California 2007

Includes information on hotels and resorts, restaurants, beaches, walking and driving tours, nighttime entertainment, shopping, and sights of interest

Internationally acclaimed landscape photographer and California native and resident Carr Clifton presents a stunning new collection of large format images of that most diverse and beautiful of American states, California. Carr Clifton has gained wide recognition for his startling color photographs of California wilderness. Considered one of the leading young interpreters of the natural world working in film today, he has published widely including Wild by Law from the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

Catch a wave off La Jolla, shop L.A.’s trendy boutiques, sample fiery Mexican cuisine, hike through Death Valley, or compare footprints along Hollywood Boulevard - Fodor's Southern California 2007 offers all these experiences and more! Our local writers have traveled throughout the country to find the best hotels, restaurants, attractions and activities to prepare you for a journey of stunning variety. Before you leave for your trip be sure to pack your Fodor's guide to ensure you don't miss a thing. The San Francisco Chronicle sums it up best –"Fodor's guides are saturated with information." - We frequently update our guide to Southern California, and we make every effort to bring you the most accurate and thorough book. Plus we provide timely updates about the area at Fodors.com. - Unlike other travel books, Fodor's guides rely heavily on local experts who know the territory best–so you know you're seeing the real Southern California - We give you the planning tools you need to tailor your trip. We give options for all budgets. You make the choices.

Detailed and timely information on accommodations, restaurants, and local attractions highlight these updated travel guides, which feature all-new covers, a two-color interior design, symbols to indicate budget options, must-see ratings, multi-day itineraries, Smart Travel Tips, helpful bulleted maps, tips on transportation, guidelines for shopping excursions, and other valuable features. Original.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.

Chaparral shrubland ecosystems are an iconic feature of the California landscape, and a highly biodiverse yet highly flammable backdrop to some of the fastest growing urban areas in the United States. Chaparral-type ecosystems are a common element of all of the world’s Mediterranean-type climate regions – of which California is one – yet there is little public appreciation of the intrinsic value and the ecosystem services that these landscapes provide. Valuing Chaparral is a compendium of contributions from experts in chaparral ecology and management, with a focus on the human relationship with chaparral ecosystems. Chapters cover a wide variety of subjects, ranging from biodiversity to ecosystem services like water provision, erosion control, carbon sequestration and recreation; from the history of human interactions with chaparral to current education and conservation efforts; and from chaparral restoration and management to scenarios of the future under changing climate, land use, and human population. Valuing Chaparral will be of interest to resource managers, the research community, policy makers, and the public who live and work in the chaparral dominated landscapes of California and other Mediterranean-type climate regions.