Customer Reviews

A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush

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In A World Transformed, Editor Joshua Paddison compiles 11 eyewitness accounts of California before the Gold Rush of 1849.

The accounts are as diverse as the landscapes they describe. From San Francisco to Santa Barbara, readers experience the journals and travelogues of a variety of people, ranging from Russian fur trappers, to Spanish Missionaries, to American merchant sailors. Not only does each description render beautiful landscapes, but forgotten customs, occupations, and ideas about the world are effortlessly presented.

Paddison is a skilled Editor. Somehow he managed to find and assemble several historical documents that read like suspenseful fiction.

In this accessible and engrossing anthology, editor Paddison portrays a pre-gold rush California that is familiar to today's Californians--diverse, contested, ever-changing. The book's firsthand accounts, framed by helpful introductions, bring to life the experiences of the missionaries, Indians, explorers, and homesteaders who populated early California. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the development (and transformation) of the American West.

The eye-witnesses to the early California missions left remarkably detailed accounts of mission-life from the perspective of european outsiders. The section by George Vancouver was a great find. These accounts are compiled in a way that flows very naturally from both a chronological and stylistic view. I enjoyed reading this book very much and would highly recommend it to my fellow Californians and others interested in this period of history.

Paddison put together a great collection of first-hand accounts from contemporaries settling the west coast. The bulk of the book is made up of excerpts from contemporary personal journals and publications. Each excerpt is prefaced with an introduction to the author and some context provided by Paddison, and throughout the book the editor occasionally interjects to correct errors, to elaborate, for example, on a person referred to in the text, or to provide present day names for a location name no longer in usage today.

It is a very interesting and readable book, which I enjoyed a lot more than I do most historical accounts. If you have any interest in California history, this is absolutely worth your time.