California

Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone — a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism.

In 1978, more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones committed mass suicide in Guyana. Jeff Guinn explains how Jones captivated so many in The Road to Jonestown. Originally broadcast April 11, 2017.

Fresno native Mark Arax has written about the war over water in his state for decades. "It used to be the farmers against the delta smelt fish, and now it's the urbanite against the almond," he says.

A reissue of four of the detective writer's 1950s novels excavates the dark depths of California's suburban decay. Maureen Corrigan praises Macdonald's "psychological depth" and "penetrating vision."

Ann Packer's new novel, The Children's Crusade, opens in California, on a scene that's so bedrock American, it's borderline corny.

Oliver Stone's new film Savages is a violent thriller starring Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson as pot growers caught up in a Mexican drug war. Critic David Edelstein says the movie is deeper and more complicated than Stone's famously bloody Natural Born Killers.

In Karen Thompson Walker's first book, climate change makes the Earth's rotation go more and more sluggish, but this melancholy page-turner is more than just a disaster plot.

In California, lawyers are two weeks into a landmark federal court case challenging California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in that state. Margaret Talbot has been blogging about the trial for The New Yorker's Web site, and she has written about it in this week's issue of the magazine. A veteran journalist and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Talbot writes about family life, women's work, children's culture, and politics and moral debates as they intersect with science and law.

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, including the the prizes for best picture and best director, Paul Thomas Anderson's film, There Will Be Blood, won Oscars for cinematography and best actor.