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(More customer reviews)Wallace Smith's 'Garden of the Sun' was published in 1939 while he taught at Reedley Junior College. I had the pleasure of attending one of his lectures at Fresno State, late in his life and early in mine: it was a hoot. 'Garden of the Sun' became an instant success, and was for many years the only authoritative history of California's San Joaquin Valley. It has however long been out of print, and available mostly through valley libraries, or reprint editions that like the original have become hard to come by and quite pricey. [My uncle disappeared with my copy, one Christmas many years ago]. Editor William Secrest Jr. has now issued a 'second edition' of this classic, and has gone back to Smith's original materials in an attempt to improve accuracy and. Secrest has taken the opportunity to rearrange materials, including incorporation of appendix material into the main text, and rearrangement of some blocks into a more linear format.
Mr Secrest is to be commended for making Smith's materials available to a new generation, and it would be churlish to deny the value of this new edition for students of California history. That said, despite his stated hope that the "captivating voice of Wally Smith" will come through, I find that the insertions of new material often vitiate that voice, and the stylistic jumps between old and new are often quite sharp, especially for those familiar with the older narrative. I'll keep browsing old bookstores for one of the old reprints. Readers may also consult Stan Yogi's 'Highway 99' and material in Kevin Starr's multivolume history of California.
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