California is at a tipping point. Severe budget deficits, unsustainable pension costs, heavy taxes, cumbersome regulation, struggling cities, and distressed public schools are but a few of the challenges that policymakers must address for the state to remain a beacon of business innovation and economic opportunity. City Journal has for years been cataloging the political and economic issues of our nation's largest metropolitan areas, and in this collection compiled and introduced by City Journal editor Brian C. Anderson, the cracks in California's flawed policy plans are displayed in detail, and analyzed by a diverse set of experts in the state's design.

The list of contributors includes:

Steven Malanga, William Voegeli, Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox, Arthur B. Laffer, Steven Greenhut, Victor Davis Hanson, Heather Mac Donald, John Buntin, Ben Boychuk, Tom Gray, Andrew Klavan, Troy Senik, Larry Sand, Michael Anton, and Guy Sorman.

While there is plenty of literature on California’s history, topography, and attractions, The Beholden State: California's Lost Promise and How to Recapture It is the first book examining in rigorous detail how a place seen just a generation ago as the dynamic engine of the American future could, through bad policy ideas, find itself with among the highest unemployment rates and poorest educational outcomes in the country. The book is as thoroughly analytical as it is pragmatically proscriptive, complete with policy solutions mapping the way forward for a struggling state.

California was once regarded as a model for the nation; trends that started here swept the continent. Today we can only hope this is not true; but as The Beholden State powerfully shows, if California is still a model, the nation is in deep trouble. The stunning swiftness by which California went from being Reagan's "shining city on a hill" to Detroit-by-the-Sea is an object lesson for the rest of the nation on how quickly bad public policy can squander the bounty of nature and the productivity of its creative citizens. -- Steven F. Hayward, University of California, Berkely
The editors and writers of New York's sprightly City Journal have gone west, young man, and have returned with a gold nugget of political wisdom. How California became a basket case, and why it needn't remain one—these are the twin veins worked in this sobering and inspiring volume. No one concerned with the future of California and the nation can afford to ignore The Beholden State. -- Charles Kesler, Claremont McKenna College

Brian C. Anderson is the editor of City Journal, the cultural and political quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute, where he writes extensively on social and political trends. Formerly, he served as senior editor of City Journal and as a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute.