From Pulitzer Prize winner Miriam Pawel, a sweeping history of the largest higher education institution in the world - a pioneer of civic policy, civil rights, and upward mobility since its founding - and a look at what it can teach us in a time of crisis.The University of California system is a behemoth; constitutionally independent and protected as a public trust, it is the largest higher education institution in the world, with a budget in the tens of billions. The University has touched virtually every aspect of life in the Golden State for more than 150 years, its saga mirroring and propelling every significant social, political, cultural, and economic trend since the Civil War. Through California's complex history of immigration, "the Great Divergence" of the 1970s, and the staggering state of modern inequality nationwide, Fiat Lux elucidates what the institution can teach us about public policy, higher education, and the modern grasp of the American dream.Framing this expansive history are the stories of five pioneering graduates, including Milicent Shinn, the first woman to earn a PhD at UC Berkeley, in 1880, and Mas Masumoto, whose parents met in an internment camp and whose agricultural studies at UC Davis drew him back to his family's now iconic Central Valley peach farm. Alongside them is a memorable supporting cast, including Ansel Adams, Arnold Schoenberg, and Joan Didion, to whom the University system is "California's best idea of itself." And now, as Pawel demonstrates, this calling is of the utmost importance; the University's enduring mission as an engine of upward mobility has never been more urgent - or more difficult. Telling the history of the inexorably linked school and state in all its drama, significance, and humanity, Fiat Lux provides a sweeping analysis of the University of California's roots and an incisive lesson for the future.