Review: What hath Palo Alto Wrought?

Stanford University faced an unusual quandary in 1930, when students started complaining that their beds were too small to accommodate their growing frames.

According to a letter that students wrote to the editor of The Stanford Daily that year, at least 50 male students were over 6-feet, 2-inches tall and needed longer mattresses. The paper's staff followed suit with an editorial titled, "Give them Room."

Then, two decades later, it happened again, sparking the 1950 headline, "Towering freshmen overlap Encina beds," in the student publication. Stanford administrators examined students' height records and put in an emergency order for 7-foot beds.

The cover of "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World," by Malcolm Harris. Courtesy Little, Brown and Company.

In Malcolm Harris' expansive, engaging and explosive new book, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World," the image of Stanford racing to accommodate its influx of big, friendly giants serves as an apt metaphor for — and a direct symptom of — what he calls the Palo Alto System. Pioneered by Leland Stanford and refined over the years by the likes of Lewis Terman, Herbert Hoover, William Shockley, Jr., Steve Jobs and Peter Thiel, the system breeds ruthless efficiency, economic inequality, white supremacy, labor abuse and unspeakable wealth for those at the top. His book, which will be released on Feb. 14, describes Palo Alto as "the belly of the capitalist beast."

Read the full review here.