Malcolm Harris, author of the book "Palo Alto: A History of California Capitalism, and the World," joined the staff of the Voice's sister publication, the Palo Alto Weekly, to talk about the legacy of Leland Stanford and Herbert Hoover, the evolution of capitalism, the history of eugenics at Stanford University and his personal experiences in Palo Alto at a time when the city was addressing a cluster of student suicides.

The new book spans from the early days of California's gold rush to the modern era of artificial intelligence and iPhones. In a conversation over Zoom on March 16, Harris talked about how Leland Stanford developed what he called the "Palo Alto System" for breeding and training faster horses and how his methods were later applied to Stanford students and, ultimately, to Silicon Valley's tech industry.

Harris said he didn't originally plan on writing about Herbert Hoover as much as he did, but came to appreciate the huge global influence that the former mining engineer, food czar and U.S. president had.

Hoover helped spread his ideas about labor efficiency global. His influence, he noted, could be seen in the recent federal takeover of Silicon Valley Bank and the government's decision to guarantee all deposits after the bank's collapse. The move, he said, is consistent with the Hoover view of the government's role as a supporter of private, capitalist interests.

"This wasn't supposed to be a book about famous dead presidents. It wasn't supposed to be that kind of history. And then I run into Herbert Hoover, and he's just such a fascinating guy and he played an important role in the 20th century, just a shockingly important role ... and so much of it related to Palo Alto that I found myself writing dozens of pages about this president," he said.

He also argued that the area's legacy of eugenics, as championed by people like David Starr Jordan and William Shockley, lives on to this day. While Palo Alto recently renamed the two middle schools that were named after Jordan and Lewis Terman, those ideas still persist, he said.

"When you say Palo Alto is dealing with its eugenics past and renaming a couple of schools and you go online and you see tech leadership out there talking about all sort of the same kinds of eugenics ideas that we had from Shockley — those people who are absolutely still convinced about natural hierarchy. And if you get two drinks in them and get them off the record, apparently they have a lot of stuff to say about the order of races that still sounds a lot like they did 100 years ago."

Harris also expanded on his view that the city did not properly respond to the two clusters of student suicides, which occurred when he was a Palo Alto student. This included an effort to limit "zero period" classes and reduce homework. All the students knew these efforts were a joke, he said.

"We knew teachers were trying to get through the same amount of material with the exact amount of time, they'd just given twice as much homework the day before," Harris said. "As a student who experienced the town's response to those suicides, we hear the message loud and clear, those of us who were critical … from my perspective, what I understood from the town's reaction was, there were structural issues here that my hometown is not prepared to address."