Manuel Pastor is the director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California where he is also a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity and the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. He has co-authored five books with Chris Benner, including Equity, Growth and Community: What the Nation Can Learn From America’s Metro Areas, Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter, and Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future (The New Press). Pastor is also the author of State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future (The New Press). He lives in Los Angeles.
Readers interested in U.S. social and political economy at the state and local levels will find this a deeply engaging look at the sociopolitical landscape of the Golden State, and what it means for the rest of America.
Publishers Weekly
[A] slim, densely packed volume covers a great deal of material, tracing the decline of California’s midcentury prosperity and the state’s eventual rebound from divisive policies and politics.
Provocative and deftly argued, Pastor’s book reminds us that the future is unwritten and that it always has deep roots in, and connections to, the past.