CALIFORNIA DREAMS
The Making and Remaking of the University of California
Available September 29, 2026 ORDER HERE
Miriam Pawel’s epic history of one of the world’s elite public universities, its sweeping social impact, and hopeful lessons about endurance in troubled times.
Distinguished by its founding mission as an engine of upward mobility, the University of California-a constitutionally independent public trust-is a great American experiment that has persevered through fraught battles over access, funding, and leadership.
The University has been at the nexus of nearly every public policy debate and social movement since the Civil War, from women’s rights to student protests, from academic freedom to affirmative action, shaping policies that reverberate throughout the United States.
California Dreams narrates UC’s rise and resilience through the lens of those whose lives it has transformed-in particular, five pioneering graduates whose diverse paths underscore why the University remains, in the words of Berkeley graduate Joan Didion, “California’s best idea of itself.”
At a time of staggering inequality and uncertainty, as higher education faces unprecedented threats, that role has never been more crucial. Drawing on extensive research in ten archives and dozens of interviews, California Dreams weaves together the linked history of the school and state in all its drama, significance, and humanity; the result is a magisterial narrative of both a remarkable public institution of higher education, and also California itself.
Reviews and Interviews
“The roiling history of a ‘multiversity,’ … A timely, sweeping examination of a major institution of higher education.” Starred Review. Kirkus
“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.” ―San Francisco Chronicle
“Pawel’s book is really something more 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.” — Joe Mathews, Zocalo Public Square
“[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
“I have been a professor for over 15 years in the University of California, Irvine’s Literary Journalism Program (the campus is also a key character in the book). But I never knew — or thought I even cared to know — the backstory of the UC system. Reading Miriam’s book captivated me because it’s really an epic saga about hopes, dreams, and human transformations … She is one of the nation’s most prominent chroniclers of California, meticulously weaving the arc of history with detail-rich stories about people and places.” — Erika Hayasaki, Nieman Storyboard
“Journalist and Author Miriam Pawel tackles the sweeping story of the University of California” — UC Davis Magazine
“Miriam Pawel’s ‘California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California’ makes a history of the state’s crown jewel into an epic.” San Francisco Chronicle
“Pawel’s look into the UC’s history is a taking-stock moment of the university’s ideals, as articulated in the beginning: to establish it as a constitutional entity, independent from the state legislature or governor, a freedom for each school to develop its own character, a commitment to reflect the racial and cultural composition of California as a whole, and to keep it affordable for all, what famous alum Joan Didion called “California’s best idea of itself.” —Berkleyside
The rise of the University of California and how it changed the state – Central Valley Daily podcast, KVPR
“A magisterial account of the crown jewel of the nation’s higher education system, however tarnished by the onslaughts of the Trump administration.”– Nob Hill Gazette