Product Description

By the Author of the Bestselling Pulitzer Prize Finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN

THEY WENT WEST TO CHANGE THEIR LIVES AND IN THE BARGAIN THEY CHANGED THE WORLD. THIS IS THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE GOLD RUSH.

When gold was first discovered on the American River above Sutter's Fort in January 1848, California was sparsely populated frontier territory not yet ceded to the United States from Mexixo. The discovery triggered a massive influx as hundreds of thousands of people scrambled to California in search of riches, braving dangerous journeys across the Pacific, around Cape Horn, and through the Isthmus of Panama, as well as across America's vast, unsettled wilderness. Cities sprang up overnight, in response to the demand for supplies and services of all kinds. By 1850, California had become a state -- the fastest journey to statehood in U.S. history. It had also become a symbol of what America stood for and of where it was going.

In The Age of Gold, H. W. Brands explores the far-reaching implications of this pivotal point in U.S. history, weaving the politics of the times with the gripping stories of individuals that displays both the best and the worse of the American character. He discusses the national issues that exploded around the ratification of California's statehood, hastening the clouds that would lead to the Civil War. He tells the stories of the great fortunes made by such memorable figures as John and Jessie Fremont, Leland Stanford and George Hearst -- and of great fortunes lost by hundreds now forgotten by history. And he reveals the profound effect of the Gold Rush on the way Americans viewed their destinies, as the Puritan ethic of hard work and the gradual accumulation of worldly riches gave way to the notion of getting rich quickly.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #523537 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-20
• Released on: 2002-08-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 547 pages

Amazon.com Review
Texas A&M University professor H.W. Brands enhances his reputation as one of America's great popular historians with The Age of Gold, which tells the story of the California gold rush through rollicking narrative and intelligent analysis. "James Marshall's discovery of gold at Coloma [in 1848] turned out to be a seminal event in history, one of those rare moments that divide human existence into before and after," he writes. It launched "the most astonishing mass movement of people since the Crusades" and "helped initiate the modern era of American economic development." Brands describes how thousands of people from all over the world hazarded the journey, faced the scientific challenge of extracting precious metal from the earth, and finally struggled "to sink roots" where so many came merely "to strip the land." This book is something of a departure for Brands, who most recently has written biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt (both of them excellent). Yet he tackles this new topic with confidence, telling dozens of stories about John Fremont, Leland Stanford, and less famous forty-niners. He concludes by describing why these tales have a national and even global importance. The Age of Gold is magnificent in its sweep, and not to be missed by fans of American history. --John Miller

From Publishers Weekly
The gold rush of 1848, says Brands, was a watershed in American history, helping mold the country into its modern shape, transforming the wilderness and pushing the country into civil war. Noted biographer Brands (his life of Benjamin Franklin, The First American, was a Pulitzer finalist) makes good use of a sparkling cast of characters: George Hearst, Leland Stanford, Levi Strauss, even William "War Is Hell" Sherman, all raced to California to make their fortunes. For most of the hundreds of thousands who flocked to California, though, life in the mines of the Sierras was hard and rarely paid off. Yet the hopeful kept coming not only from the East but from around the world, with profound implications for California and the rest of the country. The question of statehood would California be a slave state or free? accelerated the onset of the Civil War, says Brands. He believes the gold rush changed the national psyche, pulling the country away from a Puritan ethic of "steadiness and frugality" and toward a new American dream of "instant wealth," the fruits of "boldness and luck." With solid research and a sprightly narrative, Brands's portrait of the gold rush is an enlightening analysis of a transformative period for California and America.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The California gold rush of 1849 revolutionized expectations. It gave material promise to the American Dream and made gold the lubricant of the world economy. Brands (history, Texas A&M), the author of acclaimed works like his life of Benjamin Franklin, The First American, here fashions a smoothly flowing narrative from diaries, journals, letters, and other contemporary accounts. He recounts how the famous, like John Sutter, John Fr‚mont, Leland Stanford, and the filibuster William Walker, and the not famous, like settler Sarah Royce, slave Archy Lee, Chinese immigrant Yee Ah Tye, and trader James Savage, changed their lives and shaped the history of California, the United States, and the world. These and the hundreds of thousands of other individuals who sparked the Age of Gold catapulted California into the center of a sectional and slavery controversies and of modern U.S. economic issues concerning gold vs. silver standards and debtors vs. creditors. Brands writes history as the art of storytelling that enthralls and informs the reader. Highly recommended, especially for public libraries.
Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Disconnected narrative
Mild disappointment. Too episodic and written just north of the level of a USA Today article. I think the author intends the narrative episodes to illustrate valid historic points, but he doesn't really tie the narrative and the theses together explicitly, and he isn't a good enough writer to make them flow together implicitly.

His key premise appears to be "The California Gold Rush was really important. Here are some examples." And the examples are often interesting and amusing, but not enough on which to hang a story which has no point.

Perhaps the finest book of it's kind.
I buy more books faster than I can read them so I always have a large queue of books to read. Over half of the books I read are about history. I picked up this book intending to simply read a few pages to get an idea of its content but, once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. What Brands has done better than perhaps any other historian is put the gold rush into historical, social, political, and even world context. When gold was discovered in January of 1848, China was having a revolt that cost more lives than any other conflict of the 19th Century (approximately 13,000,000!), France was in the middle of a revolution, and depression was sweeping Europe. Ironically, the trip to the gold fields was a longer journey for Americans on the East coast than it was for any other nation bordering the Pacific Ocean. People from all over the globe dropped everything and headed for California. The journeys of those who sought gold were often the greatest adventures of their lives and many of them never survived the trip. They headed into the unknown not knowing what would happen to them and having only a vague idea of what was in store for them. Doctors, lawyers, farmers, shopkeepers, laborers, gamblers, criminals, seamen, and virtually everyone imaginable dropped everything and headed for California.

The first part of the book covers some of those incredible journeys both by land and sea, relying on first-hand accounts by those you made the trip. I found that part of the book alone to be fascinating. Brands then takes us to the gold fields and briefly describes how the evolution of mining technology developed. But that's only the beginning; we learn about the amazingly rapid growth in the population of California and how it impacted the the people involved. We also learn how California's admission into the Union caused brought the underlying causes of the Civil War to a head. Unlike many historical books, Brands puts everything into context, giving meaning to his subject.

I haven't done justice to this book in this review. But I can tell you that it is one of the finest books of its kind that I have read and I am a voracious reader of history. If you have any interest in history at all, you will almost certainly find this a fascinating read. H.W. Brands may be one of the finest historians of our time. I can't recommend this book too much.

Amazing
I have learned so very much about American history from this book. I had no idea the discovery of gold in CA had affected the entire nation's history in so many ways.
The book is well written, very thorough and at times even exciting in its revelations.