Peter Schrag takes on the big issues - immigration, globalization, and the impact of California's politics on its quality of life - in this dynamic account of the Golden State's struggle to recapture the American dream. In the past half-century, California has been both model and anti-model for the nation and often the world, first for its high level of government and public services - schools, universities, highways - and latterly for its dysfunctional government, deteriorating services, and sometimes regressive public policies. "California" explains how many current "solutions" exacerbate the very problems they're supposed to solve and analyzes a variety of possible state and federal policy alternatives to restore government accountability and a vital democracy to the nation's most populous state and the world's fifth-largest economy.