The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America

Southern California has long been promoted as the playground of the world, the home of resort-style living, backyard swimming pools, and year-round suntans. Tracing the history of Southern California from the late nineteenth century through the late twentieth century, The Frontier of Leisure
reveals how this region did much more than just create lavish resorts like Santa Catalina Island and Palm Springs--it literally remade American attitudes towards leisure. Lawrence Culver shows how this culture of leisure gradually took hold with an increasingly broad group of Americans, and
ultimately manifested itself in suburban developments throughout the Sunbelt and across the United States. He further shows that as Southern Californians promoted resort-style living, they also encouraged people to turn inward, away from public spaces and toward their private homes and communities.
Impressively researched, a fascinating and lively read, this finely nuanced history connects Southern Californian recreation and leisure to larger historical themes, including regional development, architecture and urban planning, race relations, Indian policy, politics, suburbanization, and
changing perceptions of nature.


Author: Lawrence Culver
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/01/2012
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780199891924

About the Author

Lawrence Culver is Associate Professor of History at Utah State University.

This title is not returnable