One of the Top Urban Planning Books of 2022, Planetizen
The full and fascinating guidebook that Orange County deserves.
A People’s Guide to Orange County is an alternative tour guide that documents sites of oppression, resistance, struggle, and transformation in Orange County, California. Orange County is more than the well-known images on orange crate labels, the high-profile amusement parks of Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, or the beaches. It is also a unique site of agricultural and suburban history, political conservatism in a liberal state, and more diversity and discordance than its pop-cultural images show. It is a space of important agricultural labor disputes, segregation and resistance to segregation, privatization and the struggle for public space, politicized religions, Cold War global migrations, vibrant youth cultures, and efforts for environmental justice. Memorably, Ronald Reagan called Orange County the place “where all the good Republicans go to die,” but it is also the place where many working-class immigrants have come to live and work in its agricultural, military-industrial, and tourist service economies.
Orange County is the fifth-most populous county in America. If it were a city, it would be the nation’s third-largest city; if it were a state, its population would make it larger than twenty-one other states. It attracts 42 million tourists annually. Yet Orange County tends to be a chapter or two squeezed into guidebooks to Los Angeles or Disneyland. Mainstream guidebooks focus on Orange County’s amusement parks and wealthy coastal communities, with side trips to palatial shopping malls. These guides skip over Orange County’s most heterogeneous half—the inland space, where most of its oranges were grown alongside oil derricks that kept the orange groves heated. Existing guidebooks render invisible the diverse people who have labored there. A People’s Guide to Orange County questions who gets to claim Orange County’s image, exposing the extraordinary stories embedded in the ordinary landscape.
"This is a remarkable book. It not only tells one of the richest, most inclusive histories of Orange County out there, but it pulls you along for the ride, taking you to the places and hearing the voices of the people long ignored who made that history."—Becky Nicolaides, author of
My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 "Dismiss clichés of what’s behind the Orange Curtain. This
People’s Guide layers Orange County’s troubled history onto today’s uneasy present to reveal, in dozens of smart vignettes, the character of a place and its people. Intensely local yet expansive in their critical insight, the authors rouse true stories of desire and loss, of conflict and resistance, from Orange County's suburban dreamscape."—D. J. Waldie, author of
Becoming Los Angeles: Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place “This book showed me that history is not just in my textbooks. It’s in my backyard.”—Joyce Jogwe, eleventh grade student and Santa Ana resident
"This engaging guide to Orange County offers a critical counterpoint to the 'happiest place on earth.' It pulls back the stucco curtain to highlight diverse histories of struggle, resistance, and place-making. A fascinating read that will be an important resource for teachers, scholars, and lovers of history."—Genevieve Carpio, author of
Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race "For many, Orange County is synonymous with a host of fictional and real characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to Richard Nixon. By centering overlooked and marginalized communities, places, and people, this book challenges us to see Orange County anew. Required reading for students interested in the past and future of Southern California."—Romeo Guzmán, coeditor of
East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte 
