These passages are taken from Two Years Before the Mast and compiled

The aim of the book is to explore the social and cultural impact of rumor from Antiquity to the mid-1990s, examining it as one of the most important contributing factors to violence and discrimination. Usually defined as an unverified account that circulates from one person to another and refers to an object, event, or matter of public interest, rumor and its impact have largely been ignored by scholars and authors. Eugen O. Chirovici has tried not only to describe a number of major historic events, but also to explain how the rumors that influenced them came into being and to account for the collective desires or fears that nurtured them. Merely to conclude that the human mind has always been vulnerable to rumors, sometimes with lethal consequences, is not enough; it is important to understand not only what happens, but also why it happens. For at least three reasons, Chirovici thinks that it is important—particularly in this era of explosive development in mass communications—to understand the complex mechanisms whereby rumors emerge and spread. The first is that history has taught us that in certain circumstances rumors can be extremely dangerous, being employed as tools of manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda. The second relates to a deeper understanding of the way in which the most recent inventions—the Internet, social networks, digital landscape—affect and will go on affecting our lives; the virtual world is a historically unprecedented vehicle for the dissemination of rumors. And the third has to do with the wider and more nebulous idea of progress. In other words, are we less vulnerable to rumors today than we were, for example, in the Middle Ages?

Discusses the early history and colonial life in California.

This is the world premiere complete publication of Narciso Botellos important Annals of Southern California, a work focusing on the years 1833 - 1847 when California was emerging from its years of isolation and seclusion with dramatic turmoil, social change, political intrigues, and armed conflicts. Botello, living in that dusty pueblo Los Angeles, records a swirl of events and personalitiestragic love, crime, warfare, treachery, invasionall bound together by the characteristic bravado and intricate web of loyalties of the native Californios. This spirited English translation of the original, amplified by detailed notes and insightful commentary, draws the reader deep into the surprising events of the turbulent final years of Mexican California.

Every California schoolchild's first interaction with history begins with the missions and Indians. It is the pastoralist image, of course, and it is a lasting one. Children in elementary school hear how Father Serra and the priests brought civilization to the groveling, lizard- and acorn-eating Indians of such communities as Yang-na, now Los Angeles. So edified by history, many of those children drag their parents to as many missions as they can. Then there is the other side of the missions, one that a mural decorating a savings and loan office in the San Fernando Valley first showed to me as a child. On it a kindly priest holds a large cross over a kneeling Indian. For some reason, though, the padre apparently aims not to bless the Indian but rather to bludgeon him with the emblem of Christianity. This portrait, too, clings to the memory, capturing the critical view of the missionization of California's indigenous inhabitants. I carried the two childhood images with me both when I went to libraries as I researched the missions and when I revisited several missions thirty years after those family trips. In this work I proceed neither to dubunk nor to reconcile these contrary notions of the missions and Indians but to present a new and, I hope, deeper understanding of the complex interaction of the two antithetical cultures.

When in the early 1870s historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent interviewers out to gather oral histories from the pre-statehood gentry of California, he didn’t count on one thing: the women. When the men weren’t available, the interviewers collected the stories of the women of the household—sometimes almost as an afterthought. These interviews were eventually archived at the University of California, though many were all but forgotten. Testimonios presents thirteen women’s firsthand accounts from the days when California was part of Spain and Mexico. Having lived through the gold rush and seen their country change so drastically, these women understood the need to tell the full story of the people and the places that were their California.

This work provides a revealing look at the history of Hispanic peoples in the American West (or, from the Mexican perspective, El Norte) from the period of Spanish colonization through the present day. Hispanics in the American West portrays the daily lives, struggles, and triumphs of Spanish-speaking peoples from the arrival of Spanish conquistadors to the present, highlighting such defining moments as the years of Mexican sovereignty, the Mexican-American War, the coming of the railroad, the great Mexican migration in the early 20th century, the Great Depression, World War II, the Chicano Movement that arose in the mid-1960s, and more. Coverage includes Hispanics of all nationalities (not just Mexican, but Cuban, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan, among others) and ranges beyond the "traditional" Hispanic states (Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado) to look at newer communities of Spanish-speaking peoples in Oregon, Hawaii, and Utah. The result is a portrait of Hispanic American life in the West that is uniquely inclusive, insightful, and surprising.

Eyewitness account from a twenty-one year old Bostonite of his hide and tallow trading days in Mexican California.