Mountain of Paradise ― Reflections on the Emergence of Greater California As a World Civilization

Under a title inspired by the unlikely though intriguing derivation of the name California from the Persian kari-i-farn, "the mountain of paradise," Chytry (critical studies, California College of the Arts, Oakland/San Francisco) has collected and revised articles published over the past half decade on how various conceptions of California fit into the world at large. He discusses California as a world civilization, bordering the civilization of Greater California, three stages in the coming of European speculative thought, the California 50s as a watershed, the emotional environments of Walt Disney, and metaglobal California. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Josef Chytry is Senior Adjunct Professor in Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland/San Francisco, and is Managing Editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Unis vers Cythere: Aesthetic-Political Investigations in Polis Thought and the Artful Firm (Peter Lang, 2009), Cytherica: Aesthetic-Political Essays in an Aphrodisian Key (Peter Lang, 2005) and The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (1989), and a co-editor of Understanding Industrial and Corporate Change (2005) and Technology, Organization, and Competitiveness (1998). He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Tubingen and received his Dr. Phil. in politics and the history of ideas from the University of Oxford.