Menu
Next in the queue
55
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
37/100Critics
34/100Scholars
93/100Author:
Malcolm Harris
Publisher:
Little, Brown and Company
Date:
February 14, 2023
In Palo Alto, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism.
What The Reviewers Say
Cuts past the deceit, examining the histories the fable dresses up in heroic garb.
Aan encyclopedic account of the history and impact of the town—feels like the culmination of [Harris'] upbringing and career. It’s a stunning, Technicolor anvil of a book.
Since 'California has a privileged place' in the capitalist story, and capitalism controls the world, this book aims to explain, well, pretty much everything. It does not succeed.
Harris has dug deep into the task. The scheme here is history as microcosm: Palo Alto works outward from scrupulous specifics to an epic panoramic recasting of our whole dire situation. The book should be of urgent interest to anyone living inside its ambit—that being, according to its subtitle, California, capitalism, and the world.
