California Archives

California

In the Rockets’ Red Glare

by Rachel Kushner,

The past and future of hot-rodding in America

Trapdoor

by Kathleen Alcott,

Where the past overtakes you

Chronicle of a Death Foreteller

by Sam Sweet,

From “7417 Hollywood Boulevard,” which was published in October 2021 in the fourth volume of his All Night Menu series, a history of Los Angeles in five installments. Each booklet…

Prayer for a Just War

by Greg Jackson,

Finding meaning in the climate fight

Pillar of the Community

From public comments sent to government officials in Atascadero, California, where a ten-foot, two-hundred-pound monolith appeared in December and was torn down by a Christian group a day later. The…

Whiteout

by Kevin Baker,

This past spring and summer, political correctness—perhaps inevitably—took a full turn and became a campaign to erase the worst things that dead white men have done in our history. This…

Lost at Sea

by Joe Kloc,

Poverty and paradise at the edge of America

Orphan Bachelors

by Fae Myenne Ng,

Exclusion and Confession, the two slamming doors of America

Life’s a Beech

by C.D. Wright,

From Casting Deep Shade, which will be published by Copper Canyon Press next month. Wright (1949–2016) was a poet from the Arkansas Ozarks whose 2010 work, One With Others, was…

Jet-Age Federalism

by Edmund G. (Edmund Gerald) Brown,

Most of the time, Americans seem to thrive on change. The meadow converted to a real-estate development is regarded less as a sacrifice to progress than a symbol of it.…

Lines and Lineage

by Tomas van Houtryve,

We often forget that the boundary between the United States and Mexico was not always where it is today. It used to be seven hundred miles farther north, following what…