Processes of economic development and class formation are investigated throughout the text. The first half of the book focuses on an era preceding the dominance of industrial capitalism in Southern California. The kin-communal model of native communi- ties, ‘‘plunder economy’’ of Spanish settlements, and the complex credit system of Mexican ranch societies served as dominant modes of production prior to the annexation of Mexico’s northern hold- ings to the United States following the Mexican-American War (p. 234). Much would change in Southern California following the discovery of gold and the conferral of California statehood. Although experiencing an initial boom in the cattle industry, few Mexican ranches survived market competition, natural disasters, and changes in property taxes as lenders foreclosed on these prop- erties. Processes of capitalist development initiated by the agrarian capitalism of the 1870s comprise the second half of the work. The rise of an impressive export citrus economy, militarization and real estate development, and warehousing growth comprise the prevail- ing forms of industrial capitalism over the subsequent century. Trac- ing capitalist logic, the author uncovers the processes by which circulation replaced production as government institutions, prop- erty owners, and a segmented labor force struggled to respond to regional and national restructuring. The great strength of this work is its breadth. Drawing on a wide range of secondary sources, including academic texts, local news- papers, museum publications, and policy reports, the book synthe- sizes a long-spanning history of the region’s development. Here also lies its limitation. Adopting a Marxian framework to examine 12,000 years of time, there is little room for specificity, for primary analysis, or to unpack the theoretical underpinnings of class structure. What we gain, however, is a compelling work that uncovers how the polit- ical economy of a region changed over time in response to internal historical continuities and forces occurring beyond its boundaries. GENEVIEVE CARPIO University of California, Los Angeles A ´ lvar N ´ un ˜ez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer. By Robin Varnum. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. xvi þ 368 pp. $26.95 cloth) The journey of A ´ lvar N ´ un ˜ez Cabeza de Vaca through the Amer- ican Southwest, and the myriad first-contact encounters he described, are the stuff of myth and legend. Cabeza de Vaca wrote about virtual Reviews of Books 285