The Infamous King Of The Comstock
The Infamous King Of The Comstock

Author: Michael J. Makley

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2006-01-09

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0874176697

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William Sharon was one of the most colorful scoundrels in the nineteenth-century mining West. He epitomized the robber barons of the nation’s Gilded Age and the political corruption and moral decay for which that period remains notorious; yet he was also a visionary capitalist who controlled more than a dozen of the greatest mines on Nevada’s mighty Comstock Lode, built the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, manipulated speculation and prices on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and revived the collapsed Bank of California. One enemy called him “a thoroughly bad man—a man entirely void of principle,” while a Comstock neighbor called him “one of the best men that ever lived in Virginia City.” Both descriptions were reasonably accurate. In this first-ever biography of one of Nevada’s most reviled historical figures, author Michael Makley examines Sharon’s complex nature and the turbulent times in which he flourished. Arriving in San Francisco shortly after the Gold Rush began, Sharon was soon involved in real estate, politics, banking, and stock speculation, and he was a party in several of the era’s most shocking business and sexual scandals. When he moved to Virginia City, Nevada’s mushrooming silver boomtown, his business dealings there soon made him known as the “King of the Comstock.” Makley’s engaging and meticulously researched account not only lays bare the life of the notorious but enigmatic Sharon but examines the broader historical context of his career—the complex business relationships between San Francisco and the booming gold and silver mining camps of the Far West; the machinations of rampant Gilded Age capitalism; and the sophisticated financial and technological infrastructure that supported Virginia City’s boomtown economy. The Infamous King of the Comstock offers a significant fresh perspective on Nevada and the mining West.

The Trials of Laura Fair
The Trials of Laura Fair

Author: Carole Haber

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2013-08-01

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 146960759X

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On November 3, 1870, on a San Francisco ferry, Laura Fair shot a bullet into the heart of her married lover, A. P. Crittenden. Throughout her two murder trials, Fair's lawyers, supported by expert testimony from physicians, claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. The first jury disregarded such testimony, choosing instead to focus on Fair's disreputable character. In the second trial, however, an effective defense built on contemporary medical beliefs and gendered stereotypes led to a verdict that shocked Americans across the country. In this rousing history, Carole Haber probes changing ideas about morality and immorality, masculinity and femininity, love and marriage, health and disease, and mental illness to show that all these concepts were reinvented in the Victorian West. Haber's book examines the era's most controversial issues, including suffrage, the gendered courts, women's physiology, and free love. This notorious story enriches our understanding of Victorian society, opening the door to a discussion about the ways in which reputation, especially female reputation, is shaped.

Mining North America
Mining North America

Author: John R. McNeill

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-07-03

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0520279174

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"Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly turned to mining to produce many of their basic social and cultural objects. From cell phones to cars and roadways, metal pots to wall tile and even talcum powder, minerals products have become central to modern North American life. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and North Americans' relationship with it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, and forests leveled. The effects of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North American societies. Mining North America examines these developments. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, this book explores how mining has shaped North America over the last half millennium. It covers an array of minerals and geographies while seeking to draw mining into the core debates that animate North American environmental history generally. Taken together, the authors' contributions make a powerful case for the centrality of mining in forging North American environments and societies"--Provided by publisher.

Nevada
Nevada

Author: Michael S. Green

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2015-03-23

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 0874179742

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Nevada: A History of the Silver State has been named a CHOICE Outstanding Title. Michael S. Green, a leading Nevada historian, provides a detailed survey of the Silver State’s past, from the arrival of the early European explorers, to the predominance of mining in the 1800s, to the rise of world-class tourism in the twentieth century, and to more recent attempts to diversify the economy. Of the numerous themes central to Green’s analysis of Nevada’s history, luck plays a significant role in the state’s growth. The miners and gamblers who first visited the state all bet on luck. Today, the biggest contributor to Nevada’s tourist economy, gaming, still relies on that same belief in luck. Nevada’s financial system has generally been based on a “one industry” economy, first mining and, more recently, gaming. Green delves deeply into the limitations of this structure, while also exploring the theme of exploitation of the land and the overuse of the state’s natural resources. Green covers many more aspects of the Silver State’s narrative, including the dominance of one region of the state over another, political forces and corruption, and the citizens’ often tumultuous relationship with the federal government. The book will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers interested in Nevada history.

