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List Price: $17.95Amazon.com's Price: $12.21 You Save: $5.74 (32%)as of 03/15/2010 21:50 EDT
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780385720885
ISBN: 0385720882
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: October 14, 2003
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: October 14, 2003
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Review:
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
Product Description:
“I have found it.” These words, uttered by the man who first discovered gold on the American River in 1848, triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. California’s gold drew fortune-seekers from the ends of the earth. It accelerated America’s imperial expansion and exacerbated the tensions that exploded in the Civil War. And, as H. W. Brands makes clear in this spellbinding book, the Gold Rush inspired a new American dream—the “dream of instant wealth, won by audacity and good luck.”
Brands tells his epic story from multiple perspectives: of adventurers John and Jessie Fremont, entrepreneur Leland Stanford, and the wry observer Samuel Clemens—side by side with prospectors, soldiers, and scoundrels. He imparts a visceral sense of the distances they traveled, the suffering they endured, and the fortunes they made and lost. Impressive in its scholarship and overflowing with life, The Age of Gold is history in the grand traditions of Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This is one of the best I have read in a long time. I think Mr Brands deserves a literary award. I learned a whole lot, was entertained, and amazed. His writing caused me to actually seem like I was there and I found it most interesting. Now if you like gore or drippy romance novels this is not your book. But if like history, finance, struggle, and learning a little about mining you'll like this. Facsinating topic.
Rating: -
When James Marshall thought he saw a few specks of gold at the bottom of the American river near the sawmill he was building for John Sutter near Coloma California on January 25 1848 California was still a part of Mexico with the capital in Monterey; and from the Rio Grande and the Colorado to Oregon was Spanish or Indian - take your pick. - and thinly "settled" if it could be called "settled" at all. The site of San Francisco was a settlement of a few small cabins called Yerba Buena and the country ... Read More
Rating: -
The Age of Gold is a fascinating read. The book primarily deals with the California gold rush and its consequences, but the author adeptly deals with so many other issues related to California's early history. These include the struggles to build order in newly created communities, racial relations, the transcontinental railroad, the Civil War, international trade, etc. Mr. Brands's primary thesis is that the gold rush was not simply an influential event that helped shape California and our nation's ... Read More
Rating: -
The Age of Gold is the best book that I have read (and I have read quite a few) about the California Gold Rush for it tells the story in the words of the people involved and gives a feeling of the incredible change the discovery of gold brought to the State of California.
Rating:  -
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 ... Read More
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