Rating: 
Summary: Great story, Excellent history
Review: This is a great read. Brands tells the tale of the gold rush as both an astute historian and a master storyteller. Ever since reading "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue" Sea a few years ago I'd been hoping for an engaging account of the gold rush. This book exceeded my expectations. I was sad when I got the the end because I so enjoyed the book and wanted it to keep going.
Rating: 
Summary: A History of California Dreaming and Its Impact on a Nation
Review: This is the story of the California Gold Rush, its impact on the American people then and now, and its contribution to the Civil War and the ultimate forging of the American nation.Like his biography of Franklin, "The First American," Brands presents history in an engaging manner that allows the reader to imagine vividly conditions and lives in times gone-by. He brings history to life. The narrative follows from the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill and the mass, world-wide movement of humanity to California to the settling of San Francisco, the rush to statehood and the Compromise of 1850. The core significance of the book for me wasn't so much about the gold, as about the debates and mounting animosities between slave and free states back east as California sought admission; and about how California, and the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads united a country on the East-West axis, even as the Civil War was forging a new union between North and South. As Brands presents them, Leland Stanford and William Tecumseh Sherman are as large in the union of East and West as Lincoln and Grant are in uniting North and South. Stanford as the first Republican governor of California met with Lincoln - the "rail-splitter" and former railroad attorney. Grant and Sherman worked together in the war, but before then, Sherman was a banker in San Francisco, commuting between New York and the West coast. From California gold, the narrator follows the prospectors into Nevada and its silver mines. Brands includes Mark Twain's observations on the silver bubble of that day. In a manner of speaking, Twain worked for a time as a stock analyst covering Nevada mining companies in very much the same way dot.com analysts operated in recent years. This was an inspired and fun piece to include - worth the price of admission itself. The only disappointment with the book is the final chapters are a bit rushed. There is a very cursory discussion of the economics of gold and a denouement in describing the futures of the main players in the story, most of whom - like Sutter - ended their days poor and broken men. If you are interested in the further development of San Francisco and the west, I recommend picking up Gray Brechin's "Imperial San Francisco." That work includes aspects of the California story that Brands does not, e.g., why Fremont named the gate, the "Golden Gate," and a discussion of the economic and environmental impact of hydraulic mining. In the main, this is an important and entertaining look at the Gold Rush and the lives of the people who took a part in the event. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Ounce For Ounce...As Good As It Gets
Review: This is the third book I've read by Professor Brands, and he just seems to get progressively better. (The other two were "The Reckless Decade" and "The First American.") He is a rare bird- a scholar who can write well for a popular audience. Before I sat down to write this review, I tried to think of any way this book could have been improved. Upon reflection, I really couldn't come up with anything. The author sets the stage by opening the book with the discovery of gold on the American River, above Sutter's Fort, in January 1848. He next writes about the people who came to California to try and make their fortune, where they came from, and how they got there. Nowadays, with transcontinental and global travel being so easy, we tend to forget how difficult it was to travel 150 years ago. Professor Brands brings the hazards to the forefront. You could go around South America via Cape Horn....if you could force your way through the severe storms, heavy seas, and gargantuan gales that stalked those latitudes and were the curse of sailing ships. (This section also gives the author the chance to talk about cruelty aboard ship. The crews consisted, frequently, of landlubbers who had been kidnapped and forced to serve. The men were often beaten in order to "motivate" them to work harder.) You could also sail to the Caribbean side of Panama, cross by land to the Pacific side, and continue to California by sea. The major drawback to this method was you stood a pretty good chance of dying from some horrible tropical fever. (On the Caribbean side, the ships would dock at a place called Chagres. People would often take out life insurance before they started on the long journey to California. Such were the odds of you catching the dreaded "Chagres fever" that the insurance companies had a "Chagres exclusion clause," which stated that if you stayed in Chagres overnight, your policy was void.) People who made the trip across the continental United States were pretty safe until they reached the "jumping off" spots of St. Joseph and Independence in Missouri. After that, you had to worry about cholera and the climate. You could run out of provisions and you and the animals you had brought could weaken and die in the snow-covered mountains or become dehydrated and bake to death in the desert. (The seekers-of-fortune who came from Asia and Australia via the Pacific actually had the easiest trip.) In the next section of the book, Professor Brands discusses the difficulties of mining- finding a good spot became more difficult as more and more people arrived. Prices of goods were so high that it wasn't easy to find enough gold to cover your expenses. Most people went home disappointed. Depending on your attitude, you looked back with bitterness on a horrible trip and backbreaking work or you shrugged your shoulders, appreciated that you had had a unique adventure, and got on with your life. Professor Brands also discusses the various methods of mining. At first it was easy to "pan" the streams, but after lots of people were in place and the choice spots were taken, later arrivals had to dam rivers and dig deep shafts into the sides of mountains. The author also discusses the political and social aspects of "The Age Of Gold." Many different nationalities were thrown together, friction resulted, and prejudice reared its ugly head. Native Californians, of Spanish and Mexican origin, were shunted aside, as were the Indians. People who came up from South America (mostly Chile) to stake claims were resented by American miners. The Chinese also had a tough time, with their pigtails and "strange-sounding" language and "odd-looking" written characters. The rapid increase in population and tremendous wealth generated by the gold-strikes made California unlike other areas that had been settled. California didn't have the luxury of developing slowly and of going through the process of becoming a Territory first. People pressed for statehood right away. As this was pre-Civil War America, that brought up the argument, in California and in Washington, as to whether California was going to be a free state or a slave state. And since California was growing so quickly and becoming so important, people also pushed for better transportation.....which led to the transcontinental railroad being built. It's all here, along with colorful and exciting narrative concerning not only the physical locations, but also talking about many of the interesting people who either explored, or helped maintain the peace, or who made their money from the mines or the railroads. (People such as John Fremont, William Tecumseh Sherman, Leland Stanford, and George Hearst- the publisher's father.) This is a great tale, and Professor Brands does a great job telling it.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable history of the Gold Rush
Review: Unlike Brands' more academically inclined biographies on Teddy Roosevelt and Benjamin Franklin (both excellent), his most recent work "The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream" is what some may call "popular history." The author is a natural raconteur, and he delivers a light but thoroughly entertaining narrative of the Gold Rush as seen through the eyes of an eclectic group of argonauts - some famous (such as John and Jessie Fremont, Leland Stanford, and William Tecumseh Sherman) and others anonymous to history. As a recent transplant to northern California, I'd been interested in reading a good scholarly account of the Gold Rush and its political, economic and social consequences. In an age when seemingly every historical topic has been debated from six different angles I was surprised to find very little still in print on the subject, let alone a modern account by an accomplished historian. Brands and his publishers have chosen their subject and their audience (i.e. mainstream) well. In the end, I enjoyed this book immensely, but it was not the book I would have expected Brands to write. It is expertly written and a joy to read; nevertheless, it lacks the intellectual gravity of David McCullough's piece on the Panama Canal or Richard Rhodes' telling of the building of the atomic bomb, for instance, which I would have preferred.
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