Miriam Pawel is the author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and California Book Award winner, and The Union of Their Dreams – Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement. She is a Pulitzer-prize winning editor and reporter who spent twenty-five years at Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. Her latest book is The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation (Bloomsbury Publishing), a panoramic history of California and its impact on the nation, from the Gold Rush to Silicon Valley-told through the lens of the family dynasty that led the state for nearly a quarter century. In The Browns of California, journalist and scholar Miriam Pawel weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead one hundred forty years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance. The magisterial story is enhanced by dozens of striking photos, many published for the first time.
