Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California

In this vivid account of the birth of modern California, J.S. Holliday frames the gold rush years within the larger story of the states transformation from the quietude of a Mexican hinterland in the 1840s to the forefront of entrepreneurial capitalism by the 1890s. No other state, no nation experienced such an adolescence of freedom and success. By 1883 California was hailed as America, only more so. Hollidays boldly interpretive narrative has the authority and immediacy of an eyewitness accoun…