Discover the Best Books Written by Kevin Starr

Kevin Owen Starr was an American historian and California's state librarian, best known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "Americans and the California Dream." After an impoverished childhood, he received degrees from various universities where he studied history and literature. Beginning in 1973, Starr wrote nine books on the history of California during his career, along with being a professor or visiting lecturer at numerous California universities. 

From 1989 until his death in 2017, he was a professor at the University of Southern California. From 1994 to 2004, Starr was California's state librarian. He continued writing California history throughout his career, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Society of American Historians, and the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California. In 2006 he was presented a National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush for his work as a scholar and historian. In 2010 was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

Kevin Starr was born on September 3, 1940, in San Francisco, to Owen Starr, a machinist, and Marian Starr (née Collins), a bank teller. He was a seventh-generation Californian. Starr's parents divorced when he was a child. When he was six, his mother had a nervous breakdown, after which Starr and his younger brother, James, were placed in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Ukiah. Five years later, he and his brother were reunited with their mother, where they lived in a public housing project in San Francisco while they subsisted on welfare. He attended St. Boniface School in the Tenderloin neighborhood.

He later enrolled in the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1962. At the school, he was the editor of The Foghorn, the school newspaper. After graduation, he was commissioned as an armor officer in the United States Army. He served for two years as a lieutenant with the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, first as a platoon leader and then as the Assistant S-1. The 4/68 Armor Bn was assigned to the 3rd Brigade, 8th Infantry Division, and was located at Coleman Barracks near Mannheim in what was then West Germany. 

Upon release from the service, Starr entered Harvard University, earning an M.A. in English in 1965 and a Ph.D. in the discipline (specializing in American literature) in 1969. He subsequently launched his teaching career at Harvard as an assistant (and later associate) professor of English from 1969 to 1973 before returning to California.

In 1973, he became an aide and speechwriter to San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto. He was also appointed city librarian, during which time he earned a master's degree in library science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. He also did post-doctoral work at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Beginning in 1973, Starr wrote nine books on the history of California, eight of which comprise his Americans and the California Dream series. It was at Harvard that he first became inspired to write about California's history after browsing through their collection of books about California and the Pacific Coast. He explained the impact those books had on him:

All of a sudden, I saw all these California books: diaries, memoirs, journals, histories, and bibliographies. And a kind of enchantment overtook me, a kind of beguilement, a kind of reverie, definitely a physical reaction in the days that followed. As I look back on it psychologically, I see that I’ve made an absolutely powerful connection between California and my interior landscape.

From 1974 to 1989, he was a professor or visiting lecturer at numerous California universities, including UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California, UC Davis, UC Riverside, Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, and Stanford University. He was also a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He served as the Vatican correspondent for Hearst Newspapers, covering the elections of Popes John Paul I and John Paul II in 1978.