Description: 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. A volatile assemblage of transients were fixated on "making their pile" and returning home. 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.

General themes lend unity to the chapters: reinterpreting gold-rush society and culture for modern Californians; the interplay of traditional cultures and frontier innovation; the impact of the California experience on the nation and the wider world; and the importance and continuing legacy of ethnic and cultural diversity. Together with the other three volumes in the series, Rooted in Barbarous Soil will stand as a monument not only to scholarship on the Gold Rush, but also to central themes in American historical scholarship at the end of the century.

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