Rooted In Barbarous Soil

The third in a four-volume series commemorating California's sesquicentennial, this volume brings together the best of the new scholarship on the social and cultural history of the Gold Rush, written in an accessible style and generously illustrated with with black and white and color photographs.

An edited volume exploring the role women played in California politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The final of four volumes in the 'California History Sesquicentennial Series', this text compiles original essays which treat the consequential role of post-Gold Rush California government, politics and law in the building of a dynamic state with lasting impact to the present day.

Winner, Book Award, Associaton for Borderland Studies, 2008 The U.S. and Mexican border regions have experienced rapid demographic and economic growth over the last fifty years. In this analysis, Joan Anderson and James Gerber offer a new perspective on the changes and tensions pulling at the border from both sides through a discussion of cross-border economic issues and thorough analytical research that examines not only the dramatic demographic and economic growth of the region, but also shifts in living standards, the changing political climate, and environmental pressures, as well as how these affect the lives of people in the border region. Creating what they term a Border Human Development Index, the authors rank the quality of life for every U.S. county and Mexican municipio that touches the 2,000-mile border. Using data from six U.S. and Mexican censuses, the book adeptly illustrates disparities in various aspects of economic development between the two countries over the last six decades. Anderson and Gerber make the material accessible and compelling by drawing an evocative picture of how similar the communities on either side of the border are culturally, yet how divided they are economically. The authors bring a heightened level of insight to border issues not just for academics but also for general readers. The book will be of particular value to individuals interested in how the border between the two countries shapes the debates on quality of life, industrial growth, immigration, cross-border integration, and economic and social development.

Between 1800 and the Civil War, the American West evolved from a region to territories to states. This book depicts the development of the antebellum West from the perspective of a resident of the Western frontier. What happened in the West in the lead-up to and during the American Civil War? The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed provides a clear and complete answer to this question. The work succinctly overviews the West during the antebellum period from 1800 to 1862, supplying thematic chapters that explain how key elements and characteristics of the West created conflict and division that differed from those in the East during the Civil War. It looks at how these issues influenced the military, settlement, and internal territorial conflicts about statehood in each region, and treats the Cherokee and other Indian nations as important actors in the development of a national narrative.

This comprehensive narrative history of the California Gold Rush describes daily life during this historic period, documenting its wide-reaching effects and examining the significant individuals and organizations of the time. It is easy to see the vestiges of the California Gold Rush in the state's modern culture. The San Francisco 49ers football team are named after the term given to those who flocked to California in 1849 in search of gold; California is nicknamed "The Golden State;" and the official state motto is "Eureka" meaning "I have found it" in Greek-a reference to mining success. But the Gold Rush was not only a pivotal event with lasting impact in California; it also greatly affected America as a whole and global society. This book examines the historical significances of the California Gold Rush, beginning with life in California prior to the Gold Rush and European colonization and concluding with information regarding contemporary California. Readers will gain historical insights from the highly detailed explorations of how life in California evolved and understand the enormous impact of an event over 160 years ago on present-day America.

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that he loved, Jonathan Foster was forced to come to grips with its reputation for racial violence. In so doing, he began to question how other cities dealt with similar kinds of stigmas that resulted from behavior and events that fell outside accepted norms. He wanted to know how such stigmas changed over time and how they affected a city’s reputation and residents. Those questions led to this examination of the role of stigma and history in three very different cities: Birmingham, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. In the era of civil rights, Birmingham became known as “Bombingham,” a place of constant reactionary and racist violence. Las Vegas emerged as the nation’s most recognizable Sin City, and San Francisco’s tolerance of homosexuality made it the perceived capital of Gay America. Stigma Cites shows how cultural and political trends influenced perceptions of disrepute in these cities, and how, in turn, their status as sites of vice and violence influenced development decisions, from Birmingham’s efforts to shed its reputation as racist, to San Francisco’s transformation of its stigma into a point of pride, to Las Vegas’s use of gambling to promote tourism and economic growth. The first work to investigate the important effects of stigmatized identities on urban places, Foster’s innovative study suggests that reputation, no less than physical and economic forces, explains how cities develop and why. An absorbing work of history and urban sociology, the book illuminates the significance of perceptions in shaping metropolitan history.

History records only one peaceful transition of hegemonic power: the passage from British to American dominance of the international order. To explain why this transition was nonviolent, Kori Schake explores nine points of crisis between Britain and the U.S., from the Monroe Doctrine to the unequal “special relationship” during World War II.