellany" I am particular about books written from an insider's point of view. This book fills the gaps often left by writers who do not know of which they speak. The author is definitley an insider who has all the best details down in print along with an entertaining story. This is a wonderful book to read while on vacation.
Rating:
Summary: Very personal Didion, amazing as always
Review: As an Easterner who has lived for the past few years in the SF Bay Area, I have been forced to deal with my own confusion over a number of bewildering contradictions in the psyches of people here, which are unlike anything I have experienced before. I therefore drank this book down in one evening (and haven't as yet gone back to savor it on a deeper level). People who have not had my experience might be less entranced. However, I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding, on a deeper level, the results of the recent recall election in California.
Rating:
Summary: Very personal Didion, amazing as always
Review: As an Easterner who has lived for the past few years in the SF Bay Area, I have been forced to deal with my own confusion over a number of bewildering contradictions in the psyches of people here, which are unlike anything I have experienced before. I therefore drank this book down in one evening (and haven't as yet gone back to savor it on a deeper level). People who have not had my experience might be less entranced. However, I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding, on a deeper level, the results of the recent recall election in California.
Rating: 
Summary: A chronicle of complaint about California
Review: California is changing, and it upsets old folks. Didion is clearly upset, like a variety of folks ranging in age from those of tender young years to fossilized old fogies. They are hurt, bewildered, confused and made mad by change. Arizons is flooded with refugees from California who want to go back to "the good old days" -- they have utterly restored Prescott into a brand new Victorian town of the 1890s, and they are now restoring the glory of the 1920s and 1930s in central Phoenix. Like many of the elderly in mind, spirit and outlook, Didion regrets what is past. She doesn't seem to understand that even if the future is different, it may be better. It's a story of her family intertwined with modern California; both her ancestors and California are examples of people constantly on the move in the search for something better -- even if they don't know what that "something" might be, and even if they lose their heritage by moving. Granted, Didion is the "intellectual" of the family. This book gave me the distinct impression she'd be much happier, fulfilled and content if her ancestors had never left Alsace. Somehow I doubt if she speaks German -- she wouldn't go back to Alsace unless she spoke German, just to show the Frenchies that her past is more important than their conquests. So she did the next best thing, and now lives in New York. As a genuine New Yorker, which is not "her" city so she doesn't mind how it changes, she offers a long recital of California happenings as seen by an original family and finds the state much lacking since her departure. Any one of us, and I'm no exception, can return to our "hometown" and find similar faults. It's a nice book for tired old people waiting out their empty years in sterile nursing homes where they lament the passing of the past. Even homebound grouches may find it interesting, especially if they live in California. There are flashes of insight, such as her descriptions of the Alameda Corridor, and the Lakewood school sex scandal; but, she fails to draw any meaning from these events. Her descriptions of the aircraft industry are interesting -- and exactly the same as I heard in the 1960s when I worked in the aircraft industry. Ho hum, it's a pity she never helped put airplanes together. Perhaps it's because she doesn't understand herself, or her ancestors. She is the epitome of the quintessential Californian, the daughter of a long line of "California" ancestors even when they lived on the Virginia/Carolina frontier in 1766. As a Canadian, I'd describe her as everything we expect Californians to represent; as a Californian, she is blind to personal introspection as well as understanding herself and her state. If you like moaning about the past, you'll love this book. Didion finds a lot to regret, and not much of the modern to understand, an approach which many find attractive. If you can read through her words, uncover the meanings hidden in her chronicle of complaint, you'll discover the basics which made California a great state.
Rating: 
Summary: more about Didion than about California
Review: Californians think they're special. There is no doubt about that. The first thing a native will tell you upon introduction is how many generations their family has been here. They don't do that in Boston -- where old families know they're old families and don't really give a damn if you know it or not. They don't do that in DC, New York or Toronto. But they do it in California. Those who have been here awhile will tell you exactly how many generations a long while is. Didion's book is filled with that brand of smugness - the one-upmanship of who's been here longer.
Personally, I don't care.
I don't mean to be too harsh on the book, though, for on another level this is a story not of geography or genealogy but of a generation - the generation born in the mid-to-late 1930s - too young to remember the Depression but old enough to remember the way America "used to be." My parents are from that same generation, and Didion bears a resemblence to a cousin. My grandparents are of the same generation as Didion's parents. Like them, we also have a family graveyard (ours is still in the family, still accepting members). And my father was an aerospace worker who lamented how things changed in his 42 years on the job, happy to now be retired. I mention all this because "Where I Was From" had its greatest impact on me not as a depiction of the changes in the Golden State, but as a depiction of how a family ages, of how the older generations pass over the Great Break of the grave and the Great Divide of death. While it may feel true that the land is yours only after you bury your dead in it, underlying much of this book is a sadness that this may not be enough, that not even the graves of the elders shall be respected with the passage of time - that graveyards will be sold, driven over, dug up. That progress will efface all markers. In retrospect there appears to have been no redemption for passing over the Great Plains. Perhaps there will be or will not be a redemption after passing through the grave. There is here an acceptance of the possibility that all is meaningless; and I was left with the impression that the title is facing the wrong direction. Perhaps it is not so much "Where I Was From" but "Where I Was Going." The promised land of the Golden State may prove to be nothing other than a hustler's illusion, there for the masses to devour only to enrich those who in turn will become the Disillusioned.
