American standards, Cali- fornia's recorded history is relatively brief. It was not until 1769 that the first Spanish mission in California was founded-150 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, 250 years after Hernando Cortes invaded Mexico.
For a chronicle of California from the era of the Spanish friars and sol-dados to that of today's Governor Jerry Brown, there is Berkeley histo- rian Walton Bean's reflective Cali-fornia: An Interpretive History
(McGraw-Hill, 1968; 3rd ed., 1978). Bean...