Ancient Deception - Book 9 in Of Gold & Blood
Ancient Deception - Book 9 in Of Gold & Blood

Author: Jenny Wheeler

Publisher: Jenny Wheeler

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0995145288

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She's a haunted runaway forced to hide from a brutal past. He's a charismatic businessman who despises deception. Can they overcome the lies that separate them and embrace a passion worth everything? California, 1871: Sarah Wyndham has lived a double life since escaping her abusive family and a forced marriage. Fleeing to San Francisco, the gifted mathematician lives incognito as a mousey secretary, in constant terror of discovery. Hawaiian sugar merchant Kaleo Manolo sees beyond the disguise however, and when Sarah’s secrets put her in grave danger, the handsome super surfer steps in as her protector. Traumatised by her brutal past, Sarah is ashamed to tell her story. And she knows her desperate attempt to maintain her secrets could cost Kaleo his life. Burned by her off-handed dishonesty, Kaleo battles growing feelings for a woman whose silence raises alarm bells over her integrity. He’s convinced she is hiding something, but he's determined to keep her safe, even if it means standing against a powerful enemy As they navigate a treacherous web of lies and revenge, Will Sarah learn to trust him enough to confide her shame-filled story? Or will Kaleo’s determination to do the right thing lead to him paying the ultimate price? With time running out and their lives on the line, Sarah and Kaleo risk everything for a chance at freedom. But after Sarah's deception, will Kaleo still believe the truth of her heart? Ancient Deception is the mesmerizing ninth book in the Of Gold & Blood historical mystery series. If you like brilliant heroines, principled heroes, and deadly games of cat and mouse, then you'll love Jenny Wheeler's captivating tale of secrets and sacrifice. Buy Ancient Deception to unravel the web of lies today!

Carleton Watkins
Carleton Watkins

Author: Carleton E. Watkins

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 1606060058

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This is an opulently illustrated catalogue of the entire remaining mammoth photographs of Carleton Watkins (1829-1916). The work will contribute not only to a fuller understanding of this pioneering photographer but also portray the barely explored frontier in its final moments of pristine beauty.

How the South Won the Civil War
How the South Won the Civil War

Author: Heather Cox Richardson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 019090092X

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Named one of The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion. To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern "yeoman farmer" who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. "Movement Conservatives," led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy. Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived.

The Small Shall Be Strong
The Small Shall Be Strong

Author: Matthew S. Makley

Publisher: UMass + ORM

Published: 2018-07-20

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1613765878

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For thousands of years the Washoe people have lived in the shadows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the center of their lands sits beautiful Lake Tahoe, a name derived from the Washoe word Da ow a ga. Perhaps because the Washoe population has always been small or because it has been more peaceful than other tribal communities, its history has never been published. In The Small Shall Be Strong, Matthew S. Makley demonstrates that, in spite of this lack of scholarly attention, Washoe history is replete with broad significance. The Washoes, for example, gained culturally important lands through the 1887 Dawes Act. And during the 1990s, the tribe sought to ban climbing on one of its most sacred sites, Cave Rock, a singular instance of Native sacred concerns leading to restrictions. The Small Shall Be Strong illustrates a history and raises a broad question: How might greater scholarly attention to the numerous lesser-studied tribes in the United States compel a rethinking of larger historical narratives?

Frontier Fake News
Frontier Fake News

Author: Richard Moreno

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2023-03-07

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1647790875

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When readers see the names Mark Twain and Dan De Quille, fake news may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But these legendary journalists were some of the original, and most prolific, fake news writers in the early years of Nevada’s history. Frontier Fake News puts a spotlight on the hoaxes, feuds, pranks, outright lies, witty writing, and other literary devices utilized by a number of the Silver State’s frontier newsmen from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Often known collectively as the Sagebrush School, these journalists were opinionated, talented, and individualistic. While Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who got his start at Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, and Dan De Quille (William Wright), who some felt was a better writer than Twain, are the most well-known members of the Sagebrush School, author Richard Moreno includes others such as Fred Hart, who concocted a fake social club and reported on its gatherings for Austin’s Reese River Reveille, and William Forbes, who enjoyed sprinkling clever puns with political undertones in his newspaper articles. Moreno traces the beginnings of genuine fake news from founding father Benjamin Franklin’s “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle, Number 705, March 1782,” a fake newspaper aimed at swaying British public opinion, to the fake news articles of New York and Baltimore papers in the early 1800s. But these examples are only a prelude to the amazing accounts of petrified men, freeze-inducing solar armor, magically magnetic rocks, blood-curdling massacres, and other nonsense stories that appeared in Nevada’s frontier newspapers and beyond.

Carleton Watkins
Carleton Watkins

Author: Tyler Green

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0520377532

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"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018—The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2018 California Book Awards Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union’s disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio’s horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins’s work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins’s pictures, Congress would pass legislation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical “national park,” the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth’s landmark 1948 “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea.” Watkins’s photographs helped shape America’s idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins’s clients, customers, and friends were a veritable “who’s who” of America’s Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Frémont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today’s America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn’t just reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling of Watkins’s story will fascinate anyone interested in American history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.