Rating:
Summary: Geography, Genealogy, Generations and the Great Divide
Review: Californians think they're special. There is no doubt about that. The first thing a native will tell you upon introduction is how many generations their family has been here. They don't do that in Boston -- where old families know they're old families and don't really give a damn if you know it or not. They don't do that in DC, New York or Toronto. But they do it in California. Those who have been here awhile will tell you exactly how many generations a long while is. Didion's book is filled with that brand of smugness - the one-upmanship of who's been here longer.
Personally, I don't care.
I don't mean to be too harsh on the book, though, for on another level this is a story not of geography or genealogy but of a generation - the generation born in the mid-to-late 1930s - too young to remember the Depression but old enough to remember the way America "used to be." My parents are from that same generation, and Didion bears a resemblence to a cousin. My grandparents are of the same generation as Didion's parents. Like them, we also have a family graveyard (ours is still in the family, still accepting members). And my father was an aerospace worker who lamented how things changed in his 42 years on the job, happy to now be retired. I mention all this because "Where I Was From" had its greatest impact on me not as a depiction of the changes in the Golden State, but as a depiction of how a family ages, of how the older generations pass over the Great Break of the grave and the Great Divide of death. While it may feel true that the land is yours only after you bury your dead in it, underlying much of this book is a sadness that this may not be enough, that not even the graves of the elders shall be respected with the passage of time - that graveyards will be sold, driven over, dug up. That progress will efface all markers. In retrospect there appears to have been no redemption for passing over the Great Plains. Perhaps there will be or will not be a redemption after passing through the grave. There is here an acceptance of the possibility that all is meaningless; and I was left with the impression that the title is facing the wrong direction. Perhaps it is not so much "Where I Was From" but "Where I Was Going." The promised land of the Golden State may prove to be nothing other than a hustler's illusion, there for the masses to devour only to enrich those who in turn will become the Disillusioned.
Rating:
Summary: Not the whole picture
Review: Didion writes in her characteristic style -- the clear, hesitant sentences that are reminiscent of James Baldwin. And, as usual, she tells a story behind a story, here about how the golden promise of California was often based on illusion, on schemes that enriches outsiders at the expense of the suckers who came to the state looking for a better life. Mixed in with all this is the story of her own family (the sophisticated New Yorker started life as a Sacramento girl). So why only three stars? For me, as is often the case with this writer, I felt that she was straining to make a negative point, putting the worst spin on everything. Any time you devote a good chunk of a short book to the story of kids who turn to gang violence and drugs you're going to make a place look bad. Her limited focus on prison construction and other ideas that fail to bring in the promised wealth to locals overlooks the industries that have helped make the state rich, such homegrown enterprises as the wine growing of Napa, the silicon and software farms of Silicon Valley and, oddly enough, Hollywood (odd, because Didion has written so many screenplays herself). All of these industries -- along with the state's once-vaunted school system, the University of California, the highways, etc. -- may be shadows of their former selves. But Didion refuses to find reasons for hope even in the natural beauty of the place, which is surely without rival in this country. The book is instructive about some of the underlying reasons for California's tough times and surely helps to deglamorize the place, but it ain't the whole story.
Rating: 
Summary: More memoir, less geography, please
Review: Every summer brought the drive in my in-laws' car from Stockton to Santa Cruz. I was not a California native,only marrying into a California family so I was not familiar with the state's history.I just remember California seeming so vivid and alive. Joan Didion narrates her family's move west and the intertwined history of the state and her family. Not only do we learn
of family, but of the changes in the society. California has always struck me as a restless state, ever on the move, turning to the next idea or trend. Didion follows her family's history, the eventual erosion of the ties to the land and agriculture and the huge immigrant wave. There are the huge industrial closedowns and the urban sprawl and growth. This is a book for anyone who loves California, but not nearly as revealing about the author nor her roots.
Rating:
Summary: a beautiful meshing of person and place
Review: I grew up in San Diego and have lived in the Golden State all my life, but only in the previous three years of doctoral research into the psychic fallout of conquered California did I come to appreciate her history--including its shadows. Didion paints us vivid pictures of how closely the history of a place parallels what goes on in its current inhabitants. (Susan Griffin's A CHORUS OF STONES comes to mind, but it is less geographical.) California's past is more troubled than most realize. From the mission system that wiped out thousands of Indians to the settlers who fought for "purity of labor" in the mines while supported by newspapers calling for outright eradication of native Californians; from the war against blacks (IF HE HOLLERS, LET HIM GO), ethnic Mexicans (see the work of Stephen Piti), and Asians (chronicled by Kevin Starr); from the replacement of green hills and native plants with asphalt and strip malls: the history of the state is a history of brutal conquest, Big Four imperialism, Southern Pacific "factories in the fields," and masses of people who cannot tell fantasy from reality. Ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, slave labor, bare-faced corruption in high places: we've seen it all and go on seeing it all. Eugenics laws in several states enforced the sterilization of those deemed unfit to breed, but only here could one find an actual State Lunacy Commission to oversee the process. (We now have a Self-Esteem Committee, a kinder, gentler form of control). Why does this matter? Because the pain involved continues, as do the machinations and the pavings-over, the taking of roles for selves and the destruction of people and resources (hasta la vista, baby). In California we have not learned from our own past; we have covered it over and called ourselves liberals and agents of change, we whose Southern California cities were founded primarily by ex-Confederates looking for new places to build plantations. A hundred years of psychology should have warned us that what we repress from awareness does not go away: it festers like an untended wound. For that reason exposes such as Didion's perform the valuable service of showing us where our collective psyche hurts and stands in need of healing.
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