A Troubled Oasis A Critical History Of Palm Springs California

This is a revised and enlarged version of A Troubled Oasis: A Critical History of Palm Springs. The key chapter on the tragedy of the Section Fourteen so-called "urban holocaust," when minorities were evicted from the center of the city in the 1960s, has been dramatically updated in light of a tranche of new, revelatory documents published online by city officials in the spring of 2023. However, all of the chapters have been enriched by greater detail, new subjects, and deeper research, making this new edition practically a new book. A critical perspective has been maintained, eschewing the boosterism of traditional municipal histories. This comprehensive study should appeal to anyone who wants to know more about the history of Palm Springs, from the prehistoric times of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians to the present day.

This history sidesteps the pitfalls of civic boosterism and scandal sheets. It seeks to offer a sober and unvarnished account of the development of Palm Springs, sweeping nothing under the proverbial rug. It pays special attention to the tragedy of Section 14, when minorities were evicted from the city in the 50s and 60s, and it is one of the first books to devote a chapter to the gay and lesbian exodus to Palm Springs in the 1990s.. This book also highlights the unfair treatment of the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians until 1959 and their ascent to great wealth and power thereafter.

National parks are different from other federal lands in the United States. Beginning in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone, they were largely set aside to preserve for future generations the most spectacular and inspirational features of the country, seeking the best representative examples of major ecosystems such as Yosemite, geologic forms such as the Grand Canyon, archaeological sites such as Mesa Verde, and scenes of human events such as Gettysburg. But one type of habitat--the desert--fell short of that goal in American eyes until travel writers and the Automobile Age began to change that perception. As the Park Service began to explore the better-known Mojave and Colorado deserts of southern California during the 1920s for a possible desert park, many agency leaders still carried the same negative image of arid lands shared by many Americans--that they are hostile and largely useless. But one wealthy woman--Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, from Pasadena--came forward, believing in the value of the desert, and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a national monument that would protect the unique and iconic Joshua trees and other desert flora and fauna. Thus was Joshua Tree National Monument officially established in 1936, with the area later expanded in 1994 when it became Joshua Tree National Park. Since 1936, the National Park Service and a growing cadre of environmentalists and recreationalists have fought to block ongoing proposals from miners, ranchers, private landowners, and real estate developers who historically have refused to accept the idea that any desert is suitable for anything other than their consumptive activities. To their dismay, Joshua Tree National Park, even with its often-conflicting land uses, is more popular today than ever, serving more than one million visitors per year who find the desert to be a place worthy of respect and preservation. Distributed for George Thompson Publishing

Help children of all learning styles and strengths improve their critical thinking skills with these creative, cross-curricular activities. Each engaging activity focuses on skills such as recognizing and recalling, evaluating, and analyzing.

In the first edition of this book, I began by saying that my purpose was not to write a typical municipal history. That still stands. Too often such studies are little more than exercises in boosterism. Instead, I wanted this account to be critical. Most people think the word means something negative or censorious, but it doesn't have to. In my estimation, the preferred synonymous for being critical are evaluating, explaining, interpreting, and expounding. This necessarily entails revealing both the light and the darkness in researching the history of Stockton or any other subject for that matter. In her new history of the United States, We Hold These Truths (2018), Harvard historian Jill Lepore insists that history is "not merely a form of memory but also a form of investigation, to be disputed, like philosophy, its premises questioned, its evidence examined, its arguments countered." She goes on to say that history requires "subjecting the past to skepticism, to look to beginnings and not to justify ends, but to question them-with evidence." The task of the historian is therefore not to be deferential and compliant but to be curious and skeptical. I try to be so in this revised edition. To be frank, I have still found more disreputable persons and disquieting events in the city's past than I had expected to. It was if, as I wrote earlier, I walked into a dense forest, came upon a moss-covered log, and kicked it over for no apparent reason, only to find numerous bugs, worms, spiders, centipedes, and other crawling critters underneath. I suppose that all cities have a seamy side to their history (friends from elsewhere have assured me of that) and that Stockton is not exceptional in that regard. In any event, I have decided not to conceal any of the city's numerous scandals, pathologies, shady characters, and missed opportunities. This is even more the case in this second edition than in the first. Responding to my commitment to reveal both the light and darkness in Stockton's history, a Stocktonian who read the new preface rightly reminded me, "As most natives of Stockton we know this city is not perfect. But we are diverse, critical of ourselves and still love what we see. No one or nowhere is perfect." In this new version I have more fully examined the mental illness of Charles M. Weber, the founder of the city of Stockton. In assessing his psychological problems, I have drawn material from a provocative paper written in 2011 by Russell Livingston, a docent at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum in Lodi on "A Forensic Analysis and Etiological Speculation Concerning the Behavior of Charles Weber." I have also included a new section on the tragic and mysterious death of his son, Thomas Jefferson Weber, from a total nervous collapse or something even worse. The historical record changes over time, as we ask new questions of the past in light of pressing current concerns. Historians call this process revisionism. In the first edition of this book, I devoted a significant section to the Great Influenza of 1918-1919. However, given the dimensions and repercussions of the current Covid-19 pandemic, I have more than tripled the size of my earlier treatment of the so-called Spanish Flu to see if we can learn valuable lessons from that earlier catastrophe, which killed more than 50 million people around the world. In general, I have explored in greater detail in this new version the impact of various diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and typhoid on the history of Stockton and its leaders and its people.

The first female president of the United States is summoned to an emergency briefing. Deep in the jungle of Peru, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist party whole. FBI agent Mike Rich investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Indian earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. The Chinese government "accidentally" drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. And all of these events are connected. As panic begins to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at Melanie Guyer's Washington laboratory. The unusual egg inside begins to crack. Something is spreading... The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An virulent ancient species of spiders, long dormant, is now very much awake. But this is only the beginning of our end...

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.