Less than 10 years later, California still has serious problems, but over all its prospect is the envy of most other states. Its success is uneven and, in Pastor’s term, “tentative,” with obvious challenges that range from class-based inequities in its richest cities to environmental sustainability for the state as a whole. But Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, will end his fourth and final term as governor with a large budget surplus. (His four terms have not been consecutive: Brown was, famously, also Ronald Reagan’s successor as governor more than 40 years ago.) One American in eight now lives in California, and it accounts for a larger share than that of the country’s output, innovation, job creation and wealth. While other state legislatures fight to retain gerrymandered political maps and enact voter-suppression schemes, California took the lead (under Schwarzenegger) in getting rid of gerrymanders, a movement Schwarzenegger himself is now trying to extend across the country.

California has of course also become the Democratic Party’s most important stronghold. In 2016 Hillary Clinton carried California by well over four million votes — and ran behind Donald Trump by more than a million in all the other states combined. This distinct political identity naturally feeds the impression, among progressive admirers and conservative critics alike, of California as a realm apart. So do the declarations by Brown and his attorney general, Xavier Becerra, of their commitment to environmental and immigration policies at odds with Trump’s.

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Positions like these amount to the “State of Resistance” of Pastor’s title, but the book’s argument is actually the opposite of what “resistance” might imply. Instead, Pastor, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, suggests that at just the moment California seems most out of sync with national trends, it is in fact regaining its role as bellwether and pioneer. “The country needs resistance to be sure,” he writes, “but it also needs a vision of what America can become.” In his book, which is concise, clear and convincing, he contends that the redemptive arc of modern California’s history offers both cautionary and constructive guidance on a vision for the country as a whole.

Pastor sets out his story in three acts — rise, fall, recovery — each of which offers surprising insights for readers outside the state (and many inside as well). In describing the post-World War II years of expansion, which took place under governors of both parties, he emphasizes how heavily they involved public spending and investment — roads, schools, parks, both advanced research universities and numerous community colleges — and how much they shared a goal of preparing the state for new arrivals and future citizens. “California in the 1950s and 1960s was precisely the sort of demonstration project for an active government that many conservatives seem to fear at a national level,” he writes. “The real secret to California’s once and future success was exactly its agreement on a social compact in which the public and private sectors worked to create paths upward for both those who were in the state and those who were to come.”