With descriptive elegance and humor, this book presents the compelling story of California's ascendance and decline, the kind of place on which anyone in the business of governance should keep an instructive eye. Using California as a rich historical and contemporary example, the book suggests answers to the question of how to create policy that marries expectation to outcome in any state of such fluctuating diversity and complexity. Step by step, the book discusses how California has come to its present dysfunctional condition and what, if anything, can be done to change course.