Started April 9th, 2024.

I loved Palo Alto. I’m writing this minutes after finishing it, after a long spell of not touching it. I’ve found a lot of conclusions of history focused books to be unsatisfying (and so be it), but Palo Alto’s Resolution chapter is fantastic. It reframes the whole story of Palo Alto, and then focuses our energy on where we go from here. It’s easy to feel hopeless after a read like this, and the undying power of Hooverism, but I’m leaving this with understanding and an inkling of hope.

I started Palo Alto on Amtrak on the way to visit New York to decide where I would be leaving the Bay for college to. As the California Zephyr wound its way north and east along the shores of the Carquinez Strait, on one side the Bay, on the other Chevron’s oil refinery, I began reading Palo Alto. I think it’s fitting that a book I began during a scouting trip for leaving the Bay, I finished from the fruits of that trip.

Palo Alto has changed the way I understand California Capitalism, and The World, and I think anyone doing lefty stuff, in the Bay, California, or anywhere else in the U.S., should probably read this.

Now that I’ve finished Palo Alto, I feel like I have to finally read Imperial San Francisco, which for whatever reason I’ve been putting off for a long time. My notes from Palo Alto aren’t very organized right now, but if you want them, email me. I’ll do my best to get them up here Soon.