“Massive illegal immigration from Mexico into California,” Victor Davis Hanson writes, “coupled with a loss of confidence in the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans, is changing the very nature of state. Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to integrate the new-alien population into our mainstream.” An opportunistic coalition stymies immigration reform and stifles an honest discussion of a growing problem. Conservative corporations, contractors, and agribusiness demand cheap wage labor from Mexico, whatever the social consequences. Progressive academics, journalists, and government bureaucrats envision illegal aliens as a vast new political constituency for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement. Part history, part political analysis, and part memoir, Mexifornia is an intensely personal look at what has changed in California over the last quarter century. The problems Hanson identifies affect Americans who inhabit “Mexizona,” “Mexichusetts” and other states of becoming. Hanson’s Mexifornia is that rare book that combines scholarship with personal experience to provide genuine insight into a complex issue.