Gold Rush: A Literary Exploration

Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
The California Gold Rush, which began in 1848, was a pivotal event in American history, turning the isolated settlements of California into boom towns overnight. Yet the "popular imagination," as editor Kowalewski notes in his excellent introduction, has consistently ignored its significance (perhaps the heady case of gold rush fever is too coarse for our national mythology to incorporate). Kowalewski has compiled the reminiscences of participants in the rush?one cannot call them "miners" because individuals from all walks of life were drawn to the lure of instant wealth?as well as outside contemporary observers such as Twain, Emerson, and Thoreau. First-person narratives give a good sense of those times, from the wealthiest of prospectors to the poorest Chinese immigrant. Since this is the companion volume to the PBS series The Gold Rush, airing in January and narrated by John Lithgow in honor of the 150th anniversary, it is a worthwhile purchase for both large and smaller public libraries, as well as for academic collections.?Diane G. Premo, Rochester P.L.,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A large, lively gathering of primarily firsthand recollections of the California Gold Rush of 1848, drawn from memoirs and letters, and being published as a companion volume for a PBS documentary airing in January 1998. Massive numbers of would-be miners, the majority blithely ignorant of life in the West, hurried to get to the gold fields. The journey overland to California was hazardous and harsh, as noted in such pieces as the record of a disastrous march across Death Valley by William Manly. Once there, travelers found conditions not much better. Still, life in the gold fields had a vigor and variety nicely caught here. And if very few of the many thousands of miners who made it to California got rich, many, these selections indicate, seem to have had a hard but grand adventure. A final section offers views of the Gold Rush experience as filtered through 19th-century fiction and art (Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Frank Norris, Robert Frost, Czeslaw Milosz), illuminating the continuing resonance of the event that had the most to do with the opening of the American West for settlement--and exploitation. (55 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.