Palo Alto, California, Center of the Known Universe

I feel as if I just read 500 op-eds in a row. Many of them were informative and interesting and even original. But a book that has something like 500 topics — which I feel is the case with Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris— has some problems. That’s my opinion. 

Harris makes the case that Palo Alto is a center (if not THE center) of American thought, innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, and conservative politics. Also some radical politics. He sees Leland Stanford, Sr, founder of the town of Palo Alto and also of Leland Stanford, Jr. University, as a prototype and central figure in Western America. And he sees Herbert Hoover, a member of the first Stanford graduating class of 1895, as the leader and puppet master of a huge amount of American political life and thought: even after Hoover’s death in 1974. You wouldn’t believe how much there is in this book about Hoover!

The first chapters of Palo Alto are pretty interesting. I enjoyed reading about the early history of California with a Palo Alto twist — the gold rush, the building of the railroads in which Leland Stanford was a major entrepreneur, and the details of Stanford’s horse-breeding operations which occupied his huge tract of land before it was occupied by the University. I was interested in the intellectual efforts of the first academic departments (including the reveal of the racist and eugenic theories of the founding psychology department), initial academic political struggles, and quite a bit more. I was astounded to learn that the first president of Stanford seems to have had Stanford’s widow, Jane Stanford, murdered so that he could gain control of the University. Each trend and person is covered in an interesting, rather brief and politially opinionated way: as if the author was writing an op-ed in a big newspaper.

After that, I felt like I was drowning in a huge sea of miscellaneous history of education, racism, technology, Big Agriculture, political activism, conservative thought, interaction with national politics, and all kinds of other stuff. Throughout the narrative, conspiracies were a major topic, mainly conspiracies against ordinary people and against democracy.

I persisted. I read through it all. Actually absorbing all the stuff that was drowning me would be superhuman so I kept reading but didn’t master all this stuff. Finally, as the twentieth century ends, a reader like me can come up for air. At last, the twenty-first century tech companies become Harris’s focus. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft (it’s in Seattle but Harris seems to see it as a Palo Alto extension), Google, Theranos, and their founders both good and evil. More evil as embodied by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk — initially with PayPal but also with all kinds of other things they did and power grabs they accomplished. More conspiracies. A variety of interactions with government and industrial spying and collecting data on everyone. Each topic covered as if it were an op-ed. As I say, I drowned. 

Why did I read this book? I can’t remember. The reviews when it was published last winter weren’t that great. I guess I was curious, and once I started reading, I simply decided to go through with it. 

Wrap up:

• Did I leave anything out in this review? YES! 
• Do I think Harris regrets that he stopped writing before the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, son of two Stanford professor, who is accused of criminal fraud in pursuit of a new crazy theory? YES!
• Do I recommend this book? NO.

From my last trip to the Palo Alto area: San Francisco seen from the edge of the Bay in 2019.

Review © 2023 mae sander