5.6: Suggested Readings
- Page ID
- 130566
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- Berglund, Barbara, Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). A deeply researched study of the social and cultural evolution of California’s largest city.
- Chen, Yong, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). A recent treatment that emphasizes the continuing contacts between San Francisco’s Chinatown and China.
- Clarke, Dwight L., William Tecumseh Sherman: Gold Rush Banker (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1969). Incorporates long excerpts from Sherman’s detailed letters, especially interesting for the vigilantes of 1856.
- Dame Shirley, [Clappe, Louise A. K. S.], The Shirley Letters (1854–55; Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1970). The letters of “Dame Shirley” provide a wealth of information on life in the gold fields.
- Griswold del Castillo, Richard, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990). The best single treatment of this crucially important document for the history of California and the Southwest.
- Hurtado, Albert L., Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). An insightful and comprehensive treatment of this important topic.
- Lapp, Rudolph M., Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). A pioneering work in African American history.
- Lotchin, Roger W., San Francisco, 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City (1974; Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997). An excellent treatment of this crucial decade in the history of the city.
- Matthews, Glenna. The Golden State in the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party, and the Birth of Modern California (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). A new treatment of the topic, especially good on the role of Thomas Starr King.
- Quinn, Arthur, The Rivals: William M. Gwin, David Broderick, and the Birth of California (New York: Crown Publishers, 1994). A well-written and balanced account of the key political rivalry in California in the 1850s.
- Rawls, James J., Orsi, Richard J., and Smith-Baranzini, Marlene, eds., A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). One volume of a series, all of which are excellent, developed by the California Historical Society on the occasion of the state’s sesquicentennial.
- Rohrbough, Malcolm J., Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). A highly acclaimed treatment of the Gold Rush itself and its impact on California and the nation.
- Senkewicz, Robert M., Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). An excellent overview of San Francisco’s vigilantism for the decade of the 1850s.
- Starr, Kevin, Orsi, Richard J., and Smith-Baranzini, Marlene, eds., Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Another of the excellent volumes published to mark the state’s sesquicentennial.