| American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture Contributor(s): Roberts, Brian (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807848565 ISBN-13: 9780807848562 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2000 Annotation: A colorful investigation of the California Gold Rush that overturns the myth of the rebellious Forty-niner and reveals the middle-class values and origins of those who travelled west to seek adventure and fortune. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 19th Century |
| Dewey: 979.404 |
| LCCN: 99048082 |
| Lexile Measure: 1360 |
| Series: Cultural Studies of the United States |
| Physical Information: 0.89" H x 5.8" W x 9.25" (1.04 lbs) 360 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Cultural Region - West Coast - Geographic Orientation - California |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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 who ventured westward were in fact middle-class in origin, status, and values. Tracing the experiences and adventures both of these men and of the "unseen" forty-niners--women who stayed back East while their husbands went out West--he shows that, whatever else the gold seekers abandoned on the road to California, they did not simply turn their backs on middle-class culture. Ultimately, Roberts argues, the story told here reveals an overlooked chapter in the history of the formation of the middle class. While the acquisition of respectability reflects one stage in this history, he says, the gold rush constitutes a second stage--a rebellion against standards of respectability. |
Contributor Bio(s): Roberts, Brian: - Brian Roberts is assistant professor of history at California State University in Sacramento. |