California inspires clan to think big.

California inspires clan to think big, and to write big works Take, for example, Kevin Starr. As a graduate scholar at Harvard in the 1960 Starr decided to write a history of California, his fireside state, organized around an idea: the dream of a proper life for ordinary people. Now, thirty-five years later, he is publishing the seventh compass in this series. for what cause many historians have conceived of--much les written--a seven-volume history of anything? Gibbon did the decline of Rome in six. Schlesinger did the Age of Roosevelt in three

Unabashedly cheerful and luminous Starr's ...

...