Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, author of the award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the most memorable and impactful people he h

The third in a four-volume series commemorating California's sesquicentennial, this volume brings together the best of the new scholarship on the social and cul

"Western writers," says Thomas J. Lyon in his epilogue to Updating the Literary West, "have grown up with the frontier myth but now find themselves in the early

-- At the gold diggings in 1848 and 1849. -- Gambling, money, crime, the law, strong drink, and Judge Lynch. -- Life in the cities; Satan and the Legislature; f