In his newest book, Brian Fagan journeys back to when the West Coast was still primeval forest. The Los Angeles Times [subscription required] enthusiastically reviews Fagan’s Before California: An Archaeologist Looks at Our Earliest Inhabitants.

Brian Fagan is one of those rare scholars who has made a determined and successful effort to bring the excitement of archeology to the public. A widely respected archeologist and the author of some 30 books, he provides us, in Before California, with a tour of the Golden State long before the decimation of its native peoples began in the 18th and 19th centuries. Combining his far–reaching knowledge of archeology with a unique ability to synthesize information from diverse fields, Fagan presents an informative rendering of California’s past, starting 13,000 years ago and taking us to 1542, when Portuguese explorer Juan Rodr