The Appalachia of the West: California’s agricultural heartland threatens to become a wasteland. From Bookforum, Naomi Fry on California Haze: California is usually portrayed as a palm-treed Eden, wholesome and easeful, but as the Roman Polanski scandal has reminded us, this sunny vision has a lurid underside; and Sonya Geis reviews West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State by Mark Arax. Commentators continue to see California as a beacon, for better or for worse, of the future, even as it remains stubbornly sui generis. An article on California as America’s first failed state. The Coast of Dystopia: Is the California dream really, really dead? An article on how tax cuts killed California. A look at how the L.A. suburb of Downey became one of the most toxic towns.

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