<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Not very well-written
Review: I always thought reading a book about Gold Rush-era California would be interesting, but Susan Lee Johnson has been able to make it seem not very compelling.This is a "People's History" sort of book, a tale of the minor characters in history, in particular the miners and their society. In such a book, there are oppressors (often white males) and oppressed (usually women and non-whites). Johnson supports this thesis with numerous tales of robbery and murder, which may all be true, but also reflect a political agenda that she is trying to promote. This removes any real objectivity from her book. The main problem with this book, however, is it is not very well-organized. Johnson has filled the book with some good (and some not-so-good) anecdotes, but there is not all that much joining these stories together. The result is a sometimes informative but usually rambling work. In the end, I felt like I hadn't learned very much about this era other than a few tales that needed a better context.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be called Roaring Lesbian
Review: I enjoy learning about 1850s California, so I quickly bought this book. My excitement turned to dismay when I was 40 pages in and the auther was still talking about herself. I thought this book was supposed to be about the Gold Rush. I only made it about 150 pages before I bestowed upon this book a rare honor, one that I have only bestowed upon two other books in my life: I threw it away. I refuse to allow any other human being to be subjected to its unfocused, egotistic narrative. Avoid this book and (unless you're interested in personal accounts of lesbian difficulties) everything else written by Susan Lee Johnson.
Rating:
Summary: The politically correct version of the California Gold Rush
Review: I was disappointed in this book. Johnson's thesis is interesting and she provides a considerable amount of interesting information. However, her analysis is wanting, often reflecting the shortcomings of hasty post-modern analysis. Like many post-modernists, her analysis hinges on domination. Since Anglo-American culture ends up dominating the Californian Native American culture and the Mexican culture as well as others, individual acts by whites (she fails to distinguish between Anglo-Americans and other white Americans) are seen as acts of domination. While individual acts may fit into a larger scheme of domination, the motivation for individual acts may have nothing to do with domination. This would be comparable to me arguing that the only significance of your driving a car is the domination of nature that you and your culture do. I found the monocausation very tiring. A cigar is never just a cigar. She often engages in over-analaysis. A white miner writing home about Native Americans collecting acorns for flour does not express curiousity on the part of the white miner nor a contrast between the use of oak trees in the east and California, but rather an act of domination. Finally, i was also bothered by inconsistency in analyzing data. For example, comparable linguistic usage was interpreted differently depending on what she needed for her argument. This is not to say that the book has no merits for there are several. Among the merits of this book one must include her writing. One could also sight many of the stories that she tells. In the end, i found this book less about the gold rush than about contemporary America and what appears to be Johnson's personal struggle. I was hoping for either a good social history of the Gold Rush or a good history of the construction of gender and race during the Gold Rush. I found neither.
Rating: 
Summary: Inteligent and Thoughtful
Review: In my opinion, Susan Johnson's research and demonstration of scholarship makes it inevitable for her to prove and defend her hypothesis throughout her book, ultimately confirmed in a solid thesis statement. What I find most intriguing about this book is the utilization of sources available to bring an "unheard" story, the "othered" story, to print. In Johnson's preface, she discusses the ideas for possible worlds of social justice. By choosing to undertake writing this book, Johnson deconstructs the social space of the California Southern Mines and through her thoughtful, inclusive reconstruction she gives a place to "others" whose testimonies and experience previously went unheard in a "mainstream" historical world. However, it is the stories that Johnson brings to life in this piece that truly 'paints a historical picture' of the California Gold Rush.
Rating: 
Summary: Paydirt!
Review: There are many good histories of the California Gold Rush, including Malcolm Rohrbough's award-winning _Days of Gold_. But _Roaring Camp_ presents the Gold Rush in a completely new light; and to look at the gold under johnson's illumination is to come to grips with what conventional history (and memory) represses--the intense collisions of cultures and dreams.
Rating:
Summary: Potential that doesn't follow through
Review: While some of the topics Johnson brings up such as the mixing of cultures that takes place during this time, she lacks the organizational skills and talent as a writer to make the book compelling. Her work is all over the place and it's hard to follow especially when trying to use it as the basis of a research paper (which is what I had to do for a upper division history class of mine).
Rating:
Summary: Potential that doesn't follow through
Review: While some of the topics Johnson brings up such as the mixing of cultures that takes place during this time, she lacks the organizational skills and talent as a writer to make the book compelling. Her work is all over the place and it's hard to follow especially when trying to use it as the basis of a research paper (which is what I had to do for a upper division history class of mine).
<< 1 >>
| 
