As noted here previously, writer and journalist Carey McWilliams gave the citrus towns of Riverside, Redlands, Claremont and Ontario a generous amount of space in “Southern California: An Island on the Land,” his postwar study that’s still cited as essential reading about Greater Los Angeles.

McWilliams, unlike most L.A. thinkers past and present, treated the Inland Empire as an essential piece of Southern California, not as a dull hinterland of rubes and rustics.

In writing here Oct. 29 about McWilliams , I promised a follow-up that would focus on his visits here for speaking engagements. They were lively and sometimes controversial.

I only thought to look into those public appearances because of a stray comment in “Island.”

“Not so long ago, I spoke in Riverside on the subject of

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