Click to view a selection books about California History including:
- Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture and Community in Gold Rush California by Kevin Starr
- A Gold State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California
- Global Trade Networks
- Taming the Elephant: Politics, Government and Law in Pioneer California
- Sierra Nevada Natural History
- Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration (University of California Press)
- Field Guide to California Agriculture
- Field Guide to Beetles of California
- Introduction to Fire in California
- California Indians and their Environment
From Mud-Flat Cove to Gold to Statehood: California 1840-1850
Irving Stone takes us on a journey that allows us to encounter the citizenry, experience the milestones, and appraise the events that forged the nation's most populous state.
Through his writing, experience the culture, the hardships, and the greatness of men such as John Sutter, John Bidwell, Samuel Brannan, Thomas O. Larkin, the Revered Walter Colton, and John Charles Fremont. Witness the terrible tragedy of the Donner Party and the long-battled for successes of so many others.
Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History
Anne Walthall, Professor of History, University of California
Mothers, wives, concubines, entertainers, attendants, officials, maids, drudges. By offering the first comparative view of the women who lived, worked, and served in royal courts around the globe, this work opens a new perspective on the monarchies that have dominated much of human history. Written by leading historians, anthropologists, and archeologists, these lively essays take us from Mayan states to twentieth-century Benin in Nigeria, to the palace of Japanese Shoguns, the Chinese Imperial courts, eighteenth-century Versailles, Mughal India, and beyond. Together they investigate how women's roles differed, how their roles changed over time, and how their histories can illuminate the structures of power and societies in which they lived. This work also furthers our understanding of how royal courts, created to project the authority of male rulers, maintained themselves through the reproductive and productive powers of women.
