California's Best
Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State
edited by Peter Fish
- Experience California as seen through the eyes of forty-one writers spanning two centuries, from early adventurers to contemporary poets.
Edited by Sunset magazine's Peter Fish, California's Best features fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Tobias Wolff's short story "Desert Breakdown, 1968," Joan Didion's essay "Notes from a Native Daughter," and a selection from Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club.
Excerpts from the works of Wallace Stegner, Jack London, John Muir, Mark Twain, and many others incorporate voices from the past. Contemporary writers include Robert Hass, Daniel Duane, Anne Lamott, and Tom McNeal.
360 pages, 6'' x 9'', 24 softcovers per case
softcover
ISBN 10: 1-56037-494-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-56037-494-7
$7.95
RELEASE DATE
July 2009
- Features works by:
Virginia Hamilton Adair
Gertrude Atherton
Mary Austin
Herb Caen
J. Smeaton Chase
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp
Ina Coolbrith
Richard H. Dana
Joan Didion
Harriet Doerr
Daniel Duane
Dana Gioia
Mary Edith Griswold
Ron Hansen
Bret Harte
Robert Hass
Helen Hunt Jackson
Robinson Jeffers
Clarence King
Anne Lamott
Jack London
William Lewis Manly
Wilma McDaniel
Tom McNeal
Joaquin Miller
Max Miller
Walter Mosley
John Muir
Charles Nordhoff
Frank Norris
Jenny Price
Gary Snyder
Gary Soto
Wallace Stegner
John Steinbeck
George Sterling
Robert Louis Stevenson
Amy Tan
Mark Twain
Judy Van der Veer
Tobias Wolff
Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart
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Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State |
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Peter Fish was born in Santa Barbara, California, and grew up in Ventura. He received a B.A. in history from Yale University, where he focused on the history of the American West. He was a Mirrielees Fellow in creative writing at Stanford University and a Hoyns Fellow in fiction at the University of Virginia. He has written and edited for Sunset Magazine for many years and is currently Sunset's editor-at-large. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Nancy, and son, Joseph. |
Praise for California's Best: Two Centuries of Great Writing from the Golden State
"With this book, Peter Fish has managed to pull together famous and lesser-known writers from across the years and landscapes to create a picture of California that is both timeless and surprising. The strength of California's Best is that it gives you a renewed appreciation for the magnetic pull this state has had over the people who have lived and written here. It's a great read."
?Katie Tamony, editor-in-chief, Sunset Magazine
"Armchair travelers will find that California's Best provides them with the services of an ideal tour guide. Peter Fish marshals sharp wisdom and deep knowledge to forge a book that offers a memorable journey through California?s extraordinary landscapes and histories. With each poem, memoir, short story, or essay, Fish steps aside to let a remarkable array of writers take over the tour. Readers will finish the journey not only with an enhanced appreciation for California but also with heightened powers of observation and reflection to bring to bear on every place they land."
-Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of Desert Passages and The Legacy of Conquest and native of Banning, California
"Jack London, Wallace Stegner, Gary Snyder, John Steinbeck and Joan Didion, Mark Twain and Tobias Wolff, Robert Hass and so many excellent others'California's Best is a terrific regional anthology, elegantly organized, with brilliant selections. Don?t miss this one."
-William Kittredge, co-editor, with Annick Smith, of The Last Best Place
"The collection is filled with rich human stories, both modest and grand.... This is inspired editing."
-Ben Marks, KQED Arts, San Francisco Public Television
"With this book, Peter Fish has managed to pull together famous and lesser-known writers from across the years and landscapes to create a picture of California that is both timeless and surprising. The strength of California's Best is that it gives you a renewed appreciation for the magnetic pull this state has had over the people who have lived and written here. It's a great read."
?Katie Tamony, editor-in-chief, Sunset Magazine
"Armchair travelers will find that California's Best provides them with the services of an ideal tour guide. Peter Fish marshals sharp wisdom and deep knowledge to forge a book that offers a memorable journey through California?s extraordinary landscapes and histories. With each poem, memoir, short story, or essay, Fish steps aside to let a remarkable array of writers take over the tour. Readers will finish the journey not only with an enhanced appreciation for California but also with heightened powers of observation and reflection to bring to bear on every place they land."
-Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of Desert Passages and The Legacy of Conquest and native of Banning, California
"Jack London, Wallace Stegner, Gary Snyder, John Steinbeck and Joan Didion, Mark Twain and Tobias Wolff, Robert Hass and so many excellent others'California's Best is a terrific regional anthology, elegantly organized, with brilliant selections. Don?t miss this one."
-William Kittredge, co-editor, with Annick Smith, of The Last Best Place
"The collection is filled with rich human stories, both modest and grand.... This is inspired editing."
-Ben Marks, KQED Arts, San Francisco Public Television