Writing About History

Reading this great book off and on called "Coast of Dreams," a history of California from 1990-2003. It's a thorough book and talks about in great detail the story of California of this decade plus including the LA riots, the OJ trial, the Rodney King beating, the SF tech boom, the homeless problems, the rise of San Diego, the drug epidemics, the gangs, the LAPD, the surf culture, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs differing Celebrity culture, the hippy religiousity of Bolinas, the political culture in Sacramento. I love the book because I know exactly what he is talking about most of the time, all the players and the environments....say what you will about me, but I do know about California having been raised in Marin County, spending time in Berkeley attending Summer School, living and working in San Francisco, attending college in the Inland Empire, attending graduate school in Downtown Los Angeles, living in Silverlake, spending my senior week in San Diego, traveling around the state to PGE offices, visiting Fresno several times, relatives living in Belmont and Willows and at different times in Chinatown, SF and Diamond Heights....not to mention friends spread out in San Francisco from the Marina to the Mission to Pac Heights to the Sunset District...as with friends in Los Angeles from Santa Monica to Glendale.

I'm a true Californian and as such notice a few errors in the history as written. The first one that really stood out was the discussion of the 1995 Superbowl between the Chargers and the 49ers. He was talking about it in the context of a growing San Diego that made too big a financial committment to their sports teams, but that initially it looked like a success because San Diego barely lost to the 49ers in the Superbowl....uh wait a second....I thought to myself - that Superbowl was known as a huge blowout, 55-10, I think that was the monkey off Steve Young's back. The big game that year was the NFC Championship against Dallas. The Superbowl back then was an afterthought since the AFC had been so weak (they lost like 13 years in a row or something). How this historian could skew this well publicized and known fact to support claims he was making about San Diego's growth seemed a bit sloppy to me.

The second big thing I noticed wrong was even worse. In a section called 9/11 he came to the story of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, raised in Marin County. Pete Carroll was raised there also, just so you know, and Johnny Mosley and Robin Williams, it's not all weird. But anyway, he pointed out that John Walker Lindh was an only child. But this simply wasn't true because his older brother, Connell Lindh, was in my high school class at Redwood and I remember him clearly. Not only that, all of it is published in news sources around the country after they found the American Taliban. How he could get this wrong as well?

Anyhow, the book is still a fun read, but it does make me wonder how accurrate these histories are...especially ones about times long ago when I and no one else for that matter, are really there to remember it.