Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. x, 364 pages, illustrations (some colour); 26 cm. California History Sesquicentennial Series, vol. 3. Published in association with the California Historical Society. Firm binding, clean inside copy. First paperback edition. "Perhaps never in the time-honored American tradition of frontiering did "civilization" appear to sink so low as in gold rush California. A mercurial economy swung from boom to bust, and back again, rendering everyone's fortunes ephemeral. Competition, jealousy, and racism fueled individual and mass violence. Yet, in the very midst of this turbulence, social and cultural forms emerged, gained strength, spread, and took hold. Rooted in Barbarous Soil,Volume 3 in the four-volume California History Sesquicentennial Series, is the only book of its kind to examine gold rush society and culture, to present modern interpretations, and to gather up-to-date bibliographies of its topics. Chapters by leading scholars in their respective fields explore a range of topics including migration and settlement ethnic diversity, assimilation, cooperation, and conflict the dispossession of Indians and the Californios, the founding of schools and universities, urban life, women in early California, the sexual frontier and the development of religion, art, literature, and popular culture. Many rarely seen illustrations supplement the text. / Kevin Starr is California State Librarian and University Professor at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the acclaimed multi-volume series Americans and the California Dream (1973-1998). Richard J. Orsi is Professor of History at California State University, Hayward, and editor of California History. He is the coeditor of Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush (California, 1998) and A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California (California, 1999)." - Publisher. CONTENTS: PREFACE, Michael Duty and Richard J. Orsi; I. Rooted in Barbarous Soil:An Introduction to Gold Rush Society and Culture, Kevin Starr; 2. No Boy's Play: Migration and Settlement in Early Gold Rush California, Malcolm Rohrbough; 3. A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush, Sucheng Chan; 4. "Because he is a liar and a thief" Conquering the Residents of "Old" California, 1850-1880, James A. Sandos; 5. All hands have gone downtown": Urban Places in Gold Rush California, Robert Phelps; 6. Weaving a Different World: Women and the California Gold Rush, Nancy J. Taniguchi; 7. "As jolly as a clam at high water": The Rise of Art in Gold Rush California, Anthony Kirk; 8. Romancing the Gold Rush: The Literature of the California Frontier, Michael Kowalewski; 9. From Indifference to Imperative Duty: Educating Children in Early California, Irving G. Hendrick; 10. Phelan's Cemetery: Religion in the Urbanizing West, 1850-1869, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento, Steven M. Avella; 11. Popular Culture on the Golden Shore, Gary F. Kurutz; 12. "My own private life": Toward a History of Desire in Gold Rush California, Susan Lee Johnson; LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS; INDEX.. 1st. Paperback. Fine. 4to.