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California
2 recommendations

California

A History (Modern Library Chronicles)

by Kevin Starr

Recommended by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Recommended by Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Should I read this?

Recommended by 2 sources and appears in About California, Most Recommended Books, and History.

California has always been our Shangrila?the promised land of countless pilgrims in search of the American Dream. Now the Golden State?s premier historian, Kevin Starr, distills the entire sweep of California?s history into one splendid volume. From the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, this is the story of a place at once quintessentially ...

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Why recommended

Recommended by 2 sources and appears in About California, Most Recommended Books, and History.

Recommended by notable people

People and public figures who have recommended this book.

Recommendation Signals

Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.

A

Arnold Schwarzenegger

If anyone is at all interested in a book about California, what makes California unique and special, and the history of it, the political history of it and all the little details, this is a good book to have.

Appears In

Accidental Presidents
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Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.

Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.

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Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.