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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wins the Gold, September 17, 2002
H.W. Brands shows again why he is one of America's foremost historians with his compellingly readable account of the 1849 California Gold Rush and the early history of the state. Brands digs down through the myths about the Gold Rush and unearths the fascinating stories of the people (immigrants and Americans alike) who caught America's first big burst of gold fever. Among the key players were William T. Sherman (later the famous Civil War General), explorer John C. Fremont (later the first Presidential nominee of the Republican Party), and Leland Stanford (founder of the University that bears his last name). They all come together at what was truly one of American history's major crossroads. Brands does not limit himself to just recounting the adventures in the gold fields. He focusses on the larger political, social and even military effects of the gold rush. The chapters recounting the lengthy, perilous journeys by land and sea that the gold miners took to get to Califorinia are particularly compelling. Brands also discusses at length the growth of San Francisco into a major city and the establishment of California's state government. Additionally, he devotes time examining the U.S. congresional Compromise of 1850, which allowed California to be admitted as a state only after a bitter and acrimonious sectional feud over slavery. Brands is an excellent writer with that rare ability among historians to make his historicals accounts read like fiction. His book is well-researched and the author has a flair for capturing the essence of the historical figures involved. He also argues strenuously that the gold rush's effects on American politics as a whole, including pushing the country toward Civil War, should not be underestimated. Overall, an outstanding work of history that can be enjoyed by serious students and casual readers alike.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly readable and informative, August 28, 2002
This kind of larger scale canvas is a bit of a switch for Teddy Roosevelt and Ben Franklin biographer H.W. Brand, a history prof at Texas A&M. Yet he has turned out a smooth and accessible work on the process and possible long-term effects of the California gold rush. Brand manages a fine mix of the larger view -- statistics, maps of larger immigration movements, etc. -- with storylines of various specific characters, from the familiar (General William Sherman and John Fremont), to the vaguely familiar (Leland Stanford and the actual discoverer of gold at Sutter's Mill, James Marshall), to the unknown (fortune hunters and settlers who chronicled their trips across the western prairies as well as from Australia, France, and China). Although the Chinese experience still gets short shrift, Brand has chosen some terrific characters (and decent writers) from other foreign lands to tell their stories. This book also makes very clear how hard a time most people had of it. Brand describes in detail the effort of crossing the raw continent, the many human and animal carcasses that fell by the wayside (or succumbed to violence), and the arduous physical process of extracting precious metals from the earth until industrialization took over that work too. One of the more eye-opening sections for me was the description of how many fires -- big, devastating ones -- San Francisco suffered in the 1840s and 1850s. In trying to make a case for the larger and long-term effects of the gold rush (impressive shifts of world population, the decline of the Native American west due largely to the railroads), Brand gets a little far afield from California's gold fields toward the end of the book, but the text is always interesting and very readable.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A History of California Dreaming and Its Impact on a Nation, October 30, 2002
This is the story of the California Gold Rush, its impact on the American people then and now, and its contribution to the Civil War and the ultimate forging of the American nation. Like his biography of Franklin, "The First American," Brands presents history in an engaging manner that allows the reader to imagine vividly conditions and lives in times gone-by. He brings history to life. The narrative follows from the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill and the mass, world-wide movement of humanity to California to the settling of San Francisco, the rush to statehood and the Compromise of 1850. The core significance of the book for me wasn't so much about the gold, as about the debates and mounting animosities between slave and free states back east as California sought admission; and about how California, and the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads united a country on the East-West axis, even as the Civil War was forging a new union between North and South. As Brands presents them, Leland Stanford and William Tecumseh Sherman are as large in the union of East and West as Lincoln and Grant are in uniting North and South. Stanford as the first Republican governor of California met with Lincoln - the "rail-splitter" and former railroad attorney. Grant and Sherman worked together in the war, but before then, Sherman was a banker in San Francisco, commuting between New York and the West coast. From California gold, the narrator follows the prospectors into Nevada and its silver mines. Brands includes Mark Twain's observations on the silver bubble of that day. In a manner of speaking, Twain worked for a time as a stock analyst covering Nevada mining companies in very much the same way dot.com analysts operated in recent years. This was an inspired and fun piece to include - worth the price of admission itself. The only disappointment with the book is the final chapters are a bit rushed. There is a very cursory discussion of the economics of gold and a denouement in describing the futures of the main players in the story, most of whom - like Sutter - ended their days poor and broken men. If you are interested in the further development of San Francisco and the west, I recommend picking up Gray Brechin's "Imperial San Francisco." That work includes aspects of the California story that Brands does not, e.g., why Fremont named the gate, the "Golden Gate," and a discussion of the economic and environmental impact of hydraulic mining. In the main, this is an important and entertaining look at the Gold Rush and the lives of the people who took a part in the event. Highly recommended.
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