American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture

by Brian Roberts

Book Overview

California during the gold rush was a place of disputed claims, shoot-outs, gambling halls, and prostitution; a place populated by that rough and rebellious figure, the forty-niner; in short, a place that seems utterly unconnected to middle-class culture. In American Alchemy, however, Brian Roberts offers a surprising challenge to this assumption.

Roberts points to a long-neglected truth of the gold rush: many of the northeastern forty-niners...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807848565
• ISBN13: 9780807848562
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 9.3"