Arax, a native son, spent four years traveling the breadth of the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. From the marijuana growing capital of the U.S. to the town that inspired The Grapes of Wrath, Arax offers a stunning panorama of California in a new century.
Award-winning author and journalist Mark Arax is a co-author of The King of California-a Los Angeles Times bestseller-and author of In My Father's Name. He is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine and a former senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. He teaches nonfiction writing at Claremont McKenna College and lives in Fresno. Tom Curwen is staff writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times. He was editor of the Outdoors section, a writer for the features section and deputy editor of the Book Review. He has been honored by the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors for three pieces he did for Outdoors on caving with nature writer, Barbara Hurd, on Alaskan bush pilots and the annual migration of sand hill cranes to the Bosque del Apache. He has a master's degree in Creative Writing from USC and was a recipient of a 1991 Academy of American Poets prize. In 2002, he received a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for mental health journalism.