Rating: 
Summary: Another outstanding book by H.W. Brands
Review: I amazed at the range of H.W. Brands knowledge. Not only has he supplies with the greatest biography on BEn Franklin, but he also given us this gem.
"The Age of Gold", is a winner on all fronts. It is highly readable, very informative, sheds light on multiple historical personalities (Stanford, Sherman, Fremont) along with other less notable participants of the era. Brands not only explains everyones involvement in the Gold Rush, but he also follows them through their life. Brands leaves us with no loose ends, everything is explained in full. I was continually amazed at the amount of hardships that these pioneers had to withstand.
"The Age of Gold," is highly readable (Reading at times like a novel) and I would recommend it to anyone who has any interest in 19th century history or the California Gold Rush.
Rating:
Summary: The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush
Review: I bought this book for my husband as he is an avid reader of American History. He very very seldom gives anything 5 stars, this was one of a very few. It was very informative and written to keep your interest and not dragged out page after page about the same event. Would highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Story
Review: I heard this book being discussed on NPR and checked it out from the library. This is a well written and very interesting stroy of the California gold rush. The author moves between several perspective in telling the story. In doing this you get a good picture of the effect of this event on the world. People coming by ship around the tip of South America, through the ismuth of Panama, overland from the east coast and from asia are profiled. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth Its Weight
Review: If you are fascinated with U.S. history and appreciate good storytelling, H.W. Brands' glittering new work is worth its weight in gold. In "The Age of Gold," Brands, an acclaimed biographer of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, trains his considerable narrative talents on the California Gold Rush. We learn of the worldwide flight to California catalyzed by gold's 1848 discovery, and the role of central figures, such as John Fremont, Leland Stanford, and many lesser known characters, in shaping the Golden State in its early years. I found Brands' central thesis particularly interesting. The Gold Rush, he says, can be seen as a demarcation line in the forging of a new American Dream. Prior to the gold strike at Coloma, most Americans held to a Puritan belief in the value of thrift, hard work and gradual wealth accumulation. A deep-seated aversion to failure made risk-taking something to be strenuously avoided. After Coloma, failure began to lose its stigma. Americans became more comfortable with the concept of risk. A failed gold strike -- or the demise of any business venture -- became a learning experience, an accepted setback in the inexorable quest for ultimate success. The Gold Rush can be seen as the Mother of the American entrepreneurial spirit, and Brands says its no coincidence that the same northern California region that yielded gold in abundance 150 years ago is home to today's Silicon Valley. An excellent read. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth Its Weight
Review: If you are fascinated with U.S. history and appreciate good storytelling, H.W. Brands' glittering new work is worth its weight in gold. In "The Age of Gold," Brands, an acclaimed biographer of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, trains his considerable narrative talents on the California Gold Rush. We learn of the worldwide flight to California unleashed by gold's 1848 discovery, and the role of central figures, such as John Fremont, Leland Stanford, and many lesser known characters, in shaping the Golden State in its early years. I found Brands' central thesis particularly interesting. The Gold Rush, he says, can be seen as a demarcation line in the forging of a new American Dream. Prior to the gold strike at Coloma, most Americans held to a Puritan belief in the value of thirft, hard work and gradual wealth accumulation. A deep-seated aversion to failure made risk-taking something to be strenuously avoided. After Coloma, failure began to lose its stigma. Americans became more comfortable with the concept of risk. A failed gold strike -- or the failure of any business venture -- became a learning experience, an accepted setback in the inexorable quest for ultimate success. The Gold Rush can be seen as the Mother of the American entrepreneurial spirit, and Brands says its no coincidence that the same northern California region that yielded gold in abundance 150 years ago is home to today's Silicon Valley. An excellent read. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: What a Rush!
Review: In January 1848, James Marshall was checking on the progress of construction of his sawmill on the American River in California. In the tailrace of the mill, he found quartz that bore flakes of gold. It might have meant nothing. His crew had spent months moving dirt and rocks around for the mill, but no previous shiny yellow specks had shown up. The discovery was kept quiet for a while, but then Sam Brannan heard about it. He owned a general store at Sutter's Fort nearby, and he pondered whether to start digging for the gold himself, or to make his fortune selling supplies to others doing the digging. He went with the latter strategy (the one that more reliably made eventual fortunes from the gold mines) - he filled a jar with gold dust, and paraded it around San Francisco. The word was out; the Gold Rush was on. According to H. W. Brands, the effect of the discovery of gold in California was to change local, national, and international history. He describes the effects in a long, entertaining narrative of individual stories, _The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream_ (Doubleday). There had never been anything like this before. The world had had a long lust for gold, but it was so rare and finds were so haphazard that there had never before been a rush for gold. The international effects of the gold discovery preceded even the national ones, for the word went out over the ocean to Chile, Australia, and China before it could be carried overland, or via the Panama land bridge, to Washington DC and other east coast cities. The gold veins of California and Nevada were big and rich, and there were new technologies to bring them out. There were different variations of the famous panning for gold to start off with, and then miners became true miners by digging for it. Eventually, large operations were launched to uncover the gold hydraulically, aiming water cannon at the mountains and bringing them low. The huge population boom was like nothing the world had seen. It had been assumed that California would slowly fill up with people, just as the lands purchased from France had done, and this was the process up until 1848. By 1849, however, California overtook many existing states in population, and the new Californians were interested in admission to the Union, skipping the usual territorial stage. Brands argues that the admission affected the national debate on slavery versus abolition, and may have accelerated the Civil War. Be that as it may, it is clear that transcontinental railroad was probably the most significant result of the Gold Rush. There had never been a larger construction enterprise, and it created "the largest unified market in the world, the market that allowed the American economy to grow into the colossus it became by the beginning of the 20th century." It is fitting that Brands winds up this illuminating and wide-ranging book with Silicon Valley. Silicon is everywhere in sand, and entrepreneurs are ubiquitous; was the American Dream so exemplified years ago in striking a rich gold vein perhaps fueling again a legendary California boom? The two booms both had their share of resultant tycoons and bankrupts, resource and hype. Brands's conclusion about the participants in the first boom may by future historians be seen to apply to the subsequent one: "They went to California to seek individual happiness. Some found it; some didn't....The men and women of the Gold Rush hoped to change their lives by going to California; in the bargain they changed their world."
