Author: David Goodman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804724807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The brave independence of the 'roaring days', the camaraderie of the gold fields, jolly diggers on a spree - these are the images that have come down to us of the gold era of the 1850s in Australia and California. But these images were largely shaped decades later, by writers such as Henry Lawson and Bret Harte - they speak of later nostalgia rather than the experience of the time." "In this study of the contemporary response to the discoveries of gold in Victoria and California, David Goodman argues that people at the time were apprehensive about gold rushing, and the kind of society it seemed to prefigure. In the chaos of the gold rushes, individual self-interest seemed to be all that could motivate people to any exertion. And it was only the economic rationalists of the day - those who believed in political economy and its promise, that out of the confusion of individual self-interest would come some sort of social order - who could wholeheartedly endorse the gold rushes as events." "This is a history of the ways people talked about gold. As the first full-length cultural history of the gold rushes on two continents, it examines the meanings of gold at the time, and the narratives which were told about social disruption. It locates the deeper underlying themes in the response to gold. It also looks at the ways in which the dominant later memories of gold were shaped. And it is about national differences, about the construction of distinctive national cultures out of materials common to the British world. This book should be read not only by Australian and American historians but by anyone with an interest in the cultural history of modernity."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author: Boston Public Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Sally Denton
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803213685
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Charles Främont was the illegitimate child of a Virginia aristocrat and a working-class French immigrant; Jessie Benton was the daughter of the most powerful pre-Civil War U.S. senator, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, and, her gender notwithstanding, had been groomed as much as any young man to be president. Senator Benton unwittingly brought the two together, never imagining that his daughter would fall in love with Främont. Despite their disparate backgrounds, however, John and Jessie?s marriage was one of the most storied events of the nineteenth century. And indeed, Jessie and John made a formidable couple. Both together and apart they contributed significantly to shaping the United States. He was a key figure in western expansion and the first presidential candidate for the Republican Party. She was a savvy political operator who played confidante and adviser to the highest political powers in the country. Despite their great efforts on behalf of their country, however, their reputations did not survive a Washington smear campaign led by none other than Jessie?s father. Written with an investigative journalist?s eye for detail and a novelist?s flair, this biography of explorer, politician, and gold-mine owner John C. Främont and his intellectual wife, Jessie Benton Främont, also casts light on the tumultuous period that forms the backdrop for their lives, from the abolition of slavery to the building of the railroad.

Author: Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1328

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1324

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1332

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1316

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 960

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Brockton Public Library (Brockton, Mass.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catalogs, Classified (Dewey decimal)
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 844

Get Book Here

Book Description