American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-class CultureUniv of North Carolina Press, 2000 - 328 pages 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. |
Contents
California Gold and Filthy Lucre | 17 |
Gold Fever as a Cure | 43 |
Husbands and Wives | 69 |
Numberless Highways to Fairy Grottos | 93 |
A Great and Perverse Paradise | 119 |
California Is a Humbug | 143 |
Widows and Helpmates | 169 |
A Wild Free Disorderly Grotesque Society | 197 |
The Prude Falls | 221 |
The End of the Flush Times | 243 |
Conclusion | 269 |
Other editions - View all
American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture Brian Roberts Limited preview - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
according accounts added adventure Alfred American Antiquarian Society appear Bancroft Beeckman behavior Boston bourgeois Calif California Gold Rush Callbreath Cape Horn character Chastina claimed Clappe Collection Company competition culture departure desires diary East eastern Eliza Farnham entry ethical example exotic experience fact female forty-niner wives forty-niners frontier gambling gender Godey's Lady's Book gold country gold regions gold seekers golden Hiram Pierce historians History Hubert Howe Bancroft husband ideology imagined Indians Jane Pierce John Josiah Royce labor later Latin American letters liberation literary literature male marketplace Mary masculine Mexican middle middle-class miners mining moral niners northeastern Panama passengers play pleasure redemption refinement respectable reveals Sabrina Swain sailed Samuel Adams San Francisco Sara scene seems sense ship social society story tion turn University Press violence voyage West wife William woman women writing wrote Yankee York City young