Tremendous… The UCs shine on and Pawel celebrates the triumphs of the institution that writer Joan Didion '56 famously called the state's 'highest, most articulate idea of itself.' Anyone curious as to how that idea took shape will benefit from reading Pawel's outstanding account.

California Magazine

Forget gods, monsters and military battles. California has its own material for an epic tale: the state's public university system. But if chancellors, state budgets and admissions stats don't sound like Homeric stuff, meet the state's historian bard, Miriam Pawel... Overall Pawel's modus operandi is canny. Each character study is suspenseful, setting up tantalizing possibilities for how a promising young writer or a farmer's son might one day be changed by, and change, a sprawling institution...Pawel's eye for detail is shrewd and delightful.

The San Francisco Chronicle

The roiling history of a 'multiversity.' Drawing on extensive archival sources, memoirs, and interviews, Pawel recounts the birth, rise, and ongoing transformations of the 'ten campuses, six health centers, three national laboratories, and hundreds of programs and research centers' that comprise the University of California...Recent assaults on higher education make California's story newly relevant. A timely, sweeping examination of a major institution of higher education.

Kirkus (starred review)

[A] superb history...What makes this book exceptional is the way Pawel captures human dimensions that afford a fuller panorama of the many ways the state and the UC are linked... California Dreams tells a story of grand ambition and foresight unfolding during war, economic boom and bust, student unrest, political upheaval, tax revolt and demographic change... Pawel presents a sweeping story of an institution that sits at the heart of California, defining the state's ethos and identity more than any other. California Dreams makes an immense contribution to our understanding of the Golden State

California Review of Books

Terrific...Pawel's book is really something intimate: an examination of the fraught, familial relationship between our state and its world-class university system....California Dreams is often quite moving, as it shows how the university shaped the ideas, ambitions and people of California.

Zocalo Public Square

Pulitzer winner Pawel offers a sweeping and uplifting history of the University of California... Tracking the university's subsequent expansion into 'a more than $50-billion-a-year behemoth,' the author spotlights the founding of landmark departments like Chicano and Asian American Studies and details political challenges weathered by the university... The result is an optimistic reflection on how a progressive institution has elevated its local population for more than a century

Publishers Weekly