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous narrative history of early California
Review: In my opinion, Historian H.W. Brands has outdone himself with this book. The age of Gold is more than just a story about gold - it is a story about early California. It is easy to say that the history of California starts with the Gold Rush of the 1840's. It would also be easy to say that it starts hundreds of years before that, but Brands focuses on how the gold rush in California really impacted the whole nation. Brands has written this book in the narrative style, which helps the reader to understand the personal motivations and feelings of each person involved in the book. It is a thrill to read how John Sutter feels when Gold is discovered on his property, and it is equally heartbreaking to read about the failure of some who traveled from foreign lands to make their fortunes. I believe that the most important pieces presented in the book are how the Gold Rush impacted the United States as a whole, including the theory that it helped build up sentiment that led to the onset of the Civil War. The political struggles faced by some of the players in 1840's and 1850's California, such as John Fremont (and his wife Jessee) are explained in great detail and add much imagery and understanding to the importance that the discovery of this precious yellow metal in the bear republic really meant. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for an understanding of how Gold was discovered in California, but it should appeal to a much wider audience than such a select group of individuals. It should also appeal to anyone with an interest in 19th century America, or the early West, including the building of the transcontinental railroad, which had roots in California and the east. I am looking forward to Brands' next book with great anticipation.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous narrative history of early California
Review: In my opinion, Historian H.W. Brands has outdone himself with this book. The age of Gold is more than just a story about gold - it is a story about early California. It is easy to say that the history of California starts with the Gold Rush of the 1840's. It would also be easy to say that it starts hundreds of years before that, but Brands focuses on how the gold rush in California really impacted the whole nation. Brands has written this book in the narrative style, which helps the reader to understand the personal motivations and feelings of each person involved in the book. It is a thrill to read how John Sutter feels when Gold is discovered on his property, and it is equally heartbreaking to read about the failure of some who traveled from foreign lands to make their fortunes. I believe that the most important pieces presented in the book are how the Gold Rush impacted the United States as a whole, including the theory that it helped build up sentiment that led to the onset of the Civil War. The political struggles faced by some of the players in 1840's and 1850's California, such as John Fremont (and his wife Jessee) are explained in great detail and add much imagery and understanding to the importance that the discovery of this precious yellow metal in the bear republic really meant. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for an understanding of how Gold was discovered in California, but it should appeal to a much wider audience than such a select group of individuals. It should also appeal to anyone with an interest in 19th century America, or the early West, including the building of the transcontinental railroad, which had roots in California and the east. I am looking forward to Brands' next book with great anticipation.
Rating: 
Summary: Fools Gold.
Review: Mediocre at best, this book's subject matter, early California history and its impact on the development of America, is handled so much better by so many other authors that this rendition is an embarrassment to H.W. Brands' pen and most reader's intelligence. This book rambles, is out of chronological sequence and, in order to present a different or unique perspective, focuses the reader on the most incredibly useless, arcane information imaginable. Complete lines of thought are left dangling. The first 350 pages are not really good at all, the writer utilizing a literary style, firsthand accounts, he is not any good at weaving into a credible story. It is only when he moves back to his own style that Brands finds his story telling groove. The next hundred pages are excellent. Yet he switches back again and blows it. This is an unsatisfactory work by a very accomplished historian. It is almost like the publisher forced an unusually good writer into a more contemporary, currently fashionable, style. The result is a confused clutter, much of whose subject matter is almost directly lifted from other peoples' works.
Rating:
Summary: Go fer da Gold!
Review: This is a fine read that deals with the California gold rush of 1849 and the idea of paradise in California that began with it. The hardships people suffered going to the gold fields were unbelievable. There was, of course, no transcontinental railroad and no Panama Canal. When they got to California, few of them struck it rich from gold. The ones who did were mostly there when it got started. The smart '49ers went into business supplying the miners. The problem was that when the boats brought in the supplies, they were immediately deserted by their crews--all of whom went to strike it rich mining a claim. This is a well written book and will be liked by history nuts like myself as well as more general readers